Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I know. Can I talk to you [inaudible 00:05:56] swap somebody out. I mean that'd be great. I'm totally fine with that. Okay, so to get serious, the reason I'm really excited to have you here is, unlike a lot of super fast growing AI startups, you are both growing like crazy, you are growing very profitably. We're going to talk about this. You did not raise a ton of money when you started. You waited a long time to raise a bunch of money. You also built a business in a category that I think most people never imagined there was this big of an opportunity. And you're basically, you've achieved the dream of a lot of founders these days, especially people building AI startups. So my goal with this conversation is essentially do an anthropological study of a really successful AI startup. Talk about how you found product market fit, how you grew, all the lessons you've learned along the journey. And I'm going to break this conversation up kind of along the different milestones of the journey. Before we get into the first piece, is there anything that you think is important for people to hear broadly about the story of Gamma? Yeah. Maybe I'll just start with a quick story if that's okay. And it's really just the founding story. So we started the company back in 2020. This is peak pandemic. And even fundraising was just so different. So all of the fundraising was done over Zoom. You were kind of sitting in these Zoom meetings trying to pitch. Many investors you never met in person. So just a different era. And so for us, we're first time founders. I was actually living in London at the time, and so different time zone. I had to do all of my pitches at night. And I have two little kids, so wait for them to go to bed. 8:00 PM. We had a pretty modest flat, so nothing big. I would basically find this little corner between the kitchenette and the laundry room to kind of set up shot, far enough from the kids so they wouldn't be woken up. In between 8:00 PM and like 2:00 AM, I'm just pitching. Trying my best. I had the fake Zoom background so people didn't know where I was, and just pitching. And so really the first day, I'm in my third pitch in, trying to tell the story of Gamma, obviously just starting to get the hang of the pitch. And I get to the very end of the pitch feeling pretty good about myself. And the investor pauses a little bit, and then just says, "That has to be the worst pitch, worst idea I have ever heard. Not only are you trying to go against incumbents, you're going against incumbents that have massive distribution. You are never going to succeed." And so in my head, I'm already kind of shell shocked and thinking what's my rebuttal? And before I could even respond, he hangs up. And so I'm there sitting there thinking about it. And before I could really get down on myself because I had to prepare for the next pitch, I just internalize this feeling that maybe he's right. Maybe something about what he's saying is actually correct. And so for me, I started thinking about, if we're going to succeed in this category, we're going to really have to think about growth from the very beginning. This category is going to be really, really hard to break into. And so we really kind of made this sort of promise to ourselves, that as we continue to build, growth was going to be critically important. And so my thing to your audience is that I don't come from a growth background. So if I can learn growth, anybody can learn growth. And I think especially in this sort of market, hyper competitive, oftentimes very crowded, it's going to be essential.…

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