00:10:31 · Grant Lee
[00:10:31] S1: Yeah. So, I guess, you know, maybe to rewind maybe a few months before that moment, we had gotten to the point where we had just come out of, a product hunt launch, which ended up going pretty well. We ended up winning product of the day, product of the week, product of the month, felt great, sign up spiked, and then they sort of plateaued. And we had this moment of realizing that what we had created had created some initial interest but not enough to drive organic growth. If we were to continue growing, we'd have to find other mechanisms of actually, you know, filling the top of the funnel and trying to get more and more users. And we felt like that meant that the fundamental part of the sort of product and the growth engine was broken. We didn't have something that could be self sustaining. So for us, that was a moment of, okay, well, we need to really go back and kind of redo the entire creation flow within Gamma. The product needs to be dead simple. We need to be able to actually win over users and have them come back and use the product. And it needs to be good enough so that people tell all their friends about so that we actually have some sort of organic virality. So this was basically end of December, coming in on, you know, January and we basically gave ourselves, just over three months to try to, address this problem. And for us, it really much was about the company moment because, you know, coming up on, you know, March, we were about a year of runway left, no meaningful traction, definitely not enough organic growth to sort of make it to the next, you know, round of funding. And so this bet the company moment was, okay, heads down. Everybody in the company focused on just the first thirty seconds of the product experience, made that feel magical, earned the right to have people tell their friends about it. And two weeks before our launch date is when the Silicon Valley Bank collapses. And of course, you know, that is a moment of crisis because, we don't know if we're gonna be able to make payroll and certainly working with a lot of our early investors to try to figure this out in the background. And of course, you know, we know employees are reading about this in the news as well. So, as a company, again, we've always been super transparent. So, we ended up calling the entire company together.
00:12:38 · Grant Lee, Jonathan Brebner
We had our own all hands and, at this stage of the company, we were in a converted two bedroom apartment. So calling an all hens meant... Calling everybody into one of the bedrooms and, setting everybody down and saying, you know, we don't know how we're going to make payroll, but you have a word that we're doing everything we possibly can to, you know, to figure this out and we can't move the launch date. We owe it to ourselves to see it through. We're gonna ship this thing one way or another. Even if the company shut shuts down, we've worked way too hard not to ship this thing. And so we ended up sticking to the launch date. Fortunately, the SVB stuff worked itself out. But I think for us, we sort of earned some resiliency going through that, coming through it on the other side, just knowing that, you know, we would do whatever it takes. We launched successfully. The launch was... Is, you know, immediate spike in sort of growth. We did start seeing that organic virality. [00:13:32] S0: Was that the the kinda like first moment in the company where we really had that sustainable... [00:13:36] S1: Yeah. Sustainable growth, you know, thousands of sign ups growing, growing, growing every single day. And so for better or worse, going through that moment, I think did make us a tougher, more resilient team and also formed kind of this sort of closeness knowing that we were never going to shy away from challenges or like these hard moments and, we're gonna, you know, get through it together.
00:13:36 · Grant Lee, Jonathan Brebner
[00:13:36] S1: Yeah. Sustainable growth, you know, thousands of sign ups growing, growing, growing every single day. And so for better or worse, going through that moment, I think did make us a tougher, more resilient team and also formed kind of this sort of closeness knowing that we were never going to shy away from challenges or like these hard moments and, we're gonna, you know, get through it together. [00:13:56] S0: Yeah. So you you had mentioned there that, you know, at the time your team was... It was the size such that you could fit it into a two bedroom apartment. Right. And and, you know, you you... One of the kind of notable things about Gamma is that you've remained relatively small. Right? And, I remember when the, you know, you shared that you were going to announce the the series B that, the thing that really stood out is the 2,000,000 in ARR Right. Per employee Right. Which really just, like, drives home kinda how successful this lean team has been. Was that a very conscious decision that, like, look, we we want to actually try to keep the teams smaller. You know, was it related to, like, we've been through that kind of an experience where it's like, like, look at what we were able to do at that size? Or, how have you thought about team growth as your company has grown?
00:14:42 · Grant Lee
[00:14:42] S1: Yeah. So it's never been with a specific ARR per employee goal in mind or like, oh, let's keep the number of... Under a certain, you know, head count under a certain number. But it is much rooted in us wanting to, you know, be scrappy, to have the mindset of always wanting to do more with less, and to to really try to be as, you know, efficient as possible every step of the way. Certainly going through the SVB, you know, collapse also just rec... We recognize that, you know, I think Paul Graham calls it like cockroach mode or whatever it means, like, be so resilient that you can survive anything. I do think a lot of that, you know, started at that point. And then part of this was also we... We've always had this internal saying, we're going to hire painfully slowly. And a part of that is a cultural thing in that we want to be able to feel that, you know, we're opening a new role, we know exactly what we're looking for. In many instances in my part of the, you know, the company where a lot of these functions are going zero to one, I've never led marketing. So when I go out and try to think about, okay, how do I build a great marketing team? I really felt like I needed to do part of the job myself so I can have a deeper appreciation for what it actually entails. I oftentimes think about this as like, you're not trying to become an expert necessarily in in that particular function, but you're you're serving as reconnaissance. You're going out. You're scouting what this role looks like. You now know what look great could could be because you know how hard the role is. Yeah. And when you go interview people, you actually know what to ask. And you know where maybe there are some of the traps in terms of maybe simplified thinking or oversimplified thinking. And can someone go deep enough to actually help you navigate, you know, what's to come? And so for me, it was actually really helpful. And then when we eventually hired our head of marketing, I felt like I was well equipped to be able to actually assess whether or not she'd be a great fit. And, you know, she's been in this role now for for almost a year. I was trying to lead marketing before that and she's been amazing, built a great team. I think a lot of that is attributed to the that foundation we laid early on.
00:16:36 · Jonathan Brebner, Grant Lee
[00:16:36] S0: Yeah. So hire painfully slowly in that, like, you have to go experience the pain of not having someone. Yeah. [00:16:42] S1: Yeah. Don't default to hire. Default to, like, knowing what you're actually trying to accomplish. [00:16:47] S0: Okay. I mean, it it brings up a subject I wanted to focus on a little bit that that I I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is, related to marketing, storytelling. Yeah. One of the things I saw recently was, that you... Correct me if I'm wrong, but had referred to, Gamma recently as a storytelling platform. [00:17:04] S1: Visual storytelling. [00:17:05] S0: Yeah. Right. And I'm interested in your take on the idea of storytelling as, a a skill set. Right? Because obviously, you know, you create tooling for that skill set for, a particular kind of it. Right? But it is fundamentally about, like, how do we make this easier? First of all, just, like, how do you think about storytelling as a skill for a founder in, that early stage, right, where you're perhaps still thinking, like, I have to know what it's like to be, like the head of marketing before I can go and hire the marketer. I know what that means from a storytelling perspective or talking to a investor who says [00:17:40] S1: Yeah. [00:17:40] S0: This is the worst idea ever. You
00:17:42 · Grant Lee
[00:17:42] S1: know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is where... To your point, it comes in many different, you know, forms, different shapes, and all of that is critical. As a founder, you are storytelling in many different ways. To your point, part of this is like selling your own vision and you'll have to, you know, sell investors on, you know, why they should even believe in what you're trying to do and and the team you have. You're gonna have to constantly sell the vision of, to future candidates and employees and like, why should they even care to join you when there's a million other startups doing interesting things that are maybe even more well funded than you. And then of course, you have to sell your customers around like going back to behavior change, like, why why should they waste any time in your tool when another tool can do the same job? And and so there's that element of it. I think there's also just, you know, storytelling being just this timeless skill. It's obviously deeply rooted in just how humans build relationships, how information gets spread. And so for us, like even if we get to play one really small, you know, sliver of that role across many different types of people, like that excites us because there's not... Nothing in our minds that creates higher leverage than being able to help people communicate more effectively. It's gonna bring us together, it's gonna help us innovate. And so for us, it's it's inspiring to know that we can play a big role in that and play a role on a global basis. Like obviously, storytelling is not limited to to just people in The US, it's it's global. It's a need that's universal. So that's always been what's really been inspiring for us. And as I've become just, you know, more sort of kind of acknowledging that other forms of storytelling might take shape in like marketing. And like how do we build a brand that people recognize and want, you know, that resonate with with a lot of people? How do you tell, that in a compelling way and trying to just get better at that craft? I always encourage, you know, founders to think about now stepping into becoming a creator or an influencer in in a way because you can be your company's megaphone. But that is a skill that needs to be developed over many, many, you know, months, years, maybe decades.