Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Today’s guest is Tony Beltramelli, Head of AI Strategy and Product at Miro, who built Uizard from a viral ML research project into a product with over 3 million users before its acquisition by Miro. He spent seven years scaling the company from pre-product R&D to acquisition while operating a distributed team across Europe.
🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and share your thoughts! In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!
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Why you should listen
You should listen to this if you are building deep tech without clear product-market fit and need to decide between prolonged R&D versus early customer feedback.
As the conversation unfolded, the tension between founder intuition and customer reality became clear, especially in how overbuilding delayed learning.
What we talk about
00:00 - Introduction
01:31 - The White Paper That Became A Startup
06:25 - Avoiding The Henry Ford Customer Trap
09:07 - Hiring Only When Growth Starts To Hurt
11:34 - Building Remote First Across Four Countries
16:50 - Growing To Three Million Users Without Marketing
19:27 - Turning Miro Interest Into A Structured Sale
26:46 - Why Teams Hear About Acquisitions Last
32:47 - Making A Legacy Company AI First
37:43 - Why AI Agents Break User Metrics
Our main take away’s
Customer validation matters more than technical conviction. The company only became real after inbound demand from GitHub and the white paper proved companies wanted to use the technology, despite years of prior solo R&D without product or revenue.
Long R&D cycles require irrational persistence but come with real survival risk. The team spent three and a half years building before having a usable product, surviving multiple near-death moments including closing their first round in the final month of personal runway.
