Elena Verna: Why Lovable bets 95% on innovation in AI growth

1. 0:00 – 5:19

   Introduction to Elena Verna

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky0:00

      You're head of growth at Lovable, on track to be the fastest or one of the fastest growing companies in history.

   2. EVElena Verna0:06

      We're over 200 million in ARR at this point. We're a hundred people large. The pace here is insane.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky0:11

      You said that you've had to throw out most of your growth playbook.

   4. EVElena Verna0:14

      I feel like only 30 to 40% of what I've learned in the last 15 to 20 years of being in growth transfers here, because we just need to invest in such bigger bets and innovate and create new growth loops here. Everybody and their mother is starting a vibe coding business nowadays, and we need to figure out how to be ahead of them. And to be ahead of them is not optimization of the problem, it's reinvention of the solution. I just feel like I usually spend maybe 5% innovating on growth in my previous roles. Right now, I'm spending 95% innovating on growth, and only 5% on optimization.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky0:48

      What do you find is actually moving the needle?

   6. EVElena Verna0:50

      One of our biggest strategy is building in public, and it's coupled with employee socials, founder-led socials. And another one is giving your product away a lot. This is part of our growth secret sauce. You have to remove the barrier of entry. If somebody, one of our users, stands up and say, "Hey, I'm gonna have a hackathon at my work on Lovable. Can you give us some free credits to play with?" Why would we prevent a person who wants to do all of the marketing and activating for us from using us? We're like, "Take it. How much do you need?"

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:22

      The trick is get more people to try it. Just ship things you can talk about.

   8. EVElena Verna1:25

      The only way to create a word of mouth loop is just to blow their socks off.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:31

      Today, my guest is Elena Verna, head of growth at Lovable. In under one year after launching, with fewer than 100 people, Lovable hit 200 million ARR, which is one of, if not the fastest ramp to 200 million ARR in history, and growth is still accelerating. They've also recently raised a Series B at a six billion dollar valuation. So with that, there's a lot to learn about what Lovable has figured out about growth. This is Elena's fourth visit to the podcast, a record. She is my favorite growth mind. And in our conversation, we talk about how the growth playbook has fundamentally changed for AI companies. What works now, what no longer works, and what has surprised her most about how Lovable grows. She also shares her advice about whether working at an AI company is right for you, some incredibly interesting insights into Lovable's secret sauce for growth, the unique ways they operate internally, their approach to building minimal lovable products. Also, how they hire, and also how product market fit as a concept is no longer what it used to be, and how every company basically has to recapture product market fit every three months. This episode is incredibly tactical, and you will leave this conversation smarter on so many levels. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 19 incredible premium products, including a year free of Lovable, Replit, Bolt, n8n, Linear, Devon, PostHoc, Superhuman, Descript, WhisperFlow, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, ChatBRD, Mobbin, and Stripe Atlas. Head on over to LennisNewsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Elena Verna after a short word from our sponsors. Here's a puzzle for you. What do OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Vercel, Plat, and hundreds of other winning companies have in common? The answer is they're all powered by today's sponsor, WorkOS. If you're building software for enterprises, you've probably felt the pain of integrating single sign-on, SCIM, RBAC, audit logs, and other features required by big customers. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Whether you're a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise-ready and unlocking growth. They're essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit workos.com to get started or just hit up their Slack support, for they have real engineers in there who answer your questions super fast. WorkOS allows you to build like the best with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise-ready today. This episode is brought to you by v0 from Vercel. v0 is the web development assistant designed for professionals of all technical backgrounds. Whether you're a product manager, designer, or developer, transform how you bring products to life. With v0, everybody can cook. Don't just show up to reviews with docs and ideas. Arrive with working prototypes that demonstrate real functionality. v0 drafts project plans, generates interactive interfaces, and builds full stack applications without writing a single line of code. And with features like AI and database integrations, screenshot import, and sync with GitHub, v0 helps reduce development bottlenecks and enhance collaboration between technical and non-technical team members. The result? Faster iteration and a shorter path from idea to implementation. Vercel built v0 for the builders who want to create at the moment of inspiration. If you can dream it, you can ship it. Visit vercel.com/lenny to get started. That's vercel.com/lenny.

2. 5:19 – 8:55

   The scale and growth of Lovable

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky5:19

      Elena, thank you so much for being here, and welcome back to the podcast.

   2. EVElena Verna5:24

      Thank you for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky5:26

      As you know, this is, uh, a record fourth time back to the podcast. No one else has ever achieved this feat. I feel like you're, uh, you're basically my co-host now.

   4. EVElena Verna5:35

      I love it. Thank you for inviting me back. I'm very proud record holder in this regard.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:41

      What I love about you coming back each time, it feels like every time you come back, you're just doing something even more epic and exciting. And so these days, as well, here in the intro, you're head of growth at Lovable.Which, no big deal, on track to be, uh, the fastest or one of the fastest growing companies in history, uh, depending on the metric that you track. Let's talk about just the scale and growth of Lovable to give people a sense of just how incredible this is. I'll share a bit of this in the intro, but just like, what are some stats you can share about just how things are going at Lovable?

   6. EVElena Verna6:08

      So, uh, we are just a little bit over one years old since we launched. Uh, the company actually did exist as a GPT engineer before, but it officially launched in the third week of November last year in 2024. So, uh, for us, we've hit over $200 million in annual recurring revenue before we even hit our one-year, uh, milestone since being launched, which is pretty incredible. You only actually have a really great, um, blog post on how quickly it takes for companies usually to get to their first million ARR, and it's usually multiple years. So this is definitely a unicorn. I don't think this is a standard. There's a couple of things that, um, account for it and we can talk about it, and the growth is only accelerating. So it's compounding, which is great, because we had our 100 million in end of July, and just four months later we were at 200 million. So seven months to, well, maybe eight months to 100 million. Another four months to get to 200 million. And from a users too, we already have over eight million users, um, that have tried Lovable. We have, as you can imagine to feed that 200 million, hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers as well that are paying for us. Uh, so things are, things are going great, and we'll talk about why.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky7:27

      Okay. Absurd. I think people are getting used to these insane numbers, and not long ago is like, okay, if you hit a million ARR in a year, you're doing pretty well.

   8. EVElena Verna7:36

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky7:37

      Okay.

   10. EVElena Verna7:37

       I think it's still you're doing pretty well if you have a million ARR in one year. This is, uh, this is one of the o- once in a lifetime type of, uh, companies and the category, the way that it's evolving. So I want to make sure that people don't all of a sudden set this as a benchmark for success, because it should never be. Um, in some categories it might be even faster, um, as we continue evolving technology, but I don't think that it's realistic to expect it, um, out of your business that you're starting right now.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky8:08

       That is such an important point you're making there. It's so discouraging to founders to hear this, these stories of okay, (laughs) 200 million. Uh, and again, this is ARR. There's a lot of companies-

   12. EVElena Verna8:19

       Yeah.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky8:19

       ... especially in the data labeling space, I've had them all on the podcast, that are, uh, very fast growing but they're not recurring revenue. There's also, they pay out their people to do this data labeling. So the revenue numbers there don't really equate. Like, recurring $200 million a year is absurd.

   14. EVElena Verna8:36

       Yeah. It is, it is absurd. I really want to make sure that people understand, uh, as we go through this episode as to why it's happening, because part of it is on Lovable, part of it is just in the market, um, and how it's moving. So when you're setting yourself as a benchmark, uh, so you know which benchmarks you actually to use and whether Lovable is the benchmark that you

3. 8:55 – 12:17

   Confidence in Lovable as a business

   1. EVElena Verna8:55

      should be using.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky8:56

      Cool. I'm gonna get into that next. Last question, just I want to see what you can share here. A lot of people look at these numbers. A lot of people are very skeptical these are lasting, durable numbers. Like, who are these people? How is there $200 million being spent on Lovable? Anything you can add about just like give people confidence this is real, this is gonna last, this is a, a really durable business?

   3. EVElena Verna9:18

      Well, I saw Stripe receipts, so it is real as far as I'm concerned. Um, unless Stripe dashboard is lying to us. But it is money getting deposited in our bank account. But I, w- let's talk about who's actually contributing to that number. We do have a really large use case of people, uh, starting their own companies on Lovable. So we call it a founder use case, where somebody that is non-technical that has never been able to code or create a piece of software is now able to come in and actually build an app completely from scratch. And, uh, some of them are already monetizing it, some of it just using it for lead gen for other services or, uh, some physical goods, for example, that they're, uh, that they're selling. Some of them are just still building. And, uh, we monetize on the active building, so that progression of like building up to your product market fit takes quite a bit of time. And even with Lovable, we're so much more efficient and effective compared to hiring an engineer, uh, in terms of the price, but, um, it still takes time. Uh, so we have a lot of founders, uh, whether it's B2C, whether there's B2B, so consumer products, business products, e-commerce, um, whatever it is. But on the other side, we have a lot of employees within companies using Lovable as well, uh, where they're building internal tools or they're building prototypes, they're building landing pages. So, um, that is qui- another use case that is very relevant and quite pr- uh, efficient for us. But then there is a hype and discovery that is happening as well, because, uh, when I think about software, I think about it... I talked to John Cutler actually, and, uh, he gave me this framework that is like completely stuck in my mind of software always goes through capabilities stage first, like what is possible, uh, to actually create with this? Then it needs to transition into value of how is it that am I gonna get value out of this? And then you can start thinking about scaling it, uh, of which aspects of my life and my work, uh, that can this actually go in. And we're right now very much in the capability stage with vibe coding, because everybody's just exploring, "What can I do?" And the beautiful thing here is that what you can do changes every month to three months. So I constantly need to come back and you need to see what has changed. So a lot of people use it for personal reasons. Um, they, I built myself, uh, apps, tutoring apps for my kid, so he has to answer questions in order to get some screen time, uh, accumulated for him. I build my own portfolio. I see people doing wonderful things. My favorite story that I always say, uh, there's this, um, man that created a proposal on Lovable. So his fiance had to answer questions and like she had to complete this game and then at the end, there was like this big reveal and he proposed to her. But people just unlock the most creative...... things that they build on Lovable. And that's where the revenue is coming from. The one piece that is working very well for us in terms of how our monetization model is set up and how it interjects with your activation moment, which we can also cover, but that is what's driving, um, that, um, growth conversion and retention rates.

4. 12:17 – 15:02

   Retention at Lovable

   1. EVElena Verna12:17

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky12:17

      Let me ask you one question that's on people's minds, I imagine, as you talk about this. Just what does, what does retention look like?

   3. EVElena Verna12:22

      Yeah. So retention, uh, really I look at it in two ways. Uh, retention that it comes as a subscriber retention, uh, so how much, many paid subscribers do we get and how many of them are we capable of renewing? There's also a very important aspect of it is how many of them can we expand? Because if you can get positive or above 100% net dollar retention, which is super important metric for investors. If you don't know about net dollar retention, please read it up. That's like a superpower to get bigger multiple if you can show, um, NDR that is over 100. And then there's actual engagement retention as well, because, uh, that is the leading indicator for how real paid retention is gonna look like. For paid retention, um, I know there's so much on the market of, "Oh, this is a high product and, um, it just, it's a leaky bucket and it has really high churn rates." Although, um, I'm not, I shouldn't share. It's not public numbers for us to share. Actual retention, however, what I can say is on par with benchmarks, uh, of other B2B SaaS products that I've ever worked at. And I worked with Miro, Dropbox, uh, SurveyMonkey, Netlify, um, Amplitude, and others. So are we absolutely crushing with paid retention? Um, no. Are we where most of the other companies are? Yes. Our NDR is quite good because when people bill, they wanna buy more credits to bill. So, uh, we're seeing really good, uh, revenue retention, but we're honestly more focused right now on engagement retention than even paid retention because our North Star is just to get as much usage as possible and, uh, we will fix and tune our monetization model afterwards. So engagement retention I would say is a by far bigger priority focus for us at the moment.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky14:04

      That is incredibly, uh, interesting and optimistic to hear because of the growth rate. Uh, rarely is growth rate this high and retention is on par with great companies.

   5. EVElena Verna14:15

      Yeah. And I'll just say too, which is a little bit maybe counterintuitive to would be to a lot of companies, we don't optimize for revenue at all. In fact, internally we have a lot of discussions about how can we give more products away. How can we, uh, reduce our revenue growth rate by just getting more paid subscribers, more users using Lovable to just get bigger share of the market? So our revenue is an outcome of us just trying to get more people through the door, not us trying to optimize for revenue per user or to get them to monetize at the higher rate. So there's like a very interesting path here where by actually focusing on the inputs, like you should, it translates to a good output, but we don't look at that output as something that we're trying to grow.

5. 15:02 – 28:13

   Lovable’s unique growth levers

   1. EVElena Verna15:02

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky15:02

      Let's talk about growth. Let's talk about what you've learned about growth in this space. You had this post online where you said that you've had to throw out most of your growth playbook. This is a huge deal. You've led growth at a lot of really successful companies.

   3. EVElena Verna15:15

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky15:15

      Lovable is growing incredibly well. Uh, this tells me there's a lot we can learn from what you've seen. So tell us what you're seeing, what's still working, what's not working, what you've, uh, learned about what it takes to drive growth at a company like Lovable.

   5. EVElena Verna15:28

      Yeah. I would say that in any other role that I've come into before, uh, I felt confident in about 80% of the patterns that I can bring to that role, meaning that I can identify inputs, understand which framework kind of applies. I know a bunch of examples that fit in within that framework, so we just need to localize a solution and push. And it was quite productive in terms of getting a company those additional acquisition, conversion, engagement, monetization rates. So, um, I, I felt very repetitive in a way, um, after some time because I feel like I'm just coming in and copy-pasting, copy-pasting. And although every single company loves to say that they have unique problems, at the end of the day, all of the problems were very similar, and I felt like I was, like, doing the same job over and over again. When I started at Lovable, the one thing to me that was very clear is that, uh, this company was growing like crazy before I joined. So I wanna make sure that there's not that much value on what I have even added today because this company is on a tear and yes, we're rounding the edges to, and removing barriers for growth, uh, so we're not standing in our own way, but, uh, there's something more magical happening here that is not a pattern that I've ever seen before. It's not a framework that I can even conceptualize, um, in my head. And plus it's a new category that I've never seen or I've never been in a company that is in the new emerging category that hits fast-moving water so quickly. And that's the difference because when you're usually trying to create a new category, it takes years. I know it's every marketer's dream to create a new category, but it takes decades often to like really, to really get that much hype and adoption around it versus with vibe coding, this has seemed to have happened really quickly. It's like it's hit the nerve with the market. So yes, we're at the right place, we're at the right time, but we're also in really fast-moving waters and, um, the demand that is coming to us, like we need to capture it mostly. We don't need to generate a lot of it yet, but at the same time it comes with a really big downfalls of we're not in control of a lot of our growth. I mean, let's be honest about it. There's so much incredible word of mouth that is happening and we're trying to grow that, but, uh, to enable as much of that as possible, but, um, it's-The company is moving. We're just, like, hanging on to it as fast as possible and making sure that the, we're, like, not gonna hit a wall, so to speak, in front of us, uh, and that the wheels are greased and that all of the pieces are in places, like your race car framework, uh, that you have as well. The, the... we're, we're really just putting a lot of oil into it, uh, and, um, figuring out what is our engine actually gonna be that is gonna take us forward. But, uh, when I'm thinking about the patterns here and what I have to unlearn, I feel like only 30 to 40% of what I've learned in the last 15 to 20 years of being in growth transfers here. And, uh, some of it is very straightforward. Okay, this is how you're gonna do paid marketing. This is how you're gonna do some of the habitual retention. Here's the free-to-pay c- maybe, uh, monetization, uh, frameworks that still stand. But the rest of it, um, honestly, it just, like, doesn't feel like it even matters anymore because we just need to invest in such bigger bets and innovate and create new growth loops here as opposed to trying to optimize it, uh, to the moon and be- and beyond, uh, which would, uh, usually be focused on in a scaled business like this.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky18:57

      Let's follow those threads. So what is it that no longer is worth it in this bucket of just, like, let's not spend any time on this thing? And then what do you find is actually moving the needle?

   7. EVElena Verna19:06

      Not worth it in growth. Uh, most of the people spend most of their time optimizing existing user journeys. So, um, you already have maybe some of your growth loops that you understand that you try to optimize or you just know, hey, there's big drop-offs from acquisition to activation. Let me go figure out how to, I can tweak the dials to get it done. Here what I find is that, um, optimizations are just not worth our time. So a lot of the times my growth team actually ends up working on new features or just standing up new growth loops one after another. And yes, there is o- of course the saying of, like, more growth loops does not mean more growth. But at the same time the m- the market is moving so quickly, you need to stand up a bunch of initiatives, uh, to capture it because it's perishable or we also have so much competition. We're not alone here, so we can't ignore that there's... everybody and their mother is starting a vibe coding business nowadays, and we need to figure out how to be ahead of them. And to be ahead of them is not optimization of the problem, it's reinvention of the solution. So I just feel like I usually spend maybe 5%, maybe 10% if I'm lucky innovating on growth in my roles, uh, in my previous roles. Right now I'm spending 95% innovating on growth and only 5% on optimization, and most of my frameworks are on optimization because it's really hard to come up with frameworks for innovation because by default they're, by definition they're innovative.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky20:38

      What I'm hearing here is, uh, new features, launching new features-

   9. EVElena Verna20:41

      Yes.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky20:41

       ... with new products is one of the bigger growth levers versus, like, you have a bunch of cool stuff, make it more, make it easier to use, increase activation, reduce friction, things like that.

   11. EVElena Verna20:51

       Yeah. And for example, um, we on growth team launched, uh, integration with Shopify to enable e-commerce use case because we're like, hey, there's already people trying to come in and do it and Shopify was open for integration with us. Let's go lean into it so people can vibe code their storefronts. Uh, that came out of growth. That usually would never come out of growth. Like, why would growth team ever invest into a core product integration? Or we, um, enabled voice mode for people so they can actually chat with Lovable using their voice as opposed to only having type. And, um, that's also, it's a feature, it's a core product feature, but we're like, hey, it's gonna help people to converse with Lovable more. It's gonna increase the engagement. One area that we've spent very little time in is activation 'cause usually I spend majority of my time in activation because there's so many awareness things that need to happen and, uh, so many things that, uh, we, uh, we need to, like, smooth out experience for the users in order for them to get through that setup moment, through aha moment, to that habit loop. And here you're just interacting with agent. So, uh, we, at the beginning were like, agent team that we have here is working a lot on it. Like, why would we go in there and, and do anything? It's like, our core team is responsible for activation. Now we're starting to move into doing agent work ourselves. So all of a sudden growth team is not just doing product surfaces. Now we're doing agentic workflows, um, and codifying agent instructions in order for customers to activate better. So the work fundamentally I feel like has gotten deeper into product and deeper into actual core product functionality as opposed to just being a smoothing surface on the outer layers.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky22:34

       Okay. That is also a very big deal. Every growth person that's ever been on this podcast, including you, always talks about the power of activation, just how much opportunity there is cons- it to get people to this aha moment, realize how well- the value of this product. That increases retention, it increases everything. And what you're saying here is you barely spend any time on activation because in a company like Lovable there's a prompt, you give it what you want, it generates a thing, and that's basically all it is. And so the impact is to make that agent better at that thing versus micro optimize every step.

   13. EVElena Verna23:06

       And our a- agent team spends night and day thinking about it. So I've never been at the company where core team thinks so much about activation, thinks so much about that first generation, thinks so much about reaching aha moment. So it's more weaved in into DNA of the overall company, which takes the pressure off of me to only have to focus on it because otherwise, yeah, I would be in that, in that experience all the time. But I feel a lot more at ease because e- everybody's thinking about it and everybody's working on making k- making agents better and agent, the beauty of it is it doesn't matter if it's actually first generation or if it's your nth generation. It just needs to be a better generation. Agent needs to understand your intent better and think and reason behind it. So it, like, improves the entire life cycle immediately as opposed to having to only work on that first experience per se.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky23:59

       And what you're not saying is don't care about that experience. It's the team building that is already f- obsessed with making that activation-

   15. EVElena Verna24:06

       Exactly.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky24:07

       ... experience better and better.

   17. EVElena Verna24:07

       Exactly. And I, I love that because I, that's the core product functionality at this point. And before, uh, people would spend more time building deeper features or deeper use cases or trying to, um, improve some platform functionality and now the core team, they're obsessed about that first experience because that is core product.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky24:29

       Another lever that I've noticed, especially with Lovable, and I'm seeing it more and more in social media, is just founders telling you what's going on. I think this connects really deeply with the new features. Launching new features, say Anton is just like, "Hey, check out this cool new thing. Check out our growth numbers." Is that a big growth lever too?

   19. EVElena Verna24:45

       Yeah. So one of our biggest strategy is, uh, building in public. Uh, building in public, and it's coupled with employee socials, founder-led socials for sure. Uh, this is difficult for larger companies, but when you're smaller and you still have a little bit more narrative control, uh, with, uh, with everybody on your team, plus you have so much more trust within the organization of where people are gonna say the right things because they understand what actually has happened. Uh, that ability to just really quickly deliver the message to the market becomes really important. Now we still do, do big launches, so we still have everything tiered into tier three, two, one. Like tier ones are gonna happen as like big moments that we're gonna really rally as a company behind, and it's gonna be something that, um, is meant to step function change our product market fit, and, uh, we're gonna do a bunch of activities behind it. But at the same time, what's really important to us is to maintain noise in the market, and that noise in the market happens by us shipping every day, every other day, multiple times per day, and just talking about it constantly. Interestingly enough, it's actually works as fantastic resurrection strategy because people are like, "Oh, there's more things here. Like, I need to go check it out." It also works as great re-engagement strategy. So instead of sending newsletters to say like, "Here's the market trends," or, "Here's the user stories," like people are like literally logging into their socials to see like, okay, what has Lovable shipped now? It's like, what, what, what is the change? So it's interesting to them to see because from the time that they voice their opinion on what needs to happen to actual delivery is so short. So they feel heard, and they are heard because that's how we, uh, prioritize all of the things that we're shipping. But it's interesting because I've never been in a company that tries to maintain so much just shipping velocity to maintain certain amount of noise that it feels like the product is alive. It's changing every single week. And then there's like these big amplifications, turbo boosts, so to speak, in the race car model, uh, that then go, uh, go out and they fundamentally create a step function change in that product market fit as a whole. And, um, that is a retention strategy I can get behind any day and all day. I only hope that we can maintain it as we continue scaling. (laughs)

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky27:06

       Sounds stressful. (laughs) This reminds me, I had, uh, G- Gaurav, he's the CEO of, uh, Mirages, used to be called Capptions, which is a really successful AI video company startup, and they have a policy of you ship a, a marketable feature every week.

   21. EVElena Verna27:22

       Mm-hmm.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky27:23

       That's how their company operates.

   23. EVElena Verna27:24

       Yeah.

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky27:24

       And it- it's the same thing. It's just ship things so you can talk about.

   25. EVElena Verna27:27

       Velocity of shipping is our number one core value in development team. So we do anything and everything to just keep it going up, up, up and, um, and to the right. And by the way, this is also means that everybody is a little- has a little bit of marketer within them. This is, uh, we have very lean product organization. We actually lean on our engineers, uh, to do a lot of product work. We call them product engineers. Uh, and, uh, they have to go and they have to announce the thing that they've shipped. It doesn't just funnel through marketing. So there's a lot of, uh, autonomy, a lot of agency that needs to happen with this- with this type of velocity because marketing team... Otherwise you have to have like enormous marketing team to staff that. So, it has to come with some roles and responsibilities, uh, redefinition on the team

6. 28:13 – 38:09

   The role of marketing in Lovable’s success

   1. EVElena Verna28:13

      as well.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky28:13

      Let's talk about marketing. That's something else you've written about is just marketing is changing in a big way, the role in growth. How does marketing play a role in all of this?

   3. EVElena Verna28:20

      On one side, marketing channels are changing. On the other side, marketing's involvement into everything that product does is changing. And then number three, I think even marketing organizations in terms of where they hired the most, um, are changing as a result as well. So I'll talk about second one first just because we just talked about shipping, and that is, um, yeah, you still have your product marketers, you still have your channel managers, um, but they focus more on the big things and the narratives. Although it's difficult because the narrative even changes all the time as these functionalities come through. Usually you can come up with the positioning and the messaging and you can have it for years, um, and create all of the campaigns around it. Now you have it for three months and then the product changes. So like the cycles here are really, uh, are really short, and, uh, for smaller changes, because cycles are so short, they spend so much time actually focusing on it as they should that some of these smaller changes just cannot be supported by marketing. You have to delegate it to your product and engineering team to do their own marketing 'cause otherwise, again, you're gonna have to have enormous marketing team in order to support it all. But at the same time, channels in which marketing right now works I think are changing quite a bit. And, um, not enough people I feel like are freaking out and talking about it as opposed to like moving just in the same direction over and over again. And the changes that I'm seeing is that it is very- has been very clear to me that when you're talking about organic strategy, if you're marketing organic strategy, if you asked me that five years ago, I would have said that's SEO. Uh, search engine optimization, go on Google. That's your organic marketing strategy. If you ask me what's the organic marketing strategy right now, to me it's all about social, which is what is my CEO posting? What is my team posting? What is my LinkedIn? What is my creator economy doing in influencer marketing and, um, across all of the social platforms? That is my organic, which is that one's kind of paid to be fair, but when I think about organic, there is still a lot of that word of mouth. What are my users posting on social? What are they talking about? And what are they, uh, what are they sharing? Which is like a mind shift because I've been always, especially in B2B, so focused on search, and now I feel like it's been completely pushed even further into consumerization territory, and it has become all about social no matter how B2B you are, because that's where eyeballs are at.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky30:44

      That is fascinating.And so when you talk about socials, what are you finding is most helpful? Is it Twitter/X? Is it LinkedIn? Is it YouTube, TikTok, Instagram?

   5. EVElena Verna30:52

      For founder socials, uh, employee socials, um, X and LinkedIn are fantastic sources, um, especially for B2B because that's where all of the B2B people are at. But you cannot just have ChatGPT write your copy and post it. You need to show personality. Like there needs to be humanity fol- uh, that it goes through it. And it's not natural for everybody and it feels very awkward sometimes to start, uh, but it's important to people to see who's building the company because there's so much competition now on functionality, so they can rally behind a team, so they want to have a team that they want to win. And for that, you need to be vulnerable, you need to be authentic obviously, but you just need to be yourself. Uh, so like that corporate scrubbing has to completely fall off, which, um, is obviously gonna pull in as, as the company scales, but at least at the beginning, that is a good chance to stand out. And then your customers posting about you, so that word of mouth of, uh, really creating a product that creates something for customers that is worth talking about. It gives them stories that they want to share, that feels empowering to them to tell to others like they're unlocking a secret, like they feel proud of what they have created, which what we focus a lot on Lovable on to have that feeling of, "Oh my gosh, I have super powers now and I can't wait to tell others. I cannot wait to show others what is happening." So on both of those sides, to me, that is very much organic. Um, if you're in a consumer, then Instagram, TikTok, um, are very much a go as well.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky32:34

      So here it's, uh, the CEO clearly is an important, uh, variable in this. Them, in this case Anton just tweeting, "Here's what's going on at Lovable, here's how fast it's growing, here's some thing we've learned."

   7. EVElena Verna32:44

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky32:44

      Uh, we had the CEO of Gamma, uh, on recently, Grant, and he's exactly the same thing, just sharing a bunch of lessons, journey building in public a big part of the growth lever. And your point here is okay, so it's the CEO, but then it's also how do you get your customers to share things on socials? And then there's a paid, uh, influencer sort of component.

   9. EVElena Verna33:01

      Yes. Uh, the customer is difficult one. That's a word of mouth loop that you need to stand up. The only way to create a word of mouth loop is just to blow their socks off, uh, when, um, they ex- actually experience your product. We have a really almost unfair advantage because our product is called Lovable, so by default we're trying to create an absolute lovable experiences, like that is a mentality internally. If it's not lovable, we're not gonna ship it. So, uh, and the best way to fix a bug at Lovable is to say, "This is not lovable," like when everybody just like jumps on it, uh, to fix it right there and then. Sprints, no sprints, it doesn't matter, it's getting fixed right now. So, uh, from that perspective, we kind of have that culture already embedded as part of our brand and it's part of our name, which helps us a lot, but that's, the point is that you feel that brand through every interaction. Uh, I talk to my designer all the time, "How can we add more love marks into the product? How can we prioritize more unique interactions?" The little elements that make up that, uh, that feeling of, "This product is speaking to me." It's like it feels something li- that is unique. It has personality, uh, behind it. So we put all of the brand work actually into our product. When you think about Lovable, thi- people think about a brand, but we don't have a brand marketing team yet, so it's all just through product interactions and some of those building and public moments of the people behind, uh, those product interactions, um, that is our strategy. And then there's influencer marketing. Interestingly enough, influencer marketing is 10 times bigger for us than paid social. So yeah, we do some paid social as well, um, and it's working decently. It's quite expensive from payback period. Um, we're still optimizing it. As I said, we're pretty early on in all of these channels. But influencer marketing is something that has worked, uh, from the beginning, uh, Lovable, and, uh, reason behind it is that influencer marketing, especially on the socials, it gives you an opportunity to have a little video and interaction, and Lovable is all about seeing like, "Oh my gosh, this is what I can do and, uh, this is possible," so that drives people to go and try it themselves. So that's why social works very well for us, because it's not really a written value proposition, like nobody knows what bi-poding is, but you watch 10 seconds of it and you go, "Hmm, that's new. Let me go give it a try."

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky35:18

       Who would have thought that a head of growth, who is traditionally seen as like data, metrics, spreadsheets, drive KPIs is like, "Okay, how do we make this more lovable? How do we add more moments of delight?"

   11. EVElena Verna35:31

       I know. My, my, my joke is like at the end of my Lovable journey whenever, hopefully it never comes to an end, but, but at the end I'll be like a growth brand person.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky35:41

       (laughs)

   13. EVElena Verna35:41

       Here, here like, "Hi, my name is Elena. I do brand now." But I actually see it as part of growth strategy to make sure that that brand shines through every single interaction, um, and I always talk to my team about it, because that is one big lever in our growth story.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky35:58

       Yeah. So I think that's, uh, a really important point to highlight. The reason Lovable is growing so fast is it is a product people love, you've made something people want, and the word of mouth spreads because it's something that blows people's socks off, as you said, so it feels like that's the first thing you've got to get right.

   15. EVElena Verna36:13

       Yes. Well, mmn- the first thing you have to get right is you have to be at the right place at the right time and you have to be in fast moving waters. Like let's not discount how fast this category is exploding on its own. So this cannot happen in every single category that you're starting to build a product. But the way to stand out in a super crowded category is to create experiences that speak to people. That, I think, is something that a lot of people deprioritize because they still prioritize functionality over humanity within software, and I think that we're actually moving to the new era of software that needs to feel human, that people want to interact with, not just utility of it. Because cost of software is coming down so much to develop that we now can actually invest into emotional feel of that software as opposed to only just focus on creating the utility out of it. So to me, it's, um, it's a w- I, I, I love the smooth because I, I hate nothing more than going to software that is just like so painful to use that I lose some brain cells, uh, as I'm interacting with it versus software that I feel...... I get energy out of. And for Lovable, for me, I-I cannot wait on some of the projects that I have to go and vibe code myself. Like, that's the highlight of my day, and I just like, I don't, I- I- I bring in my daughter, and I'm like, "Let's go do this." Like, "What do you think that needs to be done?" 'Cause I just get so much energy out of doing it, and uh, that is the feeling you cannot create by looking at it as a utility problem.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky37:42

       The way I think about it, the way, uh, what you're describing is it's almost table stakes have r- increased, and now it's so easy to build. Now the big-

   17. EVElena Verna37:48

       Exactly.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky37:49

       ... differentiator is experience, design, delight.

   19. EVElena Verna37:52

       Exactly, and it has to translate through every single interaction. So, your designer has to be one of your first hires now in startups. It's not just about the- the engineering, so to speak, utility, and you have to think through every single interaction of, does this communicate our brand or not?

7. 38:09 – 40:59

   Launching new features

   1. EVElena Verna38:09

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky38:09

      So on those lines, I want to come back to something you talked about, which is launching new features is a huge growth lever. The, kind of the big question there is just how do you maintain quality and cohesiveness as all these people are empowered to ship stuff? Is there anything that, there you've seen that works well to help avoid just a Frankenstein product, just endless features that you want to tweet about?

   3. EVElena Verna38:28

      Yeah. One part of it is not something that you can codify, but it's the type of people that you hire that are gonna go and ship these things. We at Lovable try to hire the absolute best talent available out there that we can bring in and that we can source and that we can attract, uh, to grow with. And what I, do I mean by that best talent? Um, it's not that somebody who has been at really large companies or somebody that has really, uh, done a lot of logos or has big success stories behind them. It's somebody who is extremely passionate about their job. It's their hobby. They love to work. They have fire in their belly. This is not a paycheck for them. They want to do this for some ulterior reason. This is the biggest opportunity of their life, so this is global maximum against any other opportunities that are in front of them at the moment, so that's very important for us. We want people to come and do their absolute best work at Lovable. It's very important, and you can feel it in this office. People are wired up. They are so high on, how can we make this better? How can we, uh, deliver more to our customers? And that's very different compared to usually how companies grow. We're like, okay, yeah, they check, check, check. They fit the skill set. Let's bring them in. But is that passion, is that fire behind it? And then, uh, the second piece is that, um, we work really hard on just addressing what the success here looks like. What is it that we're building? What use cases are we building for? And then because we hire these people that are so passionate about it, the other two skills, by the way, that are super important is high agency and high autonomy. I can figure out things that are tangential to me that I don't need other specialties so to speak. Like, I don't need a marketer to go launch something. I can go figure it out, and I have high agency. I can go do it myself. Um, I'm gonna own it from all the way from start to finish. Uh, those are very important, something that we screen for and something that we look for in our culture. And then, uh, you just see... What you want to do is up to you. So there's very little supervision that happens on the ground. Um, now we all have a- goals in like some of the big launches that we're all marching towards, but some of the work, um, that is completely up to developers, up to, uh, marketers or whatever, what is it that they want to do? So there has to be that enablement of go try things, and because of our velocity, if you fail, it's not a big deal. We'll just pivot, we'll go, we'll get, we will get through it. We are not here to just win all the time.

8. 40:59 – 43:17

   Hiring and team dynamics

   1. EVElena Verna40:59

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky40:59

      On the hiring of these incredible people, as we all know, it's very hard to hire people these days, especially the best. What have you seen Lovable does differently or does well that helps them recruit the best?

   3. EVElena Verna41:10

      Yes, and especially recruit in Stockholm. I mean, the main office here is in Stockholm. We're asking a lot of people to relocate, uh, which is a no small feat. Now some of it is, um, makes it easy because of how much hype we created around our product. People want to come work for us. Uh, there's, um, they're reaching out to us. They're saying, "I- I love what you're doing. I wanna join it." Uh, so that we have a cheat code to it because like we have... Most of the time when we reach out to somebody they say, "Yeah, I would love to explore." So uh, building that product that is highly lovable also creates a really great recruiting brand for you as well. So make sure that... There's like multiple benefits to that. But uh, second of all, we do a lot of trials, uh, for people, so trial work to see them in action.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky41:56

      Yeah, a work trial.

   5. EVElena Verna41:56

      Mm-hmm. A work trial to see them in action for a couple of days. We pay them as part of the work trial. We have, uh, some probation periods that we start people on, uh, because this company is not for everybody. As I start, said in the podcast in the- in the beginning, the pace here is insane. I went on vacation, uh, for the first time, so I've been here for six months. I went on vacation, um, for 10 days. I came back, I felt like I needed to onboard from the beginning. Everything changed, and when I'm in it, I feel like it's an evolution, but the fact that just being gone for 10 days, it feels like a complete revolution in the company. It's, that pace is just not for everybody, and that's okay because I'm very firm believer that there's different cultures and different environments that the best fit for different personalities and different people. So we try to be very upfront with how things are and how chaotic they are, and we prioritize people that don't look for clarity but can create clarity out of chaos because, um, it is absolutely chaotic otherwise. And if we start to look for people that can explain it, uh, to us, that's the only way that we can succeed.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky43:06

      The way you describe going on vacation and- and feeling very different, it feels like when you don't see your kid for a few days and they're just like-

   7. EVElena Verna43:12

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky43:12

      ... completely different. You're like, "How did you grow up so fast in three days?"

   9. EVElena Verna43:15

      Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

9. 43:17 – 49:46

   The value of vibe coding

   1. EVElena Verna43:17

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky43:17

      Let me try to summarize the growth levers that you're finding is, are working, and I'm trying to think about this from the perspective of...... a, an AI startup trying to think about, "Hey, sh- shoot, how do we grow faster?" What has Lovable figured out? So, it feels like number one is just, uh, build something lovable, something that blows people's socks off, but also in a market that is growing that people want to pay money for. Like, you can build something lovable that nobody actually cares about, that there isn't much money going into this space. There's no tide pushing it forward and it won't work.

   3. EVElena Verna43:46

      I call it minimum lovable product. Like, it shouldn't be minimum viable product anymore. Viability is left in er- back in twen- 2010s. Now, it's minimal lovable product. That's the only thing that matters.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky43:59

      I love how these AI tools are letting us... You know, like, PMs have always had these, um, s- what are they? A s- uh, smoke door tester. Like, what's the term?

   5. EVElena Verna44:06

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky44:07

      Just like-

   7. EVElena Verna44:07

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky44:07

      Or it's not a real product. Uh, paint the door?

   9. EVElena Verna44:10

      Paint the door test. Paint the door, yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky44:11

       Paint the door. There it is. Yeah. And that, and it's like, okay, we just have a landing page. There's nothing there. And now AI makes it easier to do that and it's like more full-featured.

   11. EVElena Verna44:18

       Yeah. Well, it's the feedback cycle is just completely collapsed. You can go from idea to some product, uh, that is functioning, to user feedback within a day if you want to. I mean, depending on how fast that you want to run or how complex the product is. For Missions, it took us a couple of weeks to vibe code it to the point where... Because we also cr- um, I have a full-time vibe coder on my team. He's amazing. So like, he, he wanted to create videos. Like, he did a bunch of designs for it, uh, too. So we... He, he took him a couple of weeks. We're testing it now, and then we'll push it in the product. But it's a completely different development life cycle. Before, uh, it would just take so many more steps, uh, from user research to, uh, the design sprints, uh, to prioritizing an engineering roadmap to build something minimal and min- and viable to actually test, to

   12. NANarrator45:08

       (whistles)

   13. EVElena Verna45:08

       ... little long testing cycles. Now it's just like, boom, let's go. Uh, it's taken us... Could have taken us a day. We just decided to take a couple of weeks to get all of the video pieces correct.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky45:18

       I saw you launch this on LinkedIn. I... To me, it looked like a, a full product launch. Uh, it is interesting to hear this is just a sort of prototype.

   15. EVElena Verna45:26

       Yeah, it's-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky45:27

       Vibe coder prototype.

   17. EVElena Verna45:28

       ... m- minimum lovable product, yes.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky45:29

       Minimum lovable product. Okay. Uh, I got to ask. You have this... You said you had a full-time vibe coder. What the heck is this? Is this, like, an engineer or is this something else? What is a full-time vibe coder?

   19. EVElena Verna45:38

       Great question. This is a new job role that is actually popping up here and there. Um, uh, it's absolutely fascinating to watch, uh, this development because I see vibe coding as a skill being added to a lot of job descriptions for designers, for product managers, uh, for marketers, which I think is a really interesting shift. Finally, Excel can move over. And like, we have a new skill to add that is, um, super empowering and, and, um, not three years old. But, uh, vibe coder, so, uh, his name is Lazar and he actually was chief of staff in his previous role, so he's not technical at all. He's self-taught, uh, in technical aspects of it, but he was very early on in the vibe coding wave so he learned a lot about it. He was an user of all of the vibe coding tools, Lovable included. And, uh, when I was coming into the role, I'm like, "I have so many projects that I will vibe code myself." So I run this, uh, woman-only hackathon she builds. I vibe coded the first version of that site and a, like, and submission process for applications, and then other people came in and started building on top of it. But I vibe coded, but then, like, I don't have enough time sometimes because I need to run around and I want to push out so many different initiatives that I want to test in the market with our own products. So, um, we connected on social and I'm like, "Can you... Like, would you join us?" And he joined us for s- uh, part time, and I'm like, "You're bringing so much value." For example, we partnered with Shopify and he created a bunch of Shopify Lovable templates, uh, vibe coded for us. And it's been so helpful, uh, to have somebody like that that is just like pushing all, all of these things out. And he's an absolute expert, so he's teaching us all too, of what is possible with Lovable because he's on the cutting edge of constantly pushing it to the limit. So I, I really enjoy having that role, which I've never had before in my life and in my team.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky47:31

       I- I'm not surprised. I've, I've never heard of this role before as a real full-time job. Do you think this is a thing people will start hiring for at non-vibe coding companies?

   21. EVElena Verna47:41

       So I vibe code myself, so like, I would put that as even as a skill on my s- uh, on my resume now. It took me a while to figure out. By the way, like, everybody's like, "Oh, you just go and, like, it... And it all happens automagically." It takes you a couple iterations, couple of projects until like you know, "Okay, this is... This is how I need to translate it, how I need to think about it." But for me, it's when I started scaling of what I want to vibe code, that's where his value really came in because I'm like, "Okay, I understand what is possible. I know what needs to be achieved. And some of these apps I want to be almost full-blown built, uh, because they're not going to get incorporated into the product anytime soon. They don't need to be. I'll just link to them from, uh, from our headers, so to speak." And, uh, he really accelerated that velocity for me. So once you get into vibe coding and you see its value within your organization, leaning into somebody like that just accelerates your velocity because it is like an engineer, uh, on your team. It's just they're not... To me, he's, he's par- he's part technical, but he- they can be non-technical if they're really good.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky48:40

       That is fascinating. This episode is brought to you by Persona, the verified identity platform helping organizations onboard users, fight fraud, and build trust. We talk a lot on this podcast about the amazing advances in AI, but this can be a double-edged sword. For every wow moment, there are fraudsters using the same tech to wreak havoc, laundering money, taking over employee identities, and impersonating businesses. Persona helps combat these threats with automated user, business, and employee verification. Whether you're looking to catch candidate fraud, meet age restrictions, or keep your platform safe, Persona helps you verify users in a way that's tailored to your specific needs. Best of all, Persona makes it easy to know who you're dealing with without adding friction for good users. This is why leading platforms like Etsy, LinkedIn, Square, and Lyft trust Persona to secure their platform.Persona is also offering my listeners 500 free services per month for one full year. Just head to withpersona.com/lenny to get started. That's withpersona.com/lenny. Thanks again to Persona for sponsoring this

10. 49:46 – 51:47

    The importance of community

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:46

       episode. Let me kind of go back to summarize just real quick the growth levers, I wanna move in a somewhat different direction. So things that help Lovable grow, one is just build something in mind that blows your socks off, as you said. Uh, I love these phrases out here. The second is, uh, make noise in the market. And the way that Lovable does this, the CEO's tweeting constantly, you build something that blows people's socks off so that they share things on socials themselves, plus this influencer marketing component, and just this idea of building in public has been really helpful. This point about activation being kind of, uh, embedded within the product team of the AI experi- of the AI agent essentially, so it's essentially not the growth team thinking about activation, it's the product team that is building the AI magic that is obsessed with activation. And it feels like those are the main, the main growth levers. Is there anything else that I missed?

    2. EVElena Verna50:38

       Community. I think community is really important here, because, uh, you need to bring people together as they're exploring these capabilities, and as they're seeing what's possible, so they can bounce off each other and they can help each other out. So I would say community also amplifies that word of mouth, it amplifies all of the social posting, it- it amplifies retention mechanisms, uh, for you as well. But community has been a huge part of Lovable's success as well, and that's something that was started very early on. It runs on Discord, so it's nothing fancy, it's not like we build anything completely from scratch for ourselves, um, and it has hundreds of thousands of members, and it's, um, very lively. We have community managers that are making sure that all of the questions get answered and the right groups are being created. We have incredible ambassador prog- program now as well of people, uh, doing it. So I would say community here, again, of really making software more human is very important role. Now, obviously not everybody can build a community, but maybe at least plugging into somebody's community is, uh, quite important as well. And then there's another one, unless you have a question on community?

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky51:46

       No, keep

11. 51:47 – 56:26

    Giving away your product for free

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky51:47

       going.

    2. EVElena Verna51:47

       Another one is, uh, giving your product away a lot. And for AI products, it may feel counterintuitive because they're so costly. Every single interaction with an AI product costs companies something. There is an LLM pass-through cost, uh, that is coming through, and, uh, a lot of especially traditional tech companies I see are gating AI immediately behind a paywall, because, uh, they're sitting on a really cush, um, high margin profile, and the moment that you start giving AI away for free, you're like cutting into those, uh, margins with a- like a- like a knife through the butter. Now, at the same time, AI being so new, and the capabilities being so new, you have to remove the barrier of entry. You have to give a lot of your product away for free. Oh, by the way, I don't just mean freemium. Freemium to me is just like a baseline, if you're in the new category, you need to let people explore, uh, what it is for free and get that initial wow moment. It's not a ha moment, by the way, it doesn't need to be a ha moment anymore. It just needs to be a wow moment. And for Lovable, it's that first preview generation after your first prompt, even though it's absolutely not going to be complete thing of what you want to build, but you just go, "This is possible? Like I had no idea, I want to keep building." And it becomes an addictive exercise. But we also give so many of our Lovable credits away to every event, to every hackathon. If you want to host a Lovable hackathon, we will sponsor it and give all of the participants credits away for free. So we give them away as candy, and we, uh, basically track them over our LLM cost on freemium and giveaways as our marketing costs. And it doesn't go into our, uh, something we need to reduce, uh, to make our margins better. It goes into, this is something that we need to spend more in, because this is part of our growth secret sauce.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky53:41

       Okay, I want to hear more about the growth secret sauce. That is extremely interesting. Uh, I haven't heard of that as a strategy, and I can see why this makes sense. If the strategy is blow people's socks off so they can tell their friends, post on all the socials, the trick is get more people to try it, and so this is an- And it's such a new crazy thing, like why would I pay money, why would I even go take the effort to, like, try sign up for an account if I don't know what this is, I don't know what I'm doing with it? So I could see how this loop goes faster and faster by giving it away.

    4. EVElena Verna54:10

       Exactly. And again, this is very uncomfortable sometimes for companies that A, they're used to really... AI companies have lower profile of margins. That's absolutely true. We, to find an AI company with 80, 90% margin profile is absolutely impossible, let's be real. We're all sitting somewhere in the 40%, uh, or so, which is a lot smaller. So any time that you look at those AI costs as your cost center, that's when you're in trouble. You fundamentally have to flip the script and say, "I need to expose to people of what is possible, and I need to remove the monetization friction out of it." Because if you don't, nobody's ever gonna try it, or you're gonna be very easily overtaken by a competitor that will give it away. And let's face it, once you hook people, they're more likely going to stay with you, so you obviously have to still work on a retention strategy there. But if you can have like for our case, if somebody, one of our users stands up and say, "Hey, I'm gonna have a hackathon at my work on Lovable. Can you give us all some free credits to play with?" Why would we prevent a person who wants to do all of the marketing and activating job for us in their company from using us? Of course, we're like, "Take it. How much do you need? How much would you like? We will sponsor it all. We will give you anything that you need." So we're really leaning into people that are wanting to show this magic to those around you, and empowering them as much as possible. And, um, that is something that is actually applies to every single product, and I agree, this is not a growth strategy that I've ever applied in my life, on like giving product away as much as possible, but it is something that, uh, is more and more becoming, uh, something that I see that is absolutely non-negotiable.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky55:52

       What I'm feeling is like the more mind-blowing it is, the more you should give it away for free.

    6. EVElena Verna55:56

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky55:56

       Especially in a competitive market where everyone is, you know, it's hard. There's like so many companies trying to do this thing. And so, um, so it's almost like the better you are, the more you should give it away.

    8. EVElena Verna56:07

       Right. Right.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky56:08

       And this also explains why, uh, so much VC money has to be raised for these sorts of companies because this is not cheap, like you said. You're paying all these foundational models a lot of money.

    10. EVElena Verna56:16

        Yes and no. Uh, becau- I'm only gonna say no is because, so take a look at Lovable. We're two, over 200 million in AR. At this point, we are 100 people large.

12. 56:26 – 1:00:23

    Tripling their company size

    1. EVElena Verna56:26

       So our headcount costs are very low.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky56:28

       Wait, wait. Let me just, let me just make sure people hear that. (laughs) 200 million AR. I didn't realize. 100 people work at Lovable.

    3. EVElena Verna56:35

       Yes. And six months ago, we had 30 people working at Lovable. So we tripled. So for us, it's a really big deal. We tripled our company size. Uh, we're gonna-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky56:43

       Such a big company now.

    5. EVElena Verna56:44

       ... quadruple it by the end of... Yeah, I know. We're big boy and girls now. But for, for, for perspective of the headcount costs, it's minimal. So we have very little in that going on. We are not spending a lot on paid marketing, so we're not a big paid marketing driver. Yeah, we're spending on influencer marketing, but it's not majority of our growth. It's, uh, low double digits, uh, to, to be fair because it's, it's not why we're successful. It's amplifying our success and it's helping us reach new audiences. Uh, we don't have really large sales team. We have only couple sales folks, um, and they're just starting to ramp up their enterprise efforts, so we don't have like really big enterprise demand gen costs as well. So from that perspective, if you like look at the equation and you say, "Well, okay, if you're not gonna do a lot of paid marketing, if you're not gonna do a lot of sales," because we're really only working on hand raisers of people that are saying right now that they want to buy Lovable, then whereas like you don't have big costs, so you can spend it on product. And that is the beautiful part because you're not... When we're giving our product away to our customers, we're not competing with other companies in that space because they're just gonna use Lovable in their hackathon or on their own, and we're not com- like we- we're not competing on AdWords or like in paid Google where everybody's buying real estate for eyeballs. So from that perspective, it's just, I think about it more as a shift of where we spend and cost, and honestly it's more efficient way to do paid marketing almost in a sense, uh, because of the cost per eyeball that we get there is quite a bit lower compared to if we were trying to compete it on Google. So yes and no to your statement because it actually does not deteriorate margin profile. We're just shifting of where we're spending it.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky58:30

       That is an incredibly important point you're making there. So it's not like, uh, you're generating an incredible amount of revenue. (laughs) Uh, so there is money a- available to spend, and what you're saying is because it's been spreading through word of mouth mostly, you're not spending tons of money on salespeople.

    7. EVElena Verna58:46

       Yeah.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky58:46

       You're not spending tons of money on paid ads. This is just, uh, an amazing way to get more people to use it, so it's kind of like a marketing cost.

    9. EVElena Verna58:54

       This is product-led growth-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky58:56

        Yeah. Supercharged.

    11. EVElena Verna58:57

        ... to the max.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky58:58

        Yeah.

    13. EVElena Verna58:58

        Supercharged. Yes, because you're literally using your product to drive that awareness by giving it away to the agents in your ecosystem that will do that distribution for you.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky59:11

        So fascinating. What a, what a wild world we're living in. Free stuff for everyone.

    15. EVElena Verna59:16

        Yes. Yes. I mean, it's great for consumers. This is a great time to be a consumer. You have so many options, like everybody's throwing themselves at you, giving your product away for free. So it's great to be in the market right now. I think it's, the, the power should be with consumer always. But with software, power has not been with consumer previously because we were forced to use ... or some solutions because of either how they were chosen for us or what was available in the market. And now that supply is almost infinite, the demand of, from the consumers can be very picky, and the one that serves it best will win.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky59:52

        And I think, again, it's important to highlight, this is not some kind of VC-subsidized, bubble-ish sort of thing. Like there is a lot of money being generated that you, uh, are spending to help it grow faster. It's not like some kind of, we're just raising more money to give away more money. Like you're actually making real money. It's not driving-

    17. EVElena Verna1:00:06

        Yeah.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:06

        It's not driven by VC money.

    19. EVElena Verna1:00:07

        I, I-

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:08

        Obviously it helps.

    21. EVElena Verna1:00:08

        Oh, I c- I can't comment on specific margin details for us.

    22. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:12

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    23. EVElena Verna1:00:12

        Uh, but at the same time, the money that we're raising on VC is for future development and hardening our business. Uh, not because we will not be able to survive without it.

    24. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:22

        Awesome. Okay, great

13. 1:00:23 – 1:08:50

    Product-market-fit challenges

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:23

       segue to, I want to talk about product-market fit and competition. You had this really interesting post that I don't think people, uh, grasp yet, which is that product-market fit is no longer this like, "We've done it. Product-market fit and we're up into the right. Now we just grow, grow, grow. Now we hire salespeople. It's gonna be great." Uh, you've written that just product-market fit is no longer this like you've done it and you're good. It's this endless fight to keep it. Talk about what you're seeing there.

    2. EVElena Verna1:00:48

       So I'll first start with, uh, what I've felt at least before when people were talking about product-market fit, that yeah, obviously always product-market fit is an evolving thing. But the rate of that evolution was measured in years, on what is it that you need the next product-market fit step function change, which often was called second horizon or third horizon. Sometimes five, 10 years, sometimes even longer that you'd need to, that you, depending on how good you're and hard your initial product-market fit was. But you'd spend years scaling the original product-market fit. It was like blitz growth stage. Marketing sales growth was very important, um, that you just try to get it to as many people as possible. And then once you have saturation or the cost to getting to the marginal people becomes too high, you start thinking, okay, what else can I offer to help me reach additional people or sell more to existing users that I already have? And again, the main point here is it would take years to get to that stage where it became a question that you had to face, um, really hard face-to-face. Now, it's three months and all of a sudden you have to face that question again. And it's happening because of two things, in my opinion.Number one, an AI technology of what LLM is capable of doing changes still very rapidly with new model release, with each new model release. So, I think we're gonna ... ho- I think we'll stabilize at some point and it's also going to become more marginal, but it- we're not there yet. So, every three months or so, every single AI LLM provider creates a step function change and what is possible with that LLM. And when you have this new possibility in just the underlying technology that opens up in front of you, then it creates another ceiling of what is possible to build on top of it. And the tricky piece here is that it's not enough to just wait for that technology to get better and then start building on top. You have to build beforehand to, like, make a bet and then the- to the AI- LLM to catch up because when that model releases, you really need to have that functionality available. So, that piece is I've never been in a company where the fundamental capabilities are still changing so rapidly, and that's the product part. So, the product can leap to the new expectations. But let's now talk about the market part as well. Consumer expectations have never changed this fast before. What we expected ChatGPT to be able to do and answer and how we wanted it to talk to us eight months ago versus now is night and day. And, like, the deep thinking mode and, uh, the, like, the how, how, how deeply it can go into answering questions and what it's capable of being- uh, building on top of it. So, consumer perception has never changed this fast too. It's this unprecedented time of, uh, consumers all a sudden, like, in a month saying, "Oh, it's not doing this yet? Like, I'm bouncing." Before, again, consumer perceptions would be years to take. It's actually technology would sometimes be able to already address it, but consumer perception has not- not been changed yet, so it would take a long time. So, we're, like, in this really weird part where both product and market is shifting so rapidly that every three months, I feel like we have to recapture our product-market fit, and not just recapture, um, on the same technology and with same customers. It's both of those pieces of the equation change every three months. And it's terrifying in a way. It's also very confusing in a way because we're a $200 million company and we're not solely focused on marketing and sales because we still have to recapture our product-market fit, and you know that the team that finds your product-market fit is very different than the team that usually scales your company. Yet, we have to find a team that is capable of doing both on an ongoing basis. Now, I think every AI company is in- on this product-market fit treadmill. Uh, hopefully that treadmill speed slows down. If not, I think we're gonna come up with, like, crazy things of what this LLM and AI will be able to do if it's gonna continue at this cost. But, um, it's a weird place to be in because every three months, we have to throttle on our scaling efforts and just reinvent and then scale again. But it's, like, short blips of growth, not these long year-long commitments.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:08

       What makes this very real is just this week, apparently OpenAI had this whole code red moment where even though OpenAI, by far the leading AI system at over almost a billion, I think, monthly active users, like, basically synonymous with AI around the world. With Gemini 3 launching, their market share just started to dip really quickly.

    4. EVElena Verna1:05:29

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:29

       I think they lost, like, six-something percent in, like, a week. And so even OpenAI, like ChatGPT, the original, the one that everyone uses-

    6. EVElena Verna1:05:38

       Yes.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:38

       ... constantly is- is- is in danger.

    8. EVElena Verna1:05:40

       It's like nobody's- nobody's future is bulletproof yet. And 10 years ago, if you asked me if a $200 million company was at risk in losing product-market fit in the next three months if it's experiencing 10% month over month growth, I would have said, "You're crazy." And now that's the reality that we live in. And I- I- I don't know. I- it's fascinating to whirl in. What a time-

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:04

       Yeah.

    10. EVElena Verna1:06:04

        ... to be alive.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:05

        (laughs) What a time to be alive. And, uh, very stressful.

    12. EVElena Verna1:06:08

        Yeah.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:08

        But the prize at the end is massive. That's the, you know, that's why-

    14. EVElena Verna1:06:10

        Yes.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:10

        ... this is worth doing, uh, not just, you know, monetarily, but just the impact it's gonna have on the world, the way we people build and shift and move.

    16. EVElena Verna1:06:17

        Exactly. Exactly. The ceiling of what is possible has been raised so massively that we haven't even became t- closest to even see it, I believe. So, I think that that's the exciting part of it.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:29

        The way I've seen you w- write about this product-market fit challenge is the traditional approach is you have these, like, core users that are using it, happy with it, and then you expand to the adjacent users and expand to the next. And you're basically just trying to recapture that same core constantly and don't even have time to go adjacent.

    18. EVElena Verna1:06:44

        Yeah. Uh, Bengali wrote a really wonderful article, um, it was many years ago at this point, on adjacent user theory, in that your product-market fit expansion when you're in the growth stages, the biggest opportunity for you to go after is this what he called the adjacent user, which are just outside of your core user. They have, uh, somewhat similar needs, but maybe they're in different geo, maybe they have slightly different use case, slightly different needs. And your biggest way to continue growing a product-market fit without having to go to next horizon is to capture those, um, that next- that next group of users. The interesting piece here of how I relate to it, we still have the core users. And by the way, those core users are mostly pioneers right now that are excited by the capabilities. Then there's latent majority that is filled with adjacent users. And the issue right now, which I'm actually quite worried about us, like, as a category, is that we're constantly focusing on recapturing the pioneers. We don't have time to go after adjacent users. And I'm worried of whether there's gonna be a gap in the space where we're actually gonna alienate the latent majority because we're so hyper-focused on just staying top of mind and take- top-up capabilities on the pioneers. But I don't know the right answer here because without the pioneers, they'll- like, you need pioneers for latent majority to follow.But if you take pioneers and you take them too far into capabilities, will latent majority never be able to catch up? Uh, maybe this is a fruitless concern, but it's just, like, something that I think about because at this stage, we should be working on adjacent users, and, and I would argue maybe OpenAI definitely started have, uh, to do that with so many people they have on their platform, but not most of the other AI companies.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:31

        I completely see what you're thinking there, like a brand could just become known as that's just for, like, startups and prototyping and it's not for serious work.

    20. EVElena Verna1:08:38

        Yeah. Or it's, like, it's for just, like, for, it's for techies. It's, like, for tech people. It's like it never actually enters the people, uh, outside of our little bubble that we live in.

14. 1:08:50 – 1:12:00

    Advice for joining AI companies

    1. EVElena Verna1:08:50

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:50

       We kind of touched on this a little bit of just like working in AI, working on AI companies, challenging, stressful, a lot of work. What's your advice for folks that are thinking about, should I join a Lovable, should I join a Cursor, should I just go work at Google? Like, you know, not, not, not to throw them under the bus or anything but just... Although Google, very, very successful in AI, I know. Maybe less AI-focused company.

    3. EVElena Verna1:09:13

       I really believe that there's different... You need to understand what's the environment that is right for you. Just please understand that AI companies are very hectic at the moment. They're very unstable by definition of that product market fit treadmill, about that distribution of how they're actually distributed to the market really changing, about how product is even being developed in the first place. So if you are very comfortable in being in that messy middle and, uh, really comfortable of converting chaos into clarity for you and those around you, then yeah, AI company is a wonderful place for you to really absorb new skill sets right now. Because, uh, even before joining Lovable, when I kept seeing AI, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, like, I'm so tired of seeing AI everywhere. Is it really changing the world? Like, is it really changing the way people work?" And when I was, um, I was at Dropbox before, and yeah, we would use AI here and there, and I would use ChatGPT. I've never used AI there the way I use AI at Lovable and the things that I'm capable of accomplishing at Lovable. And I don't know if I ever would have made that leap so fast unless I joined Lovable. If I would have just read or listened about it, it's just different compared to be surrounded by people where it's expectation. It's not, like, a nice to have or something that somebody's asking you to do. This is just how you get things done. And you have to think about everything of like, what can AI do here versus where do I add value? Versus, like, in the traditional sense of work is, like, I start with my own value and then I augment it with AI. And here, like, the mindset has completely sh- uh, shifted. Now, I don't think AI is replacing everybody's job, so, like, please don't, like, don't look at it as, um, as, as that cliche saying. I actually often call AI as, like, average intelligence that helps me get the platform up, and then I add my human thinking and my human creativity on top of it to get it to the next level. But at least I can get this base level done with AI really freaking quickly. So from that perspective, I think if you want to leapfrog on what it means to be AI native employee and how to use all of these AI tools, you should go to AI company. But if you know that your superpower is in more structure, in more definition, in a really high specialty of things, because in the AI companies they're all fairly small so you'll have to generalize quite a bit, uh, and have a lot of ownership of areas that you usually maybe not have ownership over, then you shouldn't join it, because AI companies will evolve to be more stable too. So it's just a matter of time on where you can join. So I would just urge people to look at their superpowers and the type of environments that really speak to them so they can feel happy, because this can lead to burnout for wrong type of personalities very quickly.

15. 1:12:00 – 1:15:20

    Work-life balance

    1. EVElena Verna1:12:00

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:00

       Yeah. My sense is, if you want work-life balance, don't join one of these companies, because that's just not the way they work.

    3. EVElena Verna1:12:06

       Uh, I don't know if I'd go that far. I mean, I have family, I have two kids. I feel like I have a very good work-life balance. Uh, but I put in boundaries for myself. Like I know when I need time off, I need... Because I know when my brain starts to overheat, so to speak. Uh, but I, I also know that work is my hobby and it's my passion, and I will... This is the best work of my life that I'm doing right now. There's no other place that I'd rather be, uh, than to be here. So I think that you just need to be more careful about setting your own boundaries that you know you need. But, um, I mean, let's face it, I don't think anybody has work-life balance regardless of what company that they work at. Even at Google or, like, Microsoft or any of the others, I think everybody's freaking out and running as fast as they can. It's just they're running it in different structures.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:58

       I'm really glad you said that and corrected me there, that it is possible to work at a company, one of, if not the fastest growing company in history, and actually, uh, have work-life balance, to get sleep, to spend time with your kids and family.

    5. EVElena Verna1:13:11

       You just have to protect it, uh, ruthlessly. But you also need to be realistic with how much is expected out of you, and you need to feel confident that you'll be able to deliver it. And by the way, you won't be able to deliver it unless you use AI in many aspects of your work life. So that's like the piece that helps you actually get to hit those expectations of outcomes that you need to do and the velocity. But, um, I'm, I'm very protective of my personal time with kids. Like, why did I have children if I'm not going to spend time with them? So, like, those are part of the non-negotiables, um, that I bring along with me in every single work.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:48

       For people that maybe have trouble setting boundaries or just not good at this, anything, what do you... What works for you? Is it just... Is it as easy as just telling people, "Here's where you need to leave?" What do you... What's, what advice do you have for people to set boundaries like that?

    7. EVElena Verna1:13:59

       So first of all, I would not think about it as a work-life balance. There's no such thing as balance. A balance feels like, oh, I have enough time for everything. I don't have enough time for anything, but I prioritize my family. ... in some moments. I prioritize work in other moments. And I don't try to balance the two. I go where I'm needed, and where I go and I feel like I'm not going to regret the choices that I'm making today. So I'm constantly trying to put myself in the future and say, "Will I resent myself if I make this choice right now?" And if the answer is yes, I don't make that choice. And sometimes I have to say no to Anton and say, like, "I can't make it," or, "I won't be there, I need to be here with my family." Or, like, today, I'm going to need to cancel my day, my kid is sick and he needs me, and I need to be- I need to take him to the doctor. So I think that just making, in the moment, more like in every day, but sometimes in the hour decisions to me works better than trying to balance something that is completely unachievable and it feels overwhelming to even think about. But I prioritize this in my sleep, uh, my health, my workout schedule, my kids, my family, my husband, um, and just my downtime, because I know that I'm most creative once I have separation from work, because then I come in with, like, all cylinders firing and I have so many more ideas about it. So, to me, it's actually part of doing my best work is to take time off.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:18

       That is really great advice.

16. 1:15:20 – 1:19:45

    What it’s like to work at Lovable

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:20

       I want to touch on what it's like to work at Lovable, because it feels like Lovable is at the cutting edge of what working at a product is going to be. So you mentioned a little bit about how you're always talking to AI, asking questions. Is there any- any other kind of anecdotes of just w- how people operate at Lovable that is really unique or weird or funny or interesting that might be helpful for people to try in their company?

    2. EVElena Verna1:15:43

       Yeah, I mean, we use Lovable at Lovable a lot, like, a lot of our internal tools are built on Lovables. Uh, we actually have our first hackathon on Lovable happening next week, uh, where we're gonna ... a entire company is just going to take full day to VibeCode, um, and see what we actually have happened. We prototype everything on Lovable, so our specs ... Yeah, we do still have a written spec, but it always accompanied by a Lovable prototype, uh, that everybody can interact with and, uh, to click around with and provide feedback, and everybody f- bunches in and also, like, does some edits if they have any better ideas. So I, uh, create mocks on Lovable, so for example, if we need to make some pricing changes, um, or pricing page changes, I take a screenshot of our pricing page, I go to Lovable, I say, "Recreate this pricing page, make these changes," and then I send that to my engineering team saying, "Hey, this is what I want to happen," and then, like, they take it from there. So we just u- And ChatGPT I use a lot for brainstorming, especially the deep thinking mode. I love it. It takes a long time, but it's so worth it. Uh, sometimes it has crazy ideas, sometimes it does ... Like, sometimes it's like, yeah, this is like nothing new to me, so it's not interesting, but it like- it gets me thinking and it gives me a look at the different angles. And, um, lots of, um ... I use Granola a lot, for example, because to me it's super helpful to get AI summaries of the meetings, and it's very powerful for me. I use WhisperFlow a lot, because I feel like I have no time to type anymore, so I just, like, talk to my phone and talk to my laptop all the time, uh, in order to do it. But we're even thinking about all of the customer support automations, uh, that are done through AI. How do we, um ... Like, every single aspect of what we do is question is asked, "What can AI do here first?" And then how we can add ourselves into the equation. But Lovable for us, uh, having unlimited credits at Lovable is a pretty awesome perk, I have to say. Like, I sometimes have to pinch myself. I'm like, "I get paid to VibeCode, it's like so fun."

Episode duration: 1:31:55