$2.1B AI CEO: From "The Worst Idea" to a $2.1B Company | Grant Lee, Co-Founder and CEO Gamma

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**Grant Lee** (1:00)
The investor told me this is the worst idea he had ever heard. There is no way we would ever succeed.

**Marina Mogilko** (1:04)
This is Grant Lee, co-founder and CEO of Gamma, the AI tool that turns one prompt into a finished presentation. He started at the end of 2020 before the AI boom. Today, Gamma has 100 million users and a $2.1 billion valuation. A lot of people are trying to build an AI startup these days. What is the one thing they should copy from your playbook?

**Grant Lee** (1:24)
You can build anything, whether you're vibe coding or just agentic coding. All the capabilities feel like they're there. You can build anything. The question is, should you?

**Marina Mogilko** (1:32)
So how do you know?

**Grant Lee** (1:34)
One thing you'll learn is friends will lie to you. They don't want to hurt your feelings. They'll tell you the product is amazing. If your product is valuable, they'll put their credit card down to pay for the product. Then you'll know you have product market fit.

**Marina Mogilko** (1:44)
In this episode, Grant breaks down the three things that decide it. How to make people fall in love with your product. How to know if an idea is worth a year of your life and how to pitch it so investors say yes. Can you give me their first 30 days plan, step by step?

**Grant Lee** (2:00)
First 30 days plan is...

**Marina Mogilko** (2:03)
A lot of people are trying to build an AI startup these days. What is the one thing they should copy from your playbook when building in 2026?

**Grant Lee** (2:11)
Honestly, the number one thing is to figure out who you're going to build with.
There's obviously a lot of speculation around the single person billion dollar startup. I still think even if that were possible, why do it alone? It's so much more fun building with a team. If you're going to build a team, make sure you choose the right team. A team needs to look like a set of individuals that maybe share the same ambition, share the same values and principles, but should be very complimentary in skill sets. For us, I chose two co-founders that, again, we work together at a company called Optimizee, became friends, but we're also so different. We bring a lot of different skills to the table.
If you're starting to tinker today, find people that are very complimentary. You don't all need to be developers. You don't all need to be product people. Come up with something where each of you bring something, and then start tinkering on a bunch of different ideas. Find a problem space that feels uniquely positioned where you, as a team, have the best chance of actually going out there and create something that's compelling for the market.

**Marina Mogilko** (3:12)
Yeah. Now that you're saying it makes total sense, but back then, you had to go through so many difficulties. When I read the story where an investor hung up on you saying it's the dumbest idea, then you were fundraising in your small apartment, your wife just had a second baby.
Talk to me about that time. How did you know you should keep pushing? And by the way, was that investor right about anything at all?

**Grant Lee** (3:35)
So the investor, yeah, basically, you know, this is early on in pitching, told me this is the worst idea he had ever heard, said that, you know, not only were we going up against massive incumbents, but they had ultimate distribution, so there was no way we would ever succeed.
And I think, you know, he was absolutely right, you know, in this market, especially what we're trying to build, there's going to be, you know, incumbents, they do have distribution. So as a product, you really have to think about growth from day one. You have to think about ways that your product itself can distribute itself just by use of the product. So leaning heavily into things like product-led growth and how do you build organic virality? These are things you can't afford to wait until many years later. Like as you're building the foundation of the product, you're trying to integrate that into the philosophy of building the product. So he was right. And I think for better or worse, we took that sort of painful feedback early on and sort of internalized it and use it as motivation to keep building.