Evening, CEO!
We need to talk about Gamma.
A team of roughly 30 people built a company doing $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
In two years.
Grant Lee, CEO of Gamma, was told his idea (AI presentation maker) was the “dumbest thing ever” by a top investor. He was told Google and Microsoft would crush them.
He didn’t listen.
I’ve reverse-engineered his playbook so we can steal their leverage for our own “Agency of One.
1. The “First 30 Seconds” Rule (Or: Stop Boiling the Ocean for People Who Just Want a Snack)
Here is a painful memory from my corporate life:
I once spent three weeks building a dashboard. It was magnificent. It had complex SQL queries, predictive analytics, and a color palette I agonized over for days.
I sent it to my boss (my “client”).
He opened it, couldn’t find the “Total Revenue” number in 5 seconds, closed it, and emailed me: “Can you just put the number in the subject line?”
I wanted to scream. But Grant Lee, the CEO of Gamma, would have told me I deserved it.
When Gamma launched, they won “Product of the Month” on Product Hunt. They got awards. They got hype. But their retention graph looked like a flatline EKG.
Why? Because users are lazy, vain, and selfish (Grant’s words, not mine, though I feel personally attacked).
If the user didn’t feel like a genius in the first 30 seconds, they left.
So Gamma stopped everything. They spent months rebuilding their onboarding. They stopped trying to teach users how to use the tool and just focused on giving them a “magic trick” immediately.
The “Agency of One” Takeaway:
Optimize your work for Time to Value. If it takes your client 30 minutes to understand your value, you’ve already lost.
2. The “Echo Chamber” Strategy (Networking for Introverts)
I am an introvert. Networking usually makes me want to fake my own death and move to a cave.
But Gamma’s growth strategy is genius for people who hate “schmoozing.”
They didn’t pay Kim Kardashian a million dollars to post about their slides. That’s inefficient. It looks like an ad. It smells like desperation.
Instead, Grant Lee did something unscalable.
He manually onboarded “Micro-Influencers.” Specifically, teachers and consultants. People with small audiences (3k–10k followers) but high trust.
He got on Zoom calls with them. He didn’t give them a script. He just showed them the tool and said, “Tell your story in your voice.”
The result? An Echo Chamber.
If one teacher says “Gamma is cool,” it’s noise. If fifty teachers say it in the same week, it’s a movement.
The “Agency of One” Takeaway:
If you get three key people in your department to say, “Wow, you are crushing it” in the same week? You’ve created an Echo Chamber.
You aren’t bragging. They are bragging for you. That is leverage.
3. The “Generalist” Army (Or: Why You Should Be a Swiss Army Knife)
Gamma has a revenue-per-employee that would make a Goldman Sachs banker blush.
How? They refuse to hire “managers.”
Grant believes in the “Player-Coach” model. Everyone does the work. The Head of Marketing isn’t just pointing fingers and making strategy decks; she’s organizing a drone show in San Francisco herself.
They hire Generalists. People who can design and code. People who can write copy and analyze data.
In the old world, being a “Jack of all trades” was an insult. It meant you were master of none.
In the AI world, being a specialist is risky. If you only write SQL, an AI agent will replace you by next Tuesday.
The “Agency of One” Takeaway:
The most valuable employees of 2025 are the ones who can use AI to be a Full-Stack Professional.
Don’t wait for a “designer” to fix your slides. Don’t wait for a “data analyst” to pull your numbers.
Be the Generalist. Be the Army of One.
To Recap your $100M Career Strategy:
Front-load the Magic: Give your boss the “Aha!” moment in the first 30 seconds.
Build an Echo Chamber: Win over the people who influence the people who sign your paycheck.
Be a Player-Coach: Use AI to do the jobs you used to outsource.
Gamma proved you don’t need a massive team to create massive value. You just need to be smart, ruthless about efficiency, and willing to fix things when they’re broken.
Now, I’m going to go ask my “staff” (ChatGPT) to help me figure out what to eat for dinner.
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantslee
https://gamma.app
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/grantslee_i-co-founded-gamma-in-2020-heres-why-activity-7241823230745796608-z2ZJ
https://x.com/thisisgrantlee/status/1966874658680303880
“Dumbest idea I’ve heard” to $100M ARR: Inside the rise of Gamma | Grant Lee (co-founder)
