00:00:00 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:00:00] S0: An early investor that you pitched for Gamma called it the worst idea he had ever heard and then hung up on you. [00:00:07] S1: That's right. None of those other startups were our true competition. Our competition is behavior change. We have to get people that are used to using slides to get them to give another format a try. [00:00:18] S0: How do you think about storytelling as a skill for a founder in like that early stage? [00:00:23] S1: You almost have to go through Cringe Valley for many, many months. And I think most people stop when they hit the first part of Cringe Valley because it's so painful. I encourage everybody to try to make it through because I do think the payoff is worth it. [00:00:36] S0: Grant, welcome to Minus One. [00:00:37] S1: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. [00:00:40] S0: So there's this anecdote that you share. We talked about a little bit about it right before this, about an early investor that you pitched for Gamma who called it, I hope I'm getting this right, the worst idea he had ever heard and then hung up on you. That's right. Totally unrelated question. When you were writing the press release for the series b that valued your company at $2,000,000,000 as a profitable AI company with, 2,000,000 in ARR per employee, Were you thinking about anyone in particular?
00:00:40 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:00:40] S0: So there's this anecdote that you share. We talked about a little bit about it right before this, about an early investor that you pitched for Gamma who called it, I hope I'm getting this right, the worst idea he had ever heard and then hung up on you. That's right. Totally unrelated question. When you were writing the press release for the series b that valued your company at $2,000,000,000 as a profitable AI company with, 2,000,000 in ARR per employee, Were you thinking about anyone in particular? [00:01:12] S1: No. You know, that that memory, although it's seared in in my head, you know, a lot of the, you know, recent part of the journey is just like, you know, embracing that we're still early in the grand scheme of things. And, also reflecting on what he said, you know, what he followed after saying that this was the worst idea was that the space we're operating in is filled with, you know, massive incumbents. They have ultimate distribution. And so his speculation was that there's just no way we'd win as a startup. And so I think there is truth in that. And for us to kind of internalize knowing that entering this market just meant that we would really have to think about growth from day one, distribution, how can we make a product that has a chance of actually competing against these incumbents. And so in many ways, appreciate the fact that even early on in the journey, was a wake up call to not take what we have for granted and make sure we don't squander the opportunity in front of us.
00:02:10 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:02:10] S0: So to be clear, the opportunity was take on PowerPoint. Right? I get... You you were saying it... An incumbent with great distribution PowerPoint. Sort of underselling it. And Google Slides. Yeah. But And Google Slides. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah. Talking about, like, built in distribution there. Exactly. Office and and, Google Suite. Yeah. What led to you... I'm very interested in the mechanics of how people discover or decide on the thing that they actually wanna go and build. What was the process that led up to being like, yeah, PowerPoint. Let's kill PowerPoint slides. [00:02:40] S1: Yeah. In many ways, there was a, maybe a problem I've been thinking about for a long time. So I started my career in investment banking and consulting. Lived many A lot of slides. Late nights Yeah. Living in slides, editing slides, formatting slides, and even then just having the feeling like [00:02:57] S0: You dream in slideshows, don't you?
00:02:57 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:02:57] S0: You dream in slideshows, don't you? [00:02:58] S1: Yeah. Dreaming in slideshow, why am I spending so much time formatting and trying to design the thing rather than the content itself? So, you know, that, know, obviously slides as a format has been a medium for communication throughout my career and after the last startup I was... I was acquired, I went back into advising early stage startups. I was using Google Slides as how I'd communicate to my clients and just had the same frustration. One late night trying to prepare for a big meeting the next day, getting all my ideas onto, you know, this canvas and again spending 90% of the time, you know, formatting the deck rather than actually working on the content, the structure, the story And, that tipping point was, okay. You asked them the question, like, what if there's a better way? [00:03:42] S0: Okay. So I guess it sort of makes sense, especially having come from, like, if you were doing anything consulting or... I mean, you went through and and had been living in slides for, like, your whole career. But at that point, you had to also convince people to come and join you. Right? So your founding team is is sort of like getting the band back together a little bit. Right. You you...
00:03:42 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:03:42] S0: Okay. So I guess it sort of makes sense, especially having come from, like, if you were doing anything consulting or... I mean, you went through and and had been living in slides for, like, your whole career. But at that point, you had to also convince people to come and join you. Right? So your founding team is is sort of like getting the band back together a little bit. Right. You you... [00:04:00] S1: Can you tell us a little more about that? Optimizely. Yeah. So, you know, my two cofounders and I, we worked together for five plus years at another startup called Optimizely. And that's where, you know, we became friends, we worked together, we've had talked about maybe someday trying to do something together. And yeah, early on when it was just me with the idea, you know, they're the first two I called and we, you know, decided, hey, what if we just allowed ourselves some time to tinker in the space, come up with some prototypes, what might it look like if we try to reimagine the way people present their ideas? And after about four or five months of tinkering, that gave us a first chance of actually creating a working prototype, something we can use ironically in this case to actually pitch our idea. So we used instead of Google Slides, we used the prototype of Gamma to pitch the idea of Gamma and try to raise our initial round of funding. [00:04:50] S0: Yeah. I remember I was chatting with, Evan, one of the other investing partners here. [00:04:54] S1: He was the first track in.
00:04:54 · Grant Lee, Jonathan Brebner
[00:04:54] S1: He was the first track in. [00:04:55] S0: And he mentioned that, yeah, I mean, you used the product in the pitch for the product. Right. How good was the product at the time? Or how much of it were you sort of like, you don't don't pay attention to this part. No. No. No. This is what I want you to... Where were... Were you hiding bits of it? Or or