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