Rethinking Team Building: how a 30-person Startup serves 50 Million Users — Grant Lee, Gamma

Channel: aiDotEngineer

Published at: 2025-07-15

YouTube video id: q8zoXAbmJdI

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8zoXAbmJdI

[Music]
Thanks so much uh for having me. It's uh
it's great to be here. Uh my name is
Grant. Uh I am one of the co-founders
and the CEO of Gamma. Uh we are
basically as alluded to building the
anti-P PowerPoint. So we are trying to
reimagine how people create and share
content. We make want to make that dead
simple. And this all started with kind
of just trying to solve my own problem.
I was previously doing consulting and
like many of us have probably seen uh a
page or slide that looks like this, the
blank slide, and just had this feeling
like there's got to be a better way. And
so we've been spending the past four
years just really trying to reimagine
the building blocks. How can we make it
dramatically simpler so that we're not
spending all this time designing,
formatting boxes, aligning boxes,
resizing them, figuring out the right
layers? We can focus on the content
itself and let it feel more like a
content first approach versus a design
first approach. And so, you know, we
have uh grown over the years and for us,
we're really trying to deliver both
speed and power to our users. A lot of
what we pride ourselves in is giving
people simple tools to really mold and
shape uh their presentations, their
content much simpler. And longer term,
we're trying to build what we call tools
for imagination. So this is the whole
notion of how can we help people really
sort of stretch shape their ideas in a
way that's way easier for them to to
share. And if we can do that, maybe we
can help kind of push innovation forward
in general.
But this talk isn't about uh any of that
because you know most of the talks today
really great talks around uh really
innovation obviously AI it's very much a
product you know centric lens that
people are applying which is amazing I
want to take a step back and you know I
think a lot of founders are great at
applying sort of first principles to
thinking about how do I build product
and I would encourage everyone to think
about we're in an era where we can also
apply those first principles to think
about how do we build a team how do we
innovate on org design and we're
obviously still learning ourselves, but
I just wanted to share, you know, some
of those lessons along the way to
hopefully inspire you to all think about
maybe there's a different way about
building teams in the future.
This is the old way. We're all used to
this. Uh, you know, there's many many
different flavors of this. Once an
organization starts getting big,
inevitably you have a bunch of hierarchy
and that could take shape in itself in
many many ways. And you know what
traditionally happens is uh once a
startup starts scaling uh you'll bring
on the sort of VP the VP will go on and
hire their directors directors will go
on and hire their direct reports and you
get this sort of cascading effect and
this happens across every single
function and you can go from a small
team a tiny team to a team that ends up
becoming much much bigger and that can
happen overnight. I mean we've all lived
probably through the blitz scaling phase
of of startups and um you know some of
that still exists but I do think there
today can be maybe a new way and for us
you know we've reached uh over 50
million users now we're still a team of
30 uh and in fact this is only more
recently that we've become a team of 30
and so you know again these are things
that we're still learning along the way
and trying to think about what are some
of the themes that we're starting to see
that we can start talking about and
sharing and obviously getting input from
you and then for us to continue to learn
and learn and adapt. So this kind of
impacts three different pillars. The
first pillar is you know obvious where
do you begin? Who do you even hire? For
us I want to talk a little bit about
kind of the rise of the generalist. What
does that look like in practice? The
second is okay now that you have a team
how do you manage that team? I want to
talk about this notion of introducing
the player coach. Something that is very
critical to how we build and manage the
team. And then the last is how do you
scale? You actually have a team whether
it's 10 30 more. How do you actually
prepare for the next phase? It doesn't
mean you don't hire at all. It just
means relative to maybe where you were
uh to to companies before you're just
much smaller. For us, you know, at our
scale, I would say we're probably
onetenth the size of what we would have
been if we were started just a few years
ago. So, it's just a different uh way of
like framing it.
So, let's first talk about kind of what
I call the rise of the generalist and
and what does that mean? Um this notion
of a generalist is you know in
engineering you might have an idea this
notion of like a full stack engineer and
applies to many different disciplines.
Um this one concrete example I'll
provide is you know a generalist on our
team is our head of design. Uh he was
also happens to be our very first hire.
He is a designer that is both you know
super visual. He actually knows how to
code as well and in addition to that he
can actually really go deep on the core
UX. So he loves researching, talking to
users, doing all of that. So that
empowers him to really what I call kind
of connect all the dots. You might be
able to pull in and really empathize
with, you know, your engineering
counterpart by knowing like, okay,
deeply what is what are we actually
capable of building so that when you go
off and vibe code go code a prototype,
it's actually something you can ship and
and actually uh deliver in production.
And so understanding that comes with
just being able to actually play with
everything and have much deeper empathy
for what you're building. We he also has
this really willingness to sort of adapt
and reinvent himself. So every phase of
growth he's had to kind of change it up
a little bit like early on when you know
there's really no product itself like
you're trying to think about okay what
is the basic most simple UI UX that we
can deliver to the user as a as the
product becomes much more complex you
need to iterate really fast. He's the
one coding prototypes, getting in the
hands of users, setting up user tests,
interviewing them, getting feedback,
getting that back into the hands of
users, iterating that a ton. And then
we're also at a scale now where he's al
also able to to uh look across the team
and actually provide, you know, guidance
and mentorship. And I'll get into sort
of player coach in a second because he's
actually one of those as well.
Inherently, I think what makes a strong
generalist is someone that both likes to
learn and likes to teach. And I think
learning it's one of those things like
if you're a continuous learner
especially in this age is very valuable.
There's so much innovation happening can
you pick up new skills and I think the
counterpart of that is like people that
usually are great at learning can also
be a great teacher. um when we look for
an interview process is someone that can
teach some someone else a new skill like
that is baked into how we approach
finding people is can they not only be
deep you know domain experts in a space
can they articulate that in the way do
they really have deep understanding can
they convey and persuade others to kind
of share in that understanding those are
all things that I think a great
generalist can encapsulate and and
certainly stuff we try to sus out uh
during the interview process
the second notion is just uh introducing
the notion of player coach. And some of
you may have heard of this uh before.
This uh metaphor or analogy comes from
sports. In American football, uh you you
have a a sport that there's so much
action going on all the time. The game
on the field is moving incredibly fast.
And what you can do is rather than just
having the head coach make all the
calls, make all the play call all the
plays, you can have a player coach,
someone that's actually on the field,
help make some adjustments. So in
football that could be you have a
quarterback on the offensive side. On
defense you might have the linebacker.
They're able to read and react to what's
happening on the field and then not
having to rely on the coach. They can
actually make adjustments. This metaphor
applies today because I think the game
on the field is AI. AI is moving
incredibly fast. We're all forced to
have to adapt. And so rather than having
every single thing be a top down
mandate, what if you had player coaches
on the field that are able to actually
understand how can we adapt? How can we
rejigger, rep prioritize really, really
quickly? And for all of our sort of core
leadership team, uh, every single one of
them is a player coach. On our
engineering side, we have player coaches
that, uh, have had ton of management
experience, but they still love to code.
They still love to be in the day-to-day,
and that allows them to be um, uniquely
valuable. One, they're all obviously so
close to the work that they know what's
happening. when someone else on the team
needs mentorship, needs coaching, needs
some form of prioritization or how can
we actually, you know, um consider the
things that are in flight and and maybe
change things that player coach has a
ton of context, understands the nuances,
can make the right technical tradeoffs
and in addition to that can make you
know the sort of pave the path for
longer term career aspirations. We don't
know how this is going to scale but for
today this is working well and for us it
allows us to have this really really
lean team where you know we still have
the ability to mentor and coach the
individuals that need it and then you
have deep domain like technical
expertise in places where you know
you're able to make adjustments as as
fast as needed.
The last thing I'll talk about is
scaling. And it's maybe a little bit
counterintuitive. You know you might
think like a small team why would you
invest in things like uh brand and
culture? Uh, I say brand and culture
because for me brand and culture,
they're they're two sides of the same
coin. Brand is ultimately a reflection
of your culture. Your culture is your
values as a company. And you really want
those two to to go hand in hand.
Culture, I mean, this piece of it is is
a little bit more obvious, but when
you're a small team, what ends up
becoming super important is like every
new team member you bring on, you have
to believe that they share your same
values, that they operate the same way,
because you can't afford that not to be
the case. It's a bigger company, it's
much more diluted. You might be able to
bring on a bad hire. It's not going to
be pervasive and like spread. Smaller
teams, that cannot be the case. And so,
you need to invest heavily in this from
day one. We have a living culture deck
that we've maintained basically since
the beginning. And we rewrite it all the
time. We look up at the makeup of the
team. We kind of like really try to
encapsulate everybody's core values in
the way they behave. And then we share
that back out to the team. We onboard
new employees with the same culture
deck. It's an ongoing evergreen sort of
uh exercise that we go through. And I
think what comes out of this is like
this feeling that this tiny team can
have this feeling of being a small
tribe. And that tribe is something
that's pretty magical. It allows you to
have this feeling of continuity. It
allows you to have this like feeling
that um you are in it together. And if
you have that continuity, there's just
so much like it's hard to even quantify
that value because you're not having to
retrain people, re onboard people. Like
people just get it. There's that tribal
knowledge. And I do think there's a lot
of magic that happens that translates
into just in my mind higher productivity
um transparency shared context amongst
all things. Um we have in our in our
team and it's easier to do this when
you're small is we have like three
standing all company all hands meetings.
The very beginning of the week we start
with like going deep on metrics. We talk
about we have this thing called the wall
of work where everybody's showing like
what everyone else is working on.
Wednesdays and Fridays we do companywide
showand tell. So this is a chance for
people to also dog food our own product,
use Gamma, present, share what they're
working on. It could be a small project,
it could be a feature they shipped. And
this continuity allows everyone to feel
like we're still in a small room sharing
this, you know, big ambitious uh
long-term vision and doing it together.
I know there's a lot of talk of like,
oh, maybe there'll be the 1 billion
oneperson startup. And I don't know,
maybe that will happen, but my thought
is like, why? It's so fun to build with
a team. Like why do it alone? We're
having a ton of fun building as a small
team and part of that is like we really
want to you know preserve that magic for
as long as humanly possible. So this you
know talk started with me talking about
how the gamma journey began which is me
thinking about hey from a product
perspective you know there's got to be a
better way and my you know I guess
challenge to you all is as you think
about building your own teams really
thinking about hey you know there's the
old playbook the old way of scaling and
building out a team and that's that's
totally fine but is there today a better
way and hopefully you guys can find your
own path and hopefully share back and we
can all uh you know do this together.
Uh I I guess we have a few minutes for
for questions if anybody has any.
Um with AI moving so fast, if you could
go back, what would you do differently
about building your current team now?
Yeah, that's a great question. So the
question was with AI moving so fast,
what would I have done differently? We
actually started, you know, four years
ago. So this was before like the more
recent, you know, wave. And so I do
think, you know, when you're early on,
whether you're using AI or not, you're
going to probably spend some time in the
idea maze. You're really trying to
navigate figuring out where is their
true user need and what problems are you
solving. And I do think there the
temptation today is to move super fast.
AI can do everything for you. So you
just jump onto the thing and start
building. I still think people can
afford to go be much more patient. And I
think even for us, like when we
initially started doing our first AI
launch, which was a two years ago, I
almost wish like in hindsight, we could
have like really just taken our time to
appreciate how much things are changing
and evolving before going to like full
steam ahead like let's just build build
because part of that um I think
realization that we did have bu starting
to build was that hey because things are
moving so fast like are there
infrastructure decisions we should be
thinking about earlier much earlier on
before things become too late. you get
to a scale where it's impossible to
unwind and I think it's helpful to think
a little bit more about that way earlier
on in the process doesn't mean you
should slow down just means you should
be thoughtful of it.
Do you have an example of an
infrastructure decision that you would
have gone back and done?
Um it's not something we would have done
differently. I think I would have
prioritized maybe more effort around
even more so is we have a lot of
infrastructure built around
experimentation and I think it's obvious
now like given all the different tooling
like you know especially have a big user
base experimentation is a key to
velocity and you know we we did do some
of that um pretty early on but it was
more of a sort of gradual I think we
would have you know really taken our
time to think about okay what should we
do and like put more weight behind it um
if it would have changed anything I'm
not sure but I think that's one thing
you know I would have kept in mind we
got to go here and then here.
Perfect. Um, you might already be there.
At some point, you probably will have to
bring in people whether they're like
communication experts or legal experts
that maybe don't uh gel quite as much
with maybe like the technical or
engineering culture you might have.
Yeah.
Do you have any advice for like how to
make how to not like ruin some of that
culture but also make sure that they
don't feel completely excluded?
Yeah, the way we've been trying to do it
is for the founders or other leaders to
try to do the job first. So yeah, the
question is outside of engineering
basically how do you uh you know
potentially not mess things up by
growing too fast and yeah we're still
learning there oftentimes a lot of the
jobs for me for instance a lot of
marketing sales customer experience was
all done by me first so I have some sort
of baseline understanding because you
know I as in a previous life I've never
hired for those functions so how do I
even know what good looks like I try to
do the job myself oftentimes not a great
job at it but understand all the nuances
that takes the that really goes into
that job know what great looks like and
then go out and finally fire hire that
person. We going back to the player
coach, we still go out and find player
coaches for that role so that it doesn't
end up becoming this sort of cascading
effect of like really really big and
bloated teams.
Uh some of the player coach stuff sounds
like you're hiring a lot of high agency
people. How do you judge high agency
when you're hiring people? Uh that does
not necessarily come from their resumes.
What kinds of questions do you ask? What
kinds of processes do you follow during
hiring to judge for high high agency?
Yeah, totally. It's it's probably stuff
that you have heard before, but a lot of
times, you know, you want to uh if
someone has prior work experience, you
dig into their most challenging project
or problem they had en encounter and uh
you ask them, you know, basically how
they solved it. What you'll find is
people that have high agency or just a
sense of ownership in general, they
don't immediately jump to what the
solution was. They'll talk about how
they tried to understand the problem and
then how the problem what they
understood at the surface level is
actually five like five levels too high.
You had to keep on drilling. And if they
can articulate what the true problem
was, like keep on going down and then
not only talk about what the solution
was, but all the attempts at the
solution, I think that goes to show that
someone wasn't just like taking orders
and like, hey, I'm going to do this. It
was like, I I need to fund one,
understand the layers of the problem,
and then two, navigate and actually
explore. Most people when you start
asking them like the second order or
third order or wise, they can't get
there. And if they can't, then it's
pretty clear that they probably weren't
doing much of the thinking themselves.
Hey, thanks for the comments. So, hiring
is probably one of the most important
things that uh a company can do, right?
I mean, it's either for better or worse.
What are some uh if there were any major
failures that uh you have experienced
and you you know could share with us
that would be very helpful.
Yeah, the the biggest failures were
actually when we didn't when there was a
role that there was some ambiguity
ambiguity and we weren't able to do a
work trial. So work trial is also
something I didn't talk about. Something
we deploy where people actually do the
job for a certain amount of time. Much
easier if they're obviously not
currently working and we found great
success when someone's in between or has
been doing fractional work. We bring
them to do the job first and we do that
for a few months where we had some roles
where we weren't yet sure what we're
looking for and we brought them on and
they didn't do a work trial. They just
went straight in. It often times wasn't
a good fit because neither them or us
knew kind of like okay what were we
actually what was going to be that sort
of good fit. So if if you can if you're
lucky enough to be able to do a work
trial whether it's two days or three
months in our case we default to three
months I would encourage you to try to
do that especially if it's a role you
haven't done yourself
and you had situations where if didn't
work out then
the work trials have actually all worked
out which is great and few data points
and we've done five plus of them. Uh and
then yeah in the cases where we didn't
it's actually pretty high um again going
back to the role that we weren't certain
about what we're hiring for is actually
pretty high failure rate for us.
Is that it? All right. Thank you
everyone. I'm on LinkedIn if anyone
wants to connect.
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