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AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics
Host Dan Turchin, PeopleReign CEO, explores how AI is changing the workplace. He interviews thought leaders and technologists from industry and academia who share their experiences and insights about artificial intelligence and what it means to be human in the era of AI-driven automation. Learn more about PeopleReign, the system of intelligence for IT and HR employee service: http://www.peoplereign.io.
AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics
361: Can AI Be a True Creative Partner? Grant Lee, CEO of Gamma, on AI Design Philosophy and Building the Anti-PowerPoint
Grant Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Gamma, the company reimagining presentations by building what some call the “anti-PowerPoint.” Since its launch in 2022, Gamma has grown to over 70 million users, with 30 million gammas created each month, and has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). These milestones were achieved profitably, with a team of just 50 people (that’s about $2 million in ARR per employee) and a Series B round at a $2.1 billion valuation, led by Sarah Wang at Andreessen Horowitz.
Before founding Gamma in 2020, Grant led finance at Optimizely, where he developed a passion for A/B testing. He began his career in investment banking and holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- How Gamma went from an idea to one of the fastest-growing presentation tools in the world with $100M ARR and a 50-person team
- Why Grant and his co-founders set out to reinvent slides from scratch instead of improving on PowerPoint
- Lessons from Optimizely that shaped Gamma’s culture of experimentation and rapid iteration
- How Grant thinks about product-market fit and why every feature must solve real user pain instead of mimicking the competition
- How AI serves as a design partner, not a replacement for human creativity, and why “human in the loop” is central to Gamma’s philosophy
- The importance of building user trust in generative AI through transparency, feedback loops, and community programs like the “Gambassador” initiative
- How resilience, early failures, and conviction helped Gamma survive investor rejection and a near-collapse during the SVB crisis
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