Anton Osika, Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable: Hitting 85% Day 30 Retention - Better than ChatGPT

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

March 5, 2025

Duration

49m

Channel

The Twenty Minute VC

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Anton Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable, the fastest growing startup in Europe. With Lovable, you can turn your idea into an app in seconds with just a prompt. After just 3 months, the company has scaled to $17.5M in ARR. They are adding $2M in net new revenue every single week. Even better, Lovable has 85% Day 30 retention rate, making it more retentive than ChatGPT. ---------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode We Discuss: (00:00) Intro (00:48) How a Side Project Turned into a $200M Company (02:04) Why Talent is 10x More Valuable Than Experience (05:24) How to Use a Waitlist Pre-Launch to 10x Growth (09:32) How to Master a Public Launch: $0 - $1M ARR in a Week (15:35) Why Raise a Large Seed Round (20:42) How Sustainable is Lovable and AI Revenue (23:41) What are Lovable’s Biggest Threats: Incumbents or Open Source (26:15) Raising Series A: Should You Always Take the Money (26:49) How to Compete in the US from Europe (27:53) Is Europe as F****** as the World Thinks (30:40) Building in Europe vs. Silicon Valley (33:17) The Future of Foundation Models: Who Wins (36:33) Grok vs OpenAI vs Anthropic: Buy and Short (43:46) Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Anton Osika on X: https://twitter.com/antonosika Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #antonosika #lovable #ceo #founder #openai #grok #siliconvalley #europe #startups

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Anton Osika

  guest

• Harry Stebbings

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Anton Osika and Harry Stebbings, Anton Osika, Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable: Hitting 85% Day 30 Retention - Better than ChatGPT explores lovable’s Explosive AI Growth: 2M ARR Weekly With 85% Retention Anton Osika, co-founder and CEO of Lovable, describes how a side project (GPT Engineer) evolved into Lovable, an AI software-building platform growing over $2M in ARR per week with month‑one retention exceeding ChatGPT’s. He shares lessons from his previous startup Depict, emphasizing extreme focus, junior high‑potential talent, and culture over traditional experience and hierarchy. The conversation covers Lovable’s product evolution, waitlist and feedback strategy, decision to raise large early rounds while minimizing dilution later, and why they’re deliberately staying and scaling in Europe. Osika also addresses critiques about “AI sugar revenue,” competition from mega‑corps and model providers, and his vision of AI enabling solo builders and transforming how software teams and companies are created.

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