From Idea To Impact: How Gamma Is Redefining Presentations | Grant Lee

24:08Yeah. But like, if you're not investing the millions of dollars that you're making into headcount, where does it go? Yeah. Well, it doesn't mean we won't invest in headcount. I think at a certain stage, things like acquisitions, acquihires become interesting. I think having cash on the balance sheet is going to help with that. And we are starting to explore that more than we were in the past. So those are areas where we can now have this pool of capital and say, hey, maybe we can deploy it in different ways. It can be more asymmetric than just shoving it into operating expenses. There may be different things.

24:43And so I think that's where just having the optionality helps. Like we can deploy it when we need to. And again, we will grow the team. I think once we really start building out the go-to-market team, especially on like the sales side, Those are instances where the cost will come ahead of maybe the revenue because you have to lay the foundation for AEs. And oftentimes those customers will come later. You're paying later. And so I think those will change some of the economics. And we're going to do that. At some point, that will change the dynamic. Yeah. It's interesting. During the COVID ZERP days, there was many companies that were PLG.

25:18Yeah. Which in so many words meant they didn't think they needed sales. and the reason for that is because like, you know, demand was pulled forward and the spigot was just on and everybody convinced themselves that it was never going to turn off. And then it turned off or it started to taper off and then they had no sales team, right? And they couldn't control their own destiny as a by-product of that. Right. I mean, we are building out the sales team. So I told you, these are things that I think that's where you can maybe get too cute is like, yeah, assuming that there is no role for that. If you're going after a big enough market and if you're, especially if you're doing B2B, sales is inevitable, right?

26:01You need to have that team. And we are starting to, we have been more prosumer up until now, like up until this year. And so as we think about the next chapter, you know, for us, prosumer will be the core growth engine. We'll add sales, we'll add the ability to go after that B2B opportunity and that requires that count. How many engineers are there-ish? Yes, it's, you know, more than half of the company's engineers. So like call it 25-ish. That's a lot. Yeah. And when you look down the barrel of your two-year roadmap, is there not a temptation to say we could make a, okay, let's just say we could make a three-year roadmap, a year and a half roadmap if we added 10 more headcount?

26:38Yeah. Yeah. There is. This is like the constant tension that I imagine. There is a constant tension. It's like always in your head. This is the constant tension. Yeah. And it's when you think about what keeps founders up at night. Like for me, that is one of the questions, right? It's like, how quickly do we build a team? And we are going to grow the team. I think next year will be a critical year to build out, you know, more of the R &D, the engineering team. And I think that's going to be a big investment. But the question, yeah, what is the number? And I think that's for us to sort of figure out.

27:09Yeah. When you were at Optimizely, what were you doing? I was head of finance there. So I was interim CFO. I eventually was also chief of staff. I was playing a few different operating roles. And did you come through the finance ranks? Yeah, investment banking, and then started as the first finance hire, and then, yeah. Okay. Like, not the typical... It's interesting, like, hearing the way that you think. Yeah. Like, it doesn't surprise me to hear, like, how judicious you are about resource allocation is a very, like, finance orientation towards company building. Yeah, yeah. And I actually think, in some ways, it's really refreshing, but it's not the archetype of so many founders that I work with.

27:46Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I feel, so the thing is, I think, you know, we have, there's three, three of us co-founders, very complimentary in skill sets. And for me, yeah, I come from a very different background, right? Like I, I, I studied engineering. I was in mechanical engineering in school. I did mechanical engineering in school, but, you know, I'm not working with our, our engineers today. Right. And, and for me, I think what I bring is like a different way of thinking about company building, product building. and you might assume like, oh, hey, someone from finance, the first thing you would do is apply budgets to everything.

28:20And that's the exact opposite of what we do. I don't apply budgets to a lot of things because I don't think that that's the right way of kind of framing things. Because guess what? When I was in finance, anytime you had a budget, people spent the budget, right? You give someone a budget, they're going to spend up to that budget. And then next quarter, they're going to ask you for 10 % more than the budget they had last year. For us, if you instead focus on, okay, what are the problems that need to be solved? Who's the best to go after? Which team needs to be working on it? And don't come with a budget.

28:50Let's just go do it. Let's actually just go spend the money on the thing. And if you have a strategy that sounds sound, we're going to do it. And then we'll worry about the cost later. Of course, over time, you're making sure you're not just burning everything, but you're approaching it with like, okay, we need to figure these different problems out. There is no amount of budget that I'm going to give to you that's ever going to feel right or perfect. So let's just not try to over-index on that, especially at the earliest stages. Like everything is like you're doing for the first time. And especially for a team of 50, right?

29:17Like we're not even, we're not only doing it for the first time, we're like trying to do it differently than maybe any other people have in the past. So that's been our mentality. And I think that's where, you know, I think having the finance background actually allows me to see the world with a unique perspective, but doesn't always mean that you're rigid in how you approach the problem. Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you a hypothetical. Yeah. Today, I come to your office with 10 of the most cracked engineers in Silicon Valley that all want to work at Gamma. Like certified cracked. Yeah. The best of the best.

29:51Do you hire them? If they pass their interviews, yeah. You do? You would hire all 10? Yeah, hire all 10. Okay. So there is no like true constraint on headcount. Not for where there's going to be, you know, room for them to, you know, to actually impact what we're doing. Yeah. Would I hire 10 accountants? No. But yeah, if you're saying engineers, we have an infinite roadmap for things we're going to build. There will be, if 10 landed on our front door today and they passed our interviews. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's kind of what you're trying to do with an acqui-hire, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

30:25Yeah, yeah. Get it in bulk. Like if we have 10 people that work together, love working together and they're all great. Yeah, awesome. Let's do it. This market for talent, let's just be specific, engineering talent, is like nothing I've ever seen. It's insane. And like, I'm not even talking like researchers. No, no, no. Take that, yeah. Take that aside. Yeah. Like just great engineers is insane. It's insane. It really is, yeah. It's hard. And I get it. I mean, there's so many amazing teams working on cool things, right? Like you're competing against that. Plus, you know, the thing, the mega companies also are hiring.

31:02It's from all directions, right? So if you're great and you're talented, you can choose anything you want to do. This becomes both challenging for the company as well as the candidate because you as a company, as a startup, you want to hire people that are missionaries, right? But you're competing against people that are missionaries getting massive mercenary checks. And like, how do you, how do you compete when someone can actually have the best of both worlds, potentially? You got to find people that aren't you, you know, really mission oriented, like like what you're doing, love what you're doing, love how you're doing it.

31:32That's hard. It's really hard to find. Yeah. Do you feel like there are things that you did in hindsight get too cute with where you regretted it? Like, oh, I tried to rewrite this playbook. I shouldn't have done that. nothing we've massively regretted i mean we are the type of company where we are constantly testing and iterating right it's it's very much as the strong opinions loosely held i'm i'm totally fine being proved wrong about things so i don't think there's ever been like a big decision where like hey we we like this was just dumb you know because it's it's i don't think that's that's you know it's never gotten to that and maybe i'll reflect back on this tiny team thing in like five years and be like, actually, this is done.

32:15We haven't yet. I think so. So, you know, up until this point, it's been these decisions that are oftentimes micro decisions that you're trying to, you know, see if it's right, test it out a little bit. And, you know, when we think about like even the tiny team approach, you know, a lot of our early teammates, especially in the leadership role, come through like a work trial. Like they're in the seat first for several months before we hire them. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of the, I guess what you'll see is like, not surprisingly, a company that came from Optimizee experimentation kind of allows you to kind of move fast without feeling like, you know, you're making these big, like one-way door decisions where all of a sudden you can never go back.

32:53Like, you know, you regret it for the rest of, you know, the life of the company. Yeah. That makes sense to me. When you think about the vibes of the people in the company, does the like 10 engineer headcount cross your mind of like, if we did an aqua hire today and they were all amazing engineers, because the company is so small, relatively speaking, if you increase headcount by 20 % of people that you've never worked with, I bet you people inside the company are quite protective of the culture of Gamma. Totally. I imagine. Yeah. Maybe there is an inverse world where they also start pushing back on you, saying like, no, no, no, like what we have is special.

33:34Yeah. I don't want to change that. It's a tough one. I think your point, yeah, it's like what percentage of the company are you trying to absorb or change at the same time? I think this goes back to a point of like why for us hiring slowly for us matter a lot. It is the culture piece. Because if you're going from 10 to 50 to 100 in a year, the culture doesn't even have time to really set, right? Like you don't even know what your identity is as a company and you're introducing all this new DNA. What you want to do is like, once you have this core team, that's your DNA. You're trying to replicate that DNA.

34:10You're trying to bring in people that have the exact same values and principles. But if you don't have that set yet, it's really hard to do that. And that's why I worry like these companies that maybe even pre-product market fit are like hyperscaling. Like they're all of a sudden, they're doubling, tripling size of team. Well, you know, a few years from now, are you going to have a team that even feels cohesive? And I don't think that's possible when you're trying to grow that aggressively. 20%, like at 50 now for adding 10, that's probably on the verge of like, okay, yeah, you're right. That's a decision we need to take very seriously.

34:40We'll probably need to spend a ton of time with that team. It's not just passing the interviews. It's like, okay, let's go grab dinners together. Let's make sure like you can work in this office and this day-to-day feels actually like a place you want to be. That's a big decision. And I don't, you know, 20 % is big. If it's like 5%, maybe less so. And so I do think there is some range where you can't hire 50 engineers and try to absorb it all at once. And if you're doing that, it must be for some really important strategic decision that you're merging at that level, right? Yeah, a lot of my questions, I'm incubating a company here at KP and we're going through a lot of these core questions.

35:15And one of the things that I think I got wrong was I had multiple pages of values that were core to me, okay, that I thought were very important in whatever I did next. if I ever wanted to operate again, whatever that would look like, what would that mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And very quickly, what I realized was like me, two co-founders, founding engineer, you sit in a room together for seven days a week. Yep. And I realized like, oh, like, I don't actually think any of those things matter. And the reason, the reason for that is because it is just how you behave that defines what it is. 100%. And to your point of like defining what it is before you move on to the next thing, defining what it is is like, how do you all behave together?

36:09Like what is that core behavioral cohesiveness that then is like, okay, we want people that are whatever, high slope and low ego, for example, because that's how we feel like we are. And so it's so hard to like predefine any of these things because so much of the company that you build is the people that you hire. And so much of the values that you try and imbue are through those people, like through how you actually act every day. And then you can decide what those things are. And this is what we did. I mean, so we didn't come in with predefined values. What we did was, you know, the first seven of us and eventually 12, you know, we're in Slack a lot.

36:50People, there's like a shout out channel. And so like anytime like someone does something amazing, you know, you know, they can give someone else a shout out on the team. And then what I would do is I'd start just writing down what people were praising other people for. Like what are the things I'm like, oh, this is you did an awesome job. This is exactly what you did. And I observe people's behaviors in general. Like what is something that, you know, Jess as an engineer, like what did she do that was special that I'd be like, oh, if I could have another Jess, this is this would be great. Right.

37:19I'd write that down. And then I had this sort of notebook of all the things that people did, all the behaviors that people did. And I started crafting our culture deck. And I turned all those behaviors in a set of values. And then I shared that with a team. And I said, which of these feel authentic? And we continue to iterate on that together. and that formed the first version of the culture deck. The culture deck is a living deck. Every time we have a new batch of new hires, I go through it. We ask questions about like, what are things we appreciate about, you know, how we operate and I edit it.

37:52And so like once a year, at least, if not more often, we're going in and we're revising it, we're adding to it. And that's the way we try to like stay true to a living thing that to your point is actually the people we hire. Hopefully the foundation is solid so that you're not like constantly rewriting the whole thing, right? But that first set is really observing the people around the room and trying to articulate what are the values they bring to the table. I think it's really well said. And you waited to do that deck until 12 people? Yeah, probably about two years in. Yeah. Like one and a half, two years in.

38:25So we had already gone through some craziness as a company, as every early stage company probably does, like just trying to build, trying to find part of market fit, being in the idea maze. So you go through some stuff and you feel like, okay, Okay, things are starting to click. Then you start writing some things down and you start sharing it, start talking about as a company. I don't think you ever want to do it too prematurely because nothing else matters in the beginning until you hit product market fit, right? Like as a company, you're not a company until you've reached that point. You're just a group of people working on something.

38:55Maybe you have money in the bank. But once you feel like you're a company, then yeah, I think having a culture is great. And then once you start recruiting, you better have something you can point to, or even if it's in your head, where you're like, I can replicate the DNA now. I know what I'm looking for. Yeah. How long were you in the idea maze for? Oh, I mean, two plus years. Come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so - With how many, you and your two co-founders? No, no. So when we raised our pre-seed round, this is end of 2020, over the next few months, we added a few more people. So we were about seven people and we really started kind of building the very beginning of Gamma.

39:32And what we actually did was, instead of just build, as I mentioned, Gamma is kind of like a modern alternative to PowerPoint. So we felt like, okay, one opportunity, this is pandemic too, it's like one opportunity is like, okay, we're going to change how people present and share their ideas. The other opportunity was like, we want to explore was actually, what if we created a virtual office? Because so much of our work now is hybrid, there's people distributed. Our mission all along was like, we wanted to change how people communicate. But we actually saw both of these as interesting opportunities.

40:04Presentations as a space that needs to be reimagined. Virtual office as a replacement for the physical office. And so we actually worked on both ideas in parallel for six months. And we dogfooded both simultaneously for six months. At the end of the six months, we're like, okay, which product are we going to dedicate 100 % of our time to? It was kind of like an A-B test, but it wasn't driven by any sort of hard numbers. It was, okay, we saw on one hand, this virtual office that was ultimately competing against in real life working together, which we would never be able to surpass. There was an inherent wall.

40:42No matter how much we built a better virtual office, it couldn't be better than being next to your teammates, enjoying work together, collaborating in real life. So like, okay, there's an inherent cap there. With the presentations idea, we had an infinite number of things that were like, we can make this better. PowerPoint is stuck in this rigid format. It is not the most expressive tool. Vast majority of the people know PowerPoint, but suck at it. There's so much more we could do there. So we ended up going all in, but this is after six months of parallel pathing both. It wasn't like we actually knew for sure.

41:14We're like, actually we have, we know our ambition, but let's give both a shot. So then we started working on this and that's like, okay, that's great. So we did that for a bit, but then you're like, you start building this thing and you get some early users. Many of them are your friends telling, hey, this is an interesting thing. And then you go look at the data. They don't come back to using the product. You're like, okay, well, not good at all. Let's keep iterating. We keep iterating all the way until August of 2022. So again, this is a couple of years in now. We were like, okay, we're going to do our first launch.

41:44We're going to launch on product time. We're going to launch our public beta, right? So no longer will it be like a wait list or private. We're going to launch our public beta and we launched our own product on it. And it actually did really well. We got product of the day, product of the week, product of the month, see the surge in usage and signups and you feel kind of good about yourself. And then the new signups start plateauing or they start going down. And it's like, okay, you're still getting new signups, but you have not earned word of mouth. People are not telling other people. You do not have organic virality.

42:14So you can keep on getting new startups or you're never going to have sort of exponential growth, right? And so at that point, we knew, okay, there's some interesting building blocks here that we've done, but is this standalone? We are not going to succeed as a business if this continues to be the case. There is no amount of incremental improvements we're going to do to turn us into a company that has product market fit. That's the moment where we went, let's go back to the drawing board, three-month sprint of engineering AI into the entire creation flow, relaunching our AI launch in March of 2023.

42:48And that's where things, that was the inflection point. All of a sudden, it took us like eight months to get to 60 ,000 signups. And then the day we launched, we got like 5 ,000 signups, then like 10 ,000 signups a day, then like 20 ,000 signups a day, then like 50 ,000 signups a day. And none of that was marketing. It was all word of mouth, people using the product. And that's the moment, you know, okay, we have something here that can just continue to grow organically without us even touching anything else. That's insane. When people go through the idea maze for a long time, there's a natural sense of skepticism that emerges because of course, like you've been trying to find product market fit for a while.

43:25Yeah. When you saw the first day of signups, were you like, man, too good to be true? Totally. Yeah. I mean, the first month, you're just like, oh, come on. What is this? This is like, no way. And then you keep checking the dashboards, of course, every like five seconds. You're like, yeah, okay, well, maybe we're onto something. This is like, okay, maybe, you know, this is, but yeah, you're so paranoid. You're so paranoid. Did the team stick with you? Did everybody on the team stick with you all the way through? Yeah, all the way through. That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, it really feels like, you know, within the first couple of years, we, so going back to that, even just that specific moment of time, right?

43:58Like two weeks before our AI launch, and this was, you know, this was sort of a bet the company moment, like we, this had to succeed. SVB collapse happened. All of our money, most of our money was in Silicon Valley banks. It was like, I had to call a team meeting and this is going back to like the fun part of being at the stage was we're in the two bedroom, converted two bedroom apartment. So I had to call everybody into one of the bedrooms and we're like, okay, well, you know, well, everyone's reading the news, SVB, you know, our money is totally at risk. And we had to decide, you know, are we going to stay heads down?

44:36We had the launch date already set, like three months in advance. Are we going to stick to this launch date? Or are we going to be like, oh, let's try to figure things out. We'll push this out a little bit. And basically, we had the moment, it was like, okay, we're sticking to the launch date. You know, I don't know how we're going to make payroll, but I will find a way. Like, I don't know if we're going to talk to our investors. We're going to figure something out. And we're not changing the launch date. I think those are the moments where everyone can see, like, we are all in this together. The level of resilience and trust you build in moments like that, you can't really manufacture, it just happens.

45:07And through that, I was just like, I'd never seen a team work harder. We got through the launch and it was just like massive feeling of, this is super rewarding. You know, like we are doing something that is special. We're doing something together and it was literally all hands on deck to make it happen. It's insane. I'm very happy for you. It's just awesome. Appreciate it. There is a, I guess, now viral tweet that you had about basically all the VC advice that sucks. Is that fair? Is it fair to characterize it like that? I would say it's that a lot of people take, maybe interpret certain VC advice the wrong way.

45:43And it's not that. By the way, I also think a lot of VC advice sucks. So you don't have to play coy with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so let's just say there is a lot of bad advice. There's a list that you made. Can we go through it together? Do you remember your top hits? Oh man, there's so much. I mean, a lot of it is predicated on, well, so I don't even just go with like the foundational stuff, right? Which is when you think, just go back to product market fit. Most people rush this thing of, if you don't have strong word of mouth in your product, like don't move on to the next stage of scaling.

46:19Like you need to be so patient in that part of it and be honest with yourself. Is this a product that has a chance of growing organically? And that is the tailwind you need to do everything else. If you have that, everything else becomes easier. You know, you cannot fool yourself into thinking like, hey, you know, we have like, okay, you know, distribution and like people are using it and it's super churny, but we'll incrementally figure it out. Like, no, don't do that. Don't worry about anything else. until you have strong word of mouth. And if I could just tell people one thing, like that's the thing.

46:53Like, yeah, YC trope is absolutely accurate. Build something people want because that's like the foundation. Then once you have that as a foundation, I always think about strategy is like, then you can actually build a great business around that, right? Like strategy is building the business around a product people love. If you don't have that first piece and you've tricked yourself into thinking of that first piece, everything else is just a waste of time. In my opinion, it's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. So do that first. And once you have that, then you can think about all the things that matters.

47:23Like, okay, what type of team do I need to build to go after this opportunity? And that is for you to answer. Like, I think you can be a much smaller team if you have strong word of mouth growth. And so that's where I do think we've benefited from things that are already organically working well. We can be super deliberate about which teams we hire for and how we hire for them. This is where you set the super high bar for we only have A plus players, right? or A players, like you cannot lower the bar in hiring. The mantra of hiring painfully slowly, even when we felt like we hit product market fit, I didn't open 50 headcount.

47:57We didn't open any headcount. We stuck with the roles that were already open and we incrementally added from there. And we asked the team, where are we feeling the most pain? And then we started doing it. And like, oftentimes the pain was maybe stuff that wasn't even on the engineering side. It was stuff that I was trying to figure out on the marketing side. And before I hire a marketing team, I need to know how hard this thing is, right? Like I've never done growth marketing at any level of scale. So let me try doing the job. Let me see what it takes. Let me know what great looks like before I try to hire the first growth marketer.

48:28And so I did that for like six to 12 months before we even entertained opening that role. And was it easy? No. Was it painful? Absolutely. But did I learn a lot? Yes. I went from zero to one in terms of knowledge over that six to 12 months, doing everything myself. all the talking to creators, all the working with agencies, all the thinking about like, what is the right way to tell Gamma's story? And I think that's what's, you know, it was what was needed. I could have delegated that to somebody for sure. Like people told me like, okay, you should stop doing this thing. I could have done that, but I don't think that would have been the right way for us to have approached it.

49:04And I don't think anybody would have cared as much about building a brand and the way we interact with customers, the way that I could have cared about it. Yeah. But if you're not doing, if you're, let's just say, if you choose to do growth marketing, what are you not doing? I'm delegating the rest of the product and the development side to my two co-founders. So I'm leaning on them heavily. I'm not going to be in the weeds on every product roadmap, prioritization. That's my co-founder, John. I'm not going to be in the weeds. I'm looking at our AWS bill or AI bills. That's going to be co-founder James.

49:38I'm going to be spending a ton of time with our existing customers. So we have like a separate Slack workspace for what we call the Gambassadors or power users. I live in our Gambassador Slack. I'm talking to them on a daily basis. I'm spending a ton of time with creators, talking to them, jumping on Zoom calls, meeting them in person. And I'm thinking a ton about our brand and like, how do we want to tell our story? What else? What else is on that list of shitty advice? Um, so I mean the rest of it all is all around like, you know, scaling and hiring. And so like, who do you hire? Uh, you know, what is the advice that you get and what do you disagree with?

50:13I think the advice you get is like, as soon as you hit product market fit, you blitz scale this thing, right? It's hire as fast as you can go after the market. Don't squander it. And, um, and I think there's, there's definitely, yeah, you don't want to squander it and you should be super paranoid. You should take hiring super seriously. And so I think that's important, but it doesn't mean you have to double, triple the size of your team, you know, in a year. So I think that's stuff that you just, as a founder, you need to care deeply about. And then it goes back to if, if whatever your hiring strategy is, you know, can you maintain that A-level bar?

50:47I think if you're trying to hire a hundred people, like, like founders should be honest with themselves. Like they, they say they want to hire A players. Can you do that if you're hiring a hundred people? Like, is that possible? uh we still interview every founders still interview every single person coming through the door so like we keep that bar high there's been plenty of like talented people that we don't let through the door because maybe they don't pass the culture interview and so like when we think about raising keeping that bar high for us it's only been possible because we haven't been trying to hire 100 people in a few months you know so those are things that i think it can be hard to quantify but can really dramatically change the nature of the company um when i think about the types of managers or leadership we've hired, we've hired what we call the player coach.

51:32Going back to sports analogy is certain sports like football, they move super fast. And so it's hard for the coach to always get the players in the right position or call the right play. So you have roles like the linebacker. That's essentially a player coach where if the coach can't actually see what's happening, linebacker can make some call adjustments on the field. And that happens, the play happens so fast, you know, the best linebackers can do that really, really well. We have something in Gamma where most of our management is a player coach. They are able to do the job themselves. Oftentimes, for instance, if you're on an engineering team, you're still shipping code, but then you can also coach and mentor those around you.

52:12And especially within this AI era, you can also help define like which AI tools the team might be using or should be using. So I think that allows you to be much closer to the work, but that's only really possible when, again, you have this sort of flat team, flat organization, and you don't have inherently a ton of layers that you're trying to fit into that structure. In our top eight portfolio companies across five key functions, whatever it is, sales, marketing, finance, engineering product, let's just say. 38 out of 40, maybe 39 out of 40 of those executives that run that function are reporting to the CEO for the first time.

52:56This is in our top companies. And if you listen to maybe the ramp CEO, or if you listen to what Pedro did at Brex, where he basically removed three layers between him and the director, and then made the director his CTO. And they did that across the company. And the, or the ramp, Eric says at ramp, like basically he got so many executive hires wrong that he's like, I'm just not going to hire executives anymore. I'm just going to promote from within. My point is there seems to be this really hard opposite reaction to the, like an experienced leader. I don't know how else to say that. Like, it's like we went so far in one direction of like the, you know, John Doerr days where, you know, Google hires a CEO and like the founders should not be the leader to now.

53:45So many folks are actually doing the opposite where they're like, experience is overrated. I just care about their taste in the work and the function. I will promote them and hope that they become leaders. It's an interesting, like hard opposite reaction to what it used to be. Yeah. I mean, I think so just unpack some of that. I don't think experience is overrated, but I do think maybe management experience might be overrated. Like you don't need to be 10 years manager to be a great manager. You don't need to have 10 years of management experience to be a great manager. But you do need to know how to do the job.

54:19I think like anybody that's managing a team, like they should be able to go deep on any variety of topics and be able to really serve that coach or mentorship ability to like really step in and see that team. But some people are just, you know, I think if you have a flat org and again, more of a player coach style model where someone's still doing the work, then it's inherently much easier. They're still close to it. They don't need to guess what other teammates are doing. They're seeing it. And then they can actually make sort of, I guess that's where like the management and the advice you're giving maybe doesn't fall on deaf ears because it's coming from somebody that you respect and you're seeing in the trenches.

54:56I think that model, at least for us, fits well. And I think to your point, yeah, like maybe we had swung the pendulum too far the other way, which is like you bring in someone that is just there to be the people manager. And they happen to have the Rolodex where they can hire all their, you know, people they've worked with before. And that assuming that's just going to work by, you know, copy and pasting. I think that that era probably is over. Yeah. But isn't it tempting to hire like some, I'm just making up an example, a CTO or VP of engineering that has all of these engineers, like that knows the top 10 cracked engineers that they can bring with them.

55:30Like, isn't that where the temptation really lies? It is, it is. And I think that's still something worthy of exploring. Like if that person really still felt like they fit well, then yeah, maybe that is the right hire. But oftentimes, obviously, it's not black and white. There's going to be a set of things you're looking at and you're just trying to make the best decision, you know, on the spot there. On the work trial question or the thing that you brought up about, like most people do a work trial for a couple of months or a lot of people. If you're a talented engineer working at Meta or something, or I don't know, OpenAI, I don't know, just pick your company, making a lot of money.

56:06Why? I understand why you want a work trial. You want to see what does it feel like to spend a couple of months with them? They also probably want to see what does it feel like to spend a couple of months with you. But in order to do that, I'm pretty sure they have to leave their other job. Totally. Yeah. It rarely works, I think, for a lot of these sort of IC roles. And frankly, even with us, we got lucky with timing on certain things. People were maybe in between roles. And so we could say, hey, we don't know exactly what role you'll play. Let's have you in this role. And then over time, we'll see what fits best.

56:38And so I would say it's something you should explore. By no means can it be every single hire. I think not enough people assume that's even an option, right? Like most people just assume it's higher or nothing. And I think oftentimes, yeah, that may not be the case. And if you can, especially for like management level roles or people that could be running a team, that's a pretty important, you know, that's like an important function. If you can, if you have the luxury of doing a work trial, do a work trial. What percentage of your work trials do you think have converted to full-time? All. All of them.

57:08Yeah. And I think part of it is like, obviously we set a high bar for the work trial. The other is like, if you're in the seat and, and like, assuming you set the high bar, then it's like, you're helping to find the role to a certain extent too, right? If it is collaborative, then, then it should feel like, Hey, this, this is something we can work out. And I think most of the people we even entertain the work trial with are people that are very open-minded to like doing things a different way. Like I'm very transparent with like, you know, the player coach model, like the way we operate, operate lean team, tiny team.

57:41And so I think people are opting into that knowing that there's a certain level of uncertainty. I think by nature of that, there, maybe it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy is like, okay, you know, they're going to make it work because they've, they know what they're stepping into. Do you not get caught up in like, so you've raised what an A, a seed in A? A seed in an A, yeah. Seed in an A. If it's not already happening, which I know it is, if it's not already happening after this, you will have more Series B investors knocking down your door than you know what to do with. And it's very weird in Silicon Valley, when you're a great company like Gamma is, what ends up happening is like, it's very seductive to go into the venture ecosystem.

58:23You meet all the fancy partners. They take you on the dinners, on the boats, on the things, all the things all the things and it's nice like they're nice things and by the way they're just gassing you up the whole time yeah and they're telling you like and by the way not for nothing but it feels good because like you're you want every inch of validation that you can get because you've been too like tooth and nail clawing to get to this point so like of course like it's human nature to like enjoy hearing that other people think that your baby is as beautiful as you do Yeah. They may or may not believe it for what it's worth, but at least they're going to say it to you and they're going to do all the nice things like you have really resisted that game quite effectively.

59:08Yeah. But do you agree that that seduction is there? Absolutely. I think this is the challenge, I think, for a lot of maybe first time founders or earlier founders and, you know, just their career in general is like those all feel great. those, they, they, they build up your ego and they feel really, really good. And it's not like they're trying to necessarily be, you know, doing anything malicious. That's just the way things work. Right. And I think when you're early in your career or just early in like, just figuring things out, you may not even know what you want. You may not even know what your definition of success is.

59:42And for us, it's, it's different, right? Like I'm doing this because this is what I want to be my life's work. And this is what I want to be building for as long as I possibly can. And when I think about success and what's rewarding to me, I have two little ones at home. When I get to work on something and my son is sitting on my lap and he's playing with Gamma with me and we're making like a comic book or something, that in my mind is like winning. That's success because I am enjoying that moment. For me, when I first learned PowerPoint, my eyes lit up because like, oh man, I'm creating something out of nothing.

1:00:16And I'm seeing that same light in his eyes doing that with Gamma. That's amazing. Like that is winning. And so like, I want to do that for as long as possible. If I felt like raising a mega round or like taking all this cash would help us get us faster there or like help us guarantee that destination. Like, yeah, maybe I would do it, but I don't think that's ever been the case. And I think, you know, founders need to ask themselves, is more money in the bank going to really help you build an enduring business? Yeah. With the way that money is flying around in the Valley right now and how crazy valuations are, you could get a stupid valuation and take a lot less dilution.

1:00:51Yeah. Like we're playing musical chairs and the music is going to stop at some point. I don't know when, nobody knows. Could be in a year, it could be in five years, it could be in a day. It doesn't matter, right? Like we don't know. But when it is this, when there's this much money and this much demand, is it not tempting to be like, all right, would I sleep better at night knowing that if I put 50 million in the bank with relatively little dilution, relatively. Is there not a temptation there? There definitely is. That's the calculation you're trying to do, right? But is it 50 or is it like 500 million?

1:01:28I think by default, a lot of founders will assume, let's just take the most money at the max valuation and I'll worry about the rest later. I think worrying about the rest later is just a recipe for disaster. So like, yeah, taking the 50, that probably is a smart move and that could be the smart move and you should ask yourself, is that the right number? But if you're always maximizing, if you're always going to this, like, I'm going to maximize everything, I think that's the slippery slope. Because you can, to your point, you can always go for a higher valuation. If it's competitive, someone else is going to bid it up.

1:01:59If you want to run it like an auction, you can. And then you're going to be left with, you know, hundreds of millions in the bank. And like, what are you going to do with it? I think the consequences for first-time founders are ones that are hard to calculate. You have 500 million in the bank. What do you do building your business? What do your employees think when you have that much money? What are you using it for? Oftentimes they use it to go hire the 500 people immediately. And so the temptation flips from taking the money to spending the money. And when you start spending the money, you can spend it on so many different things and you can instantly lose focus and you can instantly lose the desire to like build and uh and you have to be honest with yourself like is that going to be helpful or hurtful for for where you are as a company and i i think more founders should just be patient and thinking about or like just trying to answer that for themselves were your kids born uh post gamma being born uh daughter was born right before gamma was born and son's a little bit older yeah so he's three years at the uh how um going back to like where the conversation started about like how hard you and your team are working.

1:03:05Yeah. How do you, do you feel guilt ever? Like, do you like, how do you balance the responsibility that you feel as a CEO? Yeah. Which, you know, it's like a pie eating contest. The reward for it is more pie, uh, uh, versus, you know, like being that. Yeah. It's, it's a tough one. I mean, I, I tried to spend as much time as I can with them. Right. And I think with that just means there's sacrifices. You're not doing a whole lot of other things. You don't have fun hobbies. You have a hangout with kids, which is great and is rewarding, but you, you give up a lot of other things. And I think that's worth it for me, going back to what you think success is.

1:03:44Like if you feel like you're, you're on that path, then yeah, you shed everything else. That's not allowing you to succeed in your own definition of success. Right. Do you have to do anything intentionally with your partner kids so that the pie eating contest doesn't go in perpetuity, like that you can create some space? To a certain extent, I feel lucky. I mean, my wife works from home. So she, you know, she has, she has, she is able to work remotely. And that means like way less pressure for me to have to do like pickups or like drop-offs. So like, I think we're just trying our best to like fit this, you know, infinitely complex puzzle into the right places where we live really close to my parents.

1:04:23So like, you know, having grandparents around, you know, they're retired, they can help with the kids. That also helps. Like you got to like figure out what can you do, what's in your control to optimize for the things that matter to you. And it changes. Like when, you know, my daughter was just born, like it was actually pretty tough. When she was one years old, when she turned one, she caught this super rare disease and that throws you into a whole different spiral, right? Like obviously your priorities as a parent change as a human change. And so you're trying to navigate that. And so, you know, what startups have taught me is like, you just got to be adaptable, you know, like every year, every day is going to be different.

1:05:00You shouldn't assume it's going to be the same. And if you have that mindset, then at least, you know, you're going to be anticipating change and just trying to go with it. Do you ever feel guilty? Guilty. Guilty? Yeah. Do you ever feel guilty? No. Guilty that you're not being enough of a husband, father, or CEO? I don't. I mean, I feel like I do give it my all. And I think, you know, for me, it's been, even before starting the company, you know, you have to have conversations, like sitting down with my wife is like, are we getting into this? This is not my decision. It's a decision we have together, right?

1:05:34Like I cannot do this without your support. And when I mentioned it, it was just like, 100%, you should do it, right? Like there's no hesitation. And if she's giving me that support, then I can do everything I need to do to make sure Gamma's successful. If there was resistance there or hesitation, then there's a conversation, right? Then you have to be like, okay, am I giving up the right things here? Maybe I should just go get another job instead. But you start with open and honest conversations. And if you have a partner or whoever else is involved in those decisions, you got to have that well ahead of ever even thinking about fundraising.

1:06:08We had those conversations basically as soon as the last startup I was at was acquired. and that was, you know, eight or nine months before we even tried to raise money. Like you got to have those conversations first and then raise money later. Like if you're not having that first, then obviously it's the wrong sequencing. Yeah. I did the same. That was the starting block before anything. Starting block. Yeah. Like, are we going to do this? Yeah. And I think her reaction was, yes, we are. But even if I said no, would that change? All right. You know, they kind of know what they do. That all makes sense to me.

1:06:43Let's just say when the kids have a recital and you have a deliverable, what do you do? That's a good question. Well, oftentimes the deliverable is probably something I've set as the deadline, right? And so what will typically happen is I'll go to the recital or right now, my kids, my son's in a lot of soccer, so I'll go watch a soccer game and I'll just stay up late to make sure I hit the deliverable, right? If it's the next day, I stay up as late as possible or as needed to get it done. And that's, you know, that is, that is literally the day-to-day, week-to-week that, that is what I'm, what I'm going through.

1:07:22Yeah. And when you go to the soccer game, like honest, honestly, can you actually watch the soccer game? Like, or is your mind going crazy? It's literally like anytime there's a timeout or something, I'm checking my phone. But when my son is playing, 100 % all in. I'm also like super competitive. So like when I'm watching him play, I almost like, it's like my brain just switches to different gear. Like I have to, for better or worse, I'm just like locked in and probably screaming too loud and all those things. But yeah, I think it is, it's like, you know, switch on. Like, okay, work and then switch off.

1:07:56Like you're kind of doing, you're bouncing back and forth. But when he's not on the field, you're like, forget about it. I'm usually, yeah, unfortunately, yeah. His teammates probably aren't the biggest fans. I mean, it's just like, okay, well, I got to check this. I got to respond to this thing. I appreciate you doing this, man. I was just like, I was really excited to do this with you. I find you unique and distinct in the Valley and it's refreshing. And I'm excited to, I'm just excited to see like how these decisions play out. I'm like fascinated. Thanks, man. Yeah. I mean, I feel like if anything, you know, this is one of the things where if I can give anything back to the next sort of wave of founders is like, you know, play your own game.

1:08:39You're doing something that's incredibly hard. Every step of the way, you'll be getting good advice and bad advice. You kind of got to learn to kind of figure out yourself. And then, yeah, if, you know, when it comes back to, I always think about, you know, your luck surface areas is really just two things. It's two dimensions, right? It has people and it has time. Surround yourself with amazing people. People will give you energy, share the same values, hopefully the same ambition, and then give yourself enough time to win. That's the basics. If you can do that well, I feel like a lot of people can succeed.

1:09:10Oh, it's really well said. I close with the same questions. The first, are you hiring? We are hiring. Check out our careers page, gamma.app. We definitely are hiring. When you hear the word grit, what do you think of? I think of my parents, honestly. You know, determination, coming here with no money in the bank, starting, you know, trying to build a life where, you know, their family could, could have a better life than them. And I honestly, I just, I just picture my mom. It's amazing. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks.

1:09:52This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production and I'm Juven. Thanks for listening.

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