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
