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

We have month one retention that's better than ChatGPT's month one retention. (upbeat music)

Anton Osajca, he is the co-founder of Lovable.dev. Fastest-growing company in Europe, what a title.

Growth starts ramping up after we launch. Growing one million ARR per week at some point, and that just keeps accelerating. The most important thing is talent and culture, and there's more raw available talent in Europe.

When a competitor has a lot of money, do you have to raise too? Ready to go? Anton, fastest-growing company in Europe, what a title. But first, thank you so much for joining me today, man.

Thank you, Harry. It's, it's always fun to talk to you.

Uh, that is very, very kind of you, it's the British accent. But I want to start actually-

(laughs)

... pre-Lovable, and I spoke to a couple of your investors in your first company, Depict.

Mm-hmm.

And so I just want to start there. What are your biggest takeaways from Depict that shaped how you think about Lovable?

We, um, scaled super, super fast at Depict as well. And, uh, and, uh, we did, like moving sup- just very fast, scrappy, we did that, we d- nailed that really well. I think we did really well on this high-potential talent as well, quite junior but high-potential talent. You, you can see that from all the, uh, companies coming out from Depict. The, the, the Depict mafia is, is absolutely real. Um, but what w- I think we did, what works in the beginning is to say yes onto a lot of opportunities, and try out what works. Once you become more people and you have to follow up and maintain, uh, everything that you start, you, you have to be much more focused. So we said yes to too many things at, at Depict, and, uh, we didn't like take this one thing and that we could do ten times better than anyone else. Uh, and then at, as e- the economics, uh, macro-wise turned, uh, worse, we, we didn't continue the scaling, uh, uh, trajectory that we were on initially.

I was just reading an article actually with Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, and he said, "You need three great features in a product, (laughs) and it's really that simple, and make them really, really great." Do you agree with that product simplicity towards feature depth?

Yeah, I, I think, yeah, just on a produc- product level, you should say no to as many things as possible, and then make it more of like an Apple feeling, the things you do, you do them superb.

Okay, and so we have, hey, don't say, uh, yes to everything. Is there anything else which you did or didn't do that really shaped how you think about the early days of Lovable?

Mm, no, I think moving fast, um, and I, I would say t- talent's the, the most important thing, and, and culture, how you work together, every day, like how, how people interact and collaborate quickly. Uh, those are the two most important thing for, for almost any company.