// TECHCRUNCH — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Gamma’s Grant Lee, Engine’s Elia Wallen, and GV’s Crystal Huang on landing your first 1,000 customers
You’ve built the product. Now you need customers. But when you’re starting from zero, there may be no marketing budget, established brand, or sales team to help you find them. So how do you get the first 1,000 people to take a chance on what you’ve built?
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Gamma CEO and co-founder Grant Lee, Engine founder and CEO Elia Wallen, and GV (Google Ventures) general partner Crystal Huang will take the Builders Stage for “The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget.”
They’ll break down how founders are using community building, product-led growth, founder-led sales, strategic outbound, and word of mouth to find those critical early customers.
Still working toward your first 1,000 customers? Secure your Disrupt pass now, save up to $100, and hear how founders are finding early customers when budget, brand, and scale aren’t available yet. Bring a co-founder, colleague, partner, or peer and save 50% on your pass.
Lee knows what it takes to grow well beyond those first customers. Before co-founding Gamma, he was COO of ClearBrain, which was acquired by Amplitude, and CFO of Optimizely. A Stanford-trained engineer with experience in finance and operations, he spent years creating the slide decks that eventually inspired him to rethink how people create and share ideas.
Gamma has since grown far beyond presentations. TechCrunch reported in March 2026 that the AI-powered visual communication platform was approaching 100 million users after reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025. The company has continued expanding into websites, social content, and AI-generated marketing assets.
For an early-stage founder, the interesting part of that story starts well before 100 million users. How do you convince the first people to try a product from a company they’ve never heard of — and turn that early traction into momentum?
Get your ticket to Disrupt and hear Lee’s perspective on what it takes to start building a customer base from zero. Save up to $100 on your pass, and get a second pass at 50% off.
Wallen brings another founder journey to the conversation. He started Travelers Haven in 2008 and bootstrapped it into one of the country’s largest corporate housing companies. He raised Engine’s first outside capital in 2019 and later shifted his full attention to the travel platform.
Today, Engine has served more than 30,000 businesses and one million travelers and is cash-flow positive. Its growth continued in July when Engine acquired Options Travel, a travel management company with more than 30 years in the business, along with its group-flights product, TempoTrip.