PLG Company: Gamma.app

How an AI-native presentation tool, uses instant TTV, viral onboarding, and AI-driven creation to reach $50M ARR and 50M+ users by making presentations, docs, and webpages “at the speed of thought.”

Author

Gary Chan
September 24, 2025

Every week, I will feature a PLG company and break down how they win.

Company and Product

Gamma – AI-Powered Presentations, Docs & Webpages

Founded: 2020 by Grant Lee, Jon Noronha, and James Fox (San Francisco, CA/remote-first)

Team: 11-50 employees

Funding: $22.3M total; recent $12M Series A led by Accel (May 2024)

Revenue/Users: $50M ARR (2025); 50M+ users, hundreds of thousands of paying customers

Competitors: Beautiful.ai, Canva, Tome, Pitch, Prezi, Visme

Industry/Category

AI Content Platform / Creator Tools

Target User Persona

  • Primary: Professionals needing fast, polished decks and docs with minimal design and manual work

  • Secondary: Teachers, creators, and enterprise groups seeking collaborative, interactive, branded presentations

  • Specific: Anyone needing templates and have a cold start problem when creating slides with PowerPoint/Google Slides

A lot of creative tools suffer from this issue, and users just want to shut off their brains and click a few buttons to get started. Oftentimes, trying to learn and be creative is quite demanding. Users are just looking for tools to help them turn their ideas into something highly presentable and praiseworthy “WOW”.

Gary Yau Chan

PLG Model Used

Freemium + Viral “Aha” Moment + Instant AI Creation

  • Free plan: Basic creation, limited AI credits, branded Gamma domains

  • Paid plans unlock: Unlimited creation (more AI usage), removes branding, advanced collaboration, analytics, custom domains, export options

  • Users get instant value when the product creates their first presentation, deck, or web page from a prompt or file

Learn more about pricing and the restaurant pricing menu:

Product Led Growth Pricing and Packaging Strategy Hack

Learn how we grew our upsell with this Product-led Growth PLG pricing and packaging framework: Sell 1 advanced feature at a time.

growthwithgary.com/p/secret-pricing-packaging-framework-restaurant-menu-for-plg

Create the brief instantly

Time to Value (TTV)

Immediate (seconds to minutes):

  • Sign up, type a prompt, paste text, or upload a file, Gamma instantly creates a full doc, deck, or webpage

  • 30-60 seconds later, user sees a fully themed, auto-designed, and editable output (the “aha” moment)

  • Onboarding guided by personalized quiz, instant examples, and checklist for easy activation

The core action is simple: just create a presentation as quickly as possible for the user so that they can reach the aha moment and share it.

Gary Yau Chan

Led your users to the core action and aha moment with product led growth bumpers:

Product Led Growth Bumper: Turn your SaaS into a Growth Engine

PLG bumpers guide free users throughout the product journey, helping them activate, retain, and upgrade into paid customers.

growthwithgary.com/p/product-led-growth-bumper

The slides are created immediately

Onboarding Experience

  • Segmentation quiz personalizes the experience (work, education, creator, etc.)

  • First-run “magical” AI onboarding: generate actual content immediately, with instant preview and editing

  • In-app chat/editor makes layouts, styling, and re-writing core features available without switching tools

  • Interactive checklist surfaces key features to encourage deeper exploration

Key Growth Loops/Virality

  • Instant “Wow” Demo: Users share decks and web pages instantly, showing Gamma output in meetings and online, peers want to try it!

  • Word-of-Mouth: Viral user stories, onboarding experience encourages sharing and referrals across professional/creator networks

  • Template & Theme Sharing: Custom templates and themes are reused, creating organic spread

  • Referral Credits: Free credits can be earned via inviting friends or sharing Gamma-created docs

A lot of virality is just tapping into vanity. Hey, isn't this cool? I made this. And so, other people want it. Identifying what that is for your product will go a long way.

Check out this article about how Intercom Maps became virality feature.

Gary Yau Chan

Check out more on SaaS PLG Virality

SaaS Product Virality using Product-Led Growth

How to create internal virality bottom-up from selling to one individual user then upselling the whole customer's organization. And learn how to create external virality that compounds and drives growth.

growthwithgary.com/p/saas-virality

PLG Compounding Strategy

peeding up that activation provides immediate time to value, allowing you to create a presentation from ideas to AI-generated slides. Presentations are inherently shared, so every audience member (whether internal colleagues or external companies, clients, or customers) is curious about how this is so innovative.

Every shared document becomes a viral artifact, driving faster and faster growth. It's just that simple.

Read about other PLG Company Highlights:

Product-Led Growth Examples: 9 AI SaaS Companies That Cracked the Code (2025)

Here are 6 real-world product-led growth (PLG) examples from leading AI and SaaS startups. Learn they use common characteristics (instant value, viral loops, and user-focused strategies) to drive rapid, sustainable growth.

growthwithgary.com/p/product-led-growth-examples

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New here? Here’s what to expect each week:
- Monday: spotlight a lesser-known PLG company
- Tuesday: my PLG experience
- Wednesday: Memes on product, AI, and marketing
- Thursday: tactical growth tips
- Friday: raw accounts of my startup journey

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I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. Building ClarityInbox. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.