How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma)

In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Jon Noronha, co-founder and CPO of Gamma, the AI-native presentation platform used by more than 100 million people. In this conversation, he walks through Gamma’s distinct eras of product-market fit: from a pre-AI struggle with a year of runway left, to an overnight AI-fueled explosion, to today’s unplanned scramble into enterprise sales. Jon also unpacks his hard-won lessons on horizontal versus vertical bets, monetizing AI products, and why nailing onboarding turned out to be the whole game. In today's episode, we discuss: • Why Gamma's all-in AI launch in March 2023 saved their startup • How fixing a simple onboarding problem accidentally uncovered Gamma’s entire product-market fit • Why Jon bet Gamma on a horizontal product against the advice of nearly every investor • How Gamma's daily signups climbed from hundreds to over 100,000 with zero paid marketing • What building three pricing tiers taught Jon about monetizing AI References • Canva: https://www.canva.com/ • Corgi: https://www.corgi.insure/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ • Gamma: https://gamma.app/ • Google: https://www.google.com/ • Linear: https://linear.app/ • Loom: https://www.loom.com/ • Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ • Notion: https://www.notion.com/ • Optimizely: https://www.optimizely.com/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Slack: https://slack.com/ • Zoom: https://www.zoom.us/ Where to find Jon Noronha • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnoronha/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/thatsjonsense Where to find Brett • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital • Website: https://firstround.com/ • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:47 Gamma’s three-era journey to product-market fit 03:41 Spotting the blank page problem pre-ChatGPT 05:11 How Gamma survived with only one year of runway 07:17 How onboarding fixes revealed the whole product 09:31 Choosing horizontal over investors' vertical playbook 13:41 Prototyping by hand before AI coding 15:36 How Gamma builds with future models in mind 20:06 The Kool-Aid mistake of a late PowerPoint export 24:31 Why the presentation industry hadn't evolved since 1987 33:30 How Gamma solves evals for taste, not just data 40:21 Jon's hardest lessons monetizing AI since 2023 44:16 The fast leap from prosumer to enterprise 47:01 Why product still beats distribution 52:06 The metric that proved product-market fit 57:36 Pricing advice for prosumer AI founders 59:01 The toils and realities of founder life