Grant Lee has been dwelling in slide decks for many of his profession, however it wasn’t till he was performing some advisory work final 12 months that relied closely on slides that he aimed to reimagine the format.
“Slides had been constructed for a special period of labor,” he instructed TechCrunch. “They had been extra of a visible help. You needed to have a presenter as a result of they’ve little standalone energy with out the particular person.”
Beforehand, folks would print off slides or watch the presentation collectively on one display screen, however the total downside of individuals sharing and speaking their work has existed for a very long time. Lee mentioned. Slides have been round for over 30 years, and now everybody has their very own display screen.
So Lee and his co-founders, James Fox and Jon Noronha, all former Optimizely workers (Optimizely was acquired by Episerver in 2020), began Gamma, a software program that permits customers to construct stacks of playing cards that match a model’s aesthetic and prioritize design by linking completely different bits of content material, like movies and embeddable types that may be crammed out in actual time.
The Gamma group. Picture Credit: Gamma
The concept for Gamma was to create one thing that also feels acquainted to the normal slide, however that additionally “unlocks a complete new set of tremendous energy,” Lee mentioned. He refers to constructing content material in Gamma like “selecting your personal journey,” and the content material may be dragged, dropped uploaded and match into the playing cards. And although the presenter is guiding the dialog, watchers can discover the content material themselves after which return to following the presentation.
The corporate was based final November, launched in personal beta in August and is now saying $7 million in seed funding led by Accel. Different individuals within the spherical embrace Zoom CEO Eric Yuan; former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner; founders at Airtable, Patreon, Section, Honey and Optimizely; and early-stage funds together with Script Capital, South Park Commons, LocalGlobe, Afore and Hustle Fund.
“After we got here out of stealth in August, we had been speaking to Accel and thought they had been the fitting associate,” Lee mentioned. “Investing in a brand new medium may be tough, however we had been enthusiastic about crafting the fitting constructing blocks. The brand new funding will permit us to construct out the group and the product, and it’ll assist having the fitting associate.”
Gamma is now out of personal beta and Lee mentioned there are literally thousands of folks on the waitlist to be onboarded. It’s too early to debate progress metrics, because of the firm not but having paying prospects, however there will probably be some paid plans down the highway, he mentioned.
