Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder)

(laid-back music) Lovable is your personal AI software engineer. You describe an idea and then you get a fully working product. The reason is to enable those who have had, like, such a hard time finding people who are good at creating software, that's been their absolute bottleneck, and let them take their ideas and their dreams into reality.

You guys hit 4 million ARR in the first four weeks. You hit 10 million ARR in the first two months with just 15 people. You're the fastest growing startup in all of Europe. How did you decide on Lovable as the name? It's so sweet.

The best word for a great product is that it's lovable. A lot of jargon that I like to use to, like, emphasize what we should be striving for is building a minimum lovable product, and then building a lovable product, and then building an absolutely lovable product. So I, I took that jargon with me in the company name.

People wonder just what jobs will be more important, what skills will be less important?

Doing a bit of everything, being a generalist is, I think, much more important than it used to be. If I'm putting together a product team today, I, I would really obsess about getting as many skill sets as possible for each person I hire.

What have you done that has allowed you to grow this fast with so few people?

People love the product. (laughs) That's the driver of, of the growth.

(instrumental music) Today my guest is Anton Ock. Anton is co-founder and CEO of Lovable, which is essentially an AI engineer that takes an English prompt and codes a product for you in minutes. You can then talk to it, iterate on the product, and then launch it to the world. It's one of the fastest growing products in history, the fastest growing startup in Europe ever. And as Anton describes, their goal for Lovable is for it to be the last piece of software that anybody has to write because it'll be able to create all future products for us. They launched just a few months ago. In the first four weeks, hit 4 million ARR. In the first two months, crossed 10 million ARR, all with just 15 people. Absurd. In our conversation, we covered a lot of ground, including a live demo of Lovable, how their team operates, how they hire, what has most enabled their team to scale this quickly with so few people, pro tips for using Lovable, how it all started, how he recommends you build product teams going forward with tools like this existing, what skills will matter more and less going forward, plus how to think about Lovable versus competitors, and so much more. If you're trying to wrap your head around how product building will change with the rise of AI tools, this episode is a must watch. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become a yearly subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Perplexity and Notion and Superhuman and Linear and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com. With that, I bring you Anton Ock. This episode is brought to you by Sinch, the customer communications cloud. Here's the thing about digital customer communications. Whether you're sending marketing campaigns, verification codes, or account alerts, you need them to reach users reliably. That's where Sinch comes in. Over 150,000 businesses, including eight of the top 10 largest tech companies globally, use Sinch's API to build messaging, email, and calling into their products. And there's something big happening in messaging that product teams need to know about, rich communication services, or RCS. Think of RCS as SMS 2.0. Instead of getting texts from a random number, your users will see your verified company name and logo without needing to download anything new. It's a more secure and branded experience. Plus you get features like interactive carousels and suggestive replies. And here's why this matters. US carriers are starting to adopt RCS. Sinch is already helping major brands send RCS messages around the world, and they're helping Lenny's podcast listeners get registered first before the rush hits the US market. Learn more and get started at sinch.com/lenny. That's S-I-N-C-H.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Persona, the adaptable identity platform that helps businesses fight fraud, meet compliance requirements, and build trust. While you're listening to this right now, how do you know that you're really listening to me, Lenny? These days, it's easier than ever for fraudsters to steal PII, faces, and identities. That's where Persona comes in. Persona helps leading companies like LinkedIn, Etsy, and Twilio securely verify individuals and businesses across the world. What sets Persona apart is its configurability. Every company has different needs depending on its industry, use cases, risk tolerance, and user demographics. That's why Persona offers flexible building blocks that allow you to build tailored collection and verification flows that maximize conversion while minimizing risk. Plus, Persona's orchestration tools automate your identity process so that you can fight rapidly shifting fraud and meet new waves of regulation. Whether you're a startup or an enterprise business, Persona has a plan for you. Learn more at withpersona.com/lenny. Again, that's with P-E-R-S-O-N-a.com/lenny. Anton, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.