Grant Lee

Durable AI products move beyond simple 'wrappers' by orchestrating multiple models to solve deep, end-to-end user workflows.

"It's not just one model. It's maybe 20 plus models powering all different parts of the product, and then you're thinking about the orchestration that's required and you're thinking about, obviously if..."

Maximize audience retention by presenting only one core concept at a time.

"One idea at a time, this notion of you give them one egg, someone can catch it, give them too many eggs, they're going to drop it. So don't try to throw too many concepts all at once. Keep it simple...."

Vanity metrics like 'Product of the Day' can mask a lack of true product-market fit if organic word-of-mouth isn't building momentum.

"We launched on Product Hunt, and felt really good. We had what we felt like was a great launch, ended up winning product of the day, product of the week, product of the month. And it was like, wow, I..."

Build a sustainable growth engine by manually onboarding micro-influencers who can authentically share the product in their own voice.

"All the initial influencers, I onboarded manually myself. I would jump on a call with each one of them so that they understood what Gamma represented, how to use the product. You want to be able to ha..."

Prioritize building a 'word-of-mouth machine' as the core growth engine before investing in paid acquisition.

"When you're early on, your mindset should almost be like you're trying to create a word of mouth machine. If you can get that part right, everything else becomes significantly easier. And if you have..."

Determine pricing by combining willingness-to-pay surveys (Van Westendorp) with feature-value analysis (conjoint) and market anchors.

"We did run a form of Van Westendorp, which is just understanding what is the overall willingness to pay. And so we did use that. We did kind of integrate some forms of conjoint analysis, which is just..."

The guest emphasizes the 'first 30 seconds' and 'first mile' of the user experience as the primary driver for word-of-mouth growth, which is distinct from employee onboarding.

"We are going to do everything we possibly can to make the first 30 seconds of the product feel magical."

Protect the company's DNA by hiring slowly and ensuring the first ten employees are perfectly aligned with the mission and values.

"We had this mantra internally... 'Hire painfully slowly.'... We really focused on that first 10. That allows us to really have this sort of community of teammates that basically want to stick around...."

A scalable brand requires a well-defined 'DNA'—including art direction and tone—that allows for the mass production of cohesive content.

"When I think about something that could be scalable, it's almost like you can take the ingredients of a brand and replicate it a ton, this DNA is something where you can imagine creating tons of conte..."

Founders must personally master copywriting and storytelling to establish the brand's voice and set a high bar for future marketing hires.

"I think part of founder-led marketing is going through this yourself. I think a lot of founders are trying to be more active on social media. And I think if you can overcome the initial cringe factor..."

Use rapid prototyping and unbiased user testing to identify friction points within a single day.

"We would have an idea in the morning, come up with some sort of functional prototype, recruit a bunch of people that are legitimately good prospective users, but have zero skin in the game, ship fast..."