Scaling from Zero: The Disrupt 2026 Strategy Session

The Builders Stage panel, titled "The Zero-to-1K Playbook," features three distinct perspectives on early-stage expansion: Gamma CEO Grant Lee, Engine founder Elia Wallen, and GV general partner Crystal Huang. The session focuses on replacing traditional marketing spend with organic levers such as community building, founder-led sales, and word-of-mouth advocacy.

Grant Lee brings a high-scale perspective to the discussion, drawing from his tenure at Gamma, which recently crossed 100 million users and reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Complementing this, Elia Wallen offers insights from his experience bootstrapping Engine, a platform that has scaled to serve over 30,000 businesses. Crystal Huang provides the necessary counterpoint from the investor’s seat at GV, where she evaluates how early-stage SaaS and AI companies build sustainable momentum before securing significant capital.

The session is part of a broader program at Disrupt, held October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. With over 10,000 attendees and 200 sessions, the event aims to provide a networking environment for founders to exchange strategies on the "zero-to-one" grind, bridging the gap between product development and market penetration.