A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders Paul Graham Said His Startup Was Worthless—2 Months Later He Hit $1M ARR. | Jon Noronha, Co-Founder of Gamma
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Sep 4, 2025 Join Jon Noronha, co-founder of Gamma, an innovative AI-powered presentation platform, as he shares his rollercoaster journey to success. After years of struggle, a pivot to AI caught fire when Paul Graham publicly questioned their launch—turning a mockery into a viral sensation. They skyrocketed from 2,000 to 60,000 daily signups in mere days, with their servers crashing under the demand. Discover how leveraging negative attention, user research, and a strategic onboarding process transformed a floundering startup into a million-dollar success in just two months!
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Founding Gamma To Rethink Presentations
- Jon Noronha describes founding Gamma in 2020 to rethink presentations for remote work and mobile use.
- He and cofounders believed presentations were universally painful and saw a huge market opportunity around replacing formatting with clarity.
Universal Presentation Pain Points
- User research across ~100 people revealed three recurring presentation problems: formatting time sink, story structuring, and fear of being judged.
- These shared pain points guided product priorities toward reducing formatting friction and helping structure messages.
Built A Doc-First Editor To Convert To Slides
- Gamma built a Notion-like editor that writes as a doc and converts to a visual presentation in present mode.
- The team focused on block-based editing and responsive web tech rather than recreating a PowerPoint clone.