Grant Lee, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is routinely courted by investors eager to fund his company. Some go so far as to send personalized gifts, hoping to win him over.
At 41, Lee would typically be pleased by this interest. In the past, as a fast-growing start-up, Gamma, the artificial intelligence company he co-founded in 2020, would actively seek more funding.
However, Gamma is adopting a different approach, mirroring a trend among young start-ups in Silicon Valley. The company is leveraging artificial intelligence to boost employee productivity across various departments, including coding, marketing, customer research, and customer service.
As a result, Gamma, which develops software for creating presentations and websites, has no need for additional capital, according to Lee. The company has a relatively small workforce of 28 employees yet generates “tens of millions” in annual recurring revenue and serves nearly 50 million users. Moreover, Gamma is profitable.
“If we were from the generation before, we would easily be at 200 employees,” Lee said. “We get a chance to rethink that, basically rewrite the playbook.”
The conventional Silicon Valley approach emphasized raising substantial venture capital and using the funds to hire a large workforce for rapid scaling. Profits were often a secondary concern. Headcount and successful fundraising once served as key metrics of success for founders who believed in the ‘bigger is better’ philosophy.
