The new AI growth playbook for 2026 | How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year

Lenny Rachitsky你现在负责 Lovable 的增长，而且它正在冲向历史上最快增长公司的行列，或者至少也是其中之一。

Elena Verna我们已经做到了 2 亿美元以上的年经常性收入（ARR）。现在公司大概 100 人，节奏真的夸张到离谱。

Lenny Rachitsky你之前说，你不得不把大部分增长方法论都推翻重来。

Elena Verna我感觉过去十五到二十年里学到的东西，只有三成到四成能直接迁移到这里。原因是我们必须下更大的赌注，持续创新，自己创造新的增长飞轮。现在几乎所有人都在做 vibe coding 生意，我们得想办法跑到他们前面。而要跑到前面，靠的不是把问题优化到极致，而是重新发明解法。以前我大概只会拿 5% 的精力去做增长创新，现在我有 95% 都花在创新上，只有 5% 做优化。

Lenny Rachitsky那你发现真正能推动增长的是什么？

Elena Verna我们最重要的策略之一就是“公开构建”，而且和员工社媒、创始人社媒是绑在一起的。另一个特别重要的点，是大量把产品免费送出去，这本身就是我们的增长秘诀之一。你必须把进入门槛降下来。比如有用户说，他要在公司里办一个 Lovable 黑客松，能不能给他们一些免费额度？我们为什么要阻止一个愿意主动帮我们做营销、做激活的人用我们的产品？我们当然会说，拿去，用多少都行。

Lenny Rachitsky诀窍就是让更多人先试起来，做出你能拿来讲的东西。

Elena Verna真正能形成口碑飞轮的办法，就是在用户第一次体验时狠狠干翻他们的预期。

Lenny Rachitsky今天的嘉宾是 Elena Verna，Lovable 的增长负责人。Lovable 在上线不到一年、员工不到一百人的情况下就冲到了 2 亿美元 ARR，这几乎是历史上最快的增长曲线之一，而且还在继续加速。最近他们还完成了 B 轮融资，估值达到 60 亿美元。围绕这家公司，能学到的东西太多了。Elena 这已经是第四次来到播客，也创下了纪录。她一直是我最喜欢的增长思考者之一。这期里我们会聊：AI 公司里增长方法论到底发生了什么根本变化，什么还有效，什么已经失效，以及 Lovable 的增长为什么这么特别。她还会讲讲是否适合去 AI 公司工作、他们内部是怎么运转的、他们怎么做“最小但可爱”的产品，以及为什么产品市场契合不再是“一次性达成”的状态，而是每隔三个月就要重新夺回一次。这期非常实操，信息量很大。
Elena，欢迎再来做客播客。

Elena Verna谢谢邀请我来。

Lenny Rachitsky你知道的，这是你第四次来播客，没人做到过这个纪录。我感觉你现在几乎已经是我的联合主持了。

Elena Verna我喜欢这个说法。谢谢你一次又一次邀请我，我对这个纪录真的很骄傲。

Lenny Rachitsky我最喜欢你每次回来的地方，是每次你都会在做更夸张、更令人兴奋的事。今天按照开场你说的，你已经是 Lovable 的增长负责人，而 Lovable 正冲着成为历史上最快增长公司之一前进，不管按哪个指标都很夸张。先给大家一点规模感：现在 Lovable 到底是什么状态？

Elena Verna我们正式上线还不到一年。公司其实在此之前就以 GPT Engineer 的形式存在过，但真正发布是在去年 11 月第三周，也就是 2024 年。对我们来说，在上线还没满一年的时候就已经超过 2 亿美元 ARR，这真的非常不可思议。你之前写过一篇很好的文章，讲公司通常要花多久才能到第一个 100 万 ARR，往往是好几年。所以这绝对不是常态，是非常少见的“独角兽级”速度。而且增长还在继续加速，是复利式的。我们 7 月底到达 1 亿，四个月后就到 2 亿了。用户数也已经超过 800 万试用过 Lovable；为了支撑这 2 亿 ARR，我们还有几十万付费订阅用户。

Lenny Rachitsky太离谱了。人们似乎已经开始习惯这些天文数字了，但不久前如果一家公司的 ARR 一年到 100 万，大家就会觉得已经很不错了。

Elena Verna对，现在一年做到 100 万 ARR 其实还是很厉害的。这类公司就是那种“一辈子可能只会碰到一次”的公司，而且它所在的赛道也是在快速演化中。所以我不希望大家突然把这个速度当成成功标准，因为那不现实。某些赛道未来可能会更快，但你现在正在起步的公司，不应该拿这个速度当作常规预期。

Lenny Rachitsky你这个提醒很重要。创始人听到这种故事很容易沮丧。再说，这还是 ARR，不是一次性收入。很多公司，尤其是数据标注类公司，我都采访过，它们也增长很快，但不是经常性收入，而且还要付钱给人做标注，收入口径根本不能直接对比。2 亿美元的经常性收入，真的夸张。

Elena Verna确实夸张。我特别想让大家在这期节目里理解，为什么会发生这种增长，因为一部分是 Lovable 自己做对了，一部分是整个市场的变化。所以你要知道自己应该拿什么当基准，也要知道 Lovable 是否适合做你的参照物。

Lenny Rachitsky我最后再问一个很多人都在意的问题。大家看着这些数字，很怀疑它们是否可持续。谁会在 Lovable 上花这么多钱？你能不能给大家一点信心，这是真实收入，而且会持续？

Elena Verna我看过 Stripe 的流水，所以在我看来这就是真的，除非 Stripe 仪表盘在骗我们。钱确实是打到公司账户里的。那我们再说是谁在贡献这部分收入。一个很大的场景，是有人用 Lovable 自己创业，我们把这叫做创始人场景：那些从没写过代码、从没做过软件的人，现在可以完全从零做出一个应用。有些人已经开始把它变现，有些人只是拿它去支撑别的服务，或者卖实物商品；还有人只是继续在构建。我们按“构建”这个行为收费，所以从产品构建到真正形成产品市场契合，这中间本来就需要时间。除此之外，还有很多公司内部员工也在用 Lovable，他们拿来做内部工具、原型、着陆页。这也是一类很重要、而且效率很高的用法。

Lenny Rachitsky我想问一个大家一定会关心的问题，就是留存表现到底怎么样？

Elena Verna我会从两个层面看留存：一个是订阅留存，也就是我们拉来多少订阅用户，又能续上多少；另一个是扩张留存，也就是这些用户能不能继续加购。如果你能做到净美元留存（NDR）在 100% 以上，这对投资人来说非常重要。如果你还不熟悉这个指标，真的应该去看一下，它会直接影响估值倍数。除此之外还有一个很关键的指标叫参与度留存，它通常是付费留存的前置指标。付费留存这件事，市场上总有人说 AI 产品就是高 churn、漏水桶，但我不能公开具体数字，只能说我们的表现和我过去在 Miro、Dropbox、SurveyMonkey、Netlify、Amplitude 等公司看到的 B2B SaaS 基准大致相当。也就是说，我们并没有在付费留存上碾压一切，但也不差。更重要的是，我们的 NDR 很不错，因为用户构建越多，就越愿意买更多额度。只是现在我们更关注的是参与度留存，而不是付费留存，因为我们的北极星指标是尽可能多的使用量，先把使用做起来，之后再去调优变现模型。

Lenny Rachitsky这非常有意思。听到这些我挺乐观，因为增长这么快的公司，留存还能和优秀 SaaS 公司一个量级，这并不常见。

Elena Verna我再补一点，可能和很多公司直觉不一样：我们根本不优化收入。实际上内部经常讨论的是，怎么能把更多产品免费给出去，怎么通过让更多用户付费、更多用户使用 Lovable 来扩大市场份额，而不是把每个用户的收入榨到最高。也就是说，我们的收入只是“让更多人进门”之后自然产生的结果，而不是我们要刻意把单个用户的收入优化到很高。所以这里很有意思：只要你真的把精力放在输入项上，像你应该做的那样，最后就会有不错的输出，但我们并不会把那个输出视为要专门冲高的目标。

Lenny Rachitsky那我们就来聊增长，聊聊你在这个赛道里学到了什么。你之前发过一条帖子，说你不得不推翻大部分增长方法论。这事可不小，你过去在很多成功公司都带过增长，而 Lovable 现在又增长得这么好，所以我很好奇：什么还有效，什么没用了，你到底学到了什么？

Elena Verna过去我去任何一家公司，通常都能把大约 80% 的成熟方法论带进去。我知道该看哪些输入、该套哪种框架，也能找到大量和这个框架匹配的案例，所以只需要本地化一下方案，然后往前推就行，通常都很有效，能把获客、转化、参与、变现再往上拉一截。久而久之，我会有一种在复制粘贴的感觉，好像自己一直在做同一份工作。到了 Lovable，我一开始就很清楚，这家公司在我加入前就已经疯狂增长了。所以我不想夸大我今天到底加了多少价值，因为公司本来就在高速冲刺。没错，我是在帮它修边角、清障碍，但这里面有一种更魔法的东西，是我以前从没见过的，也不是我脑子里能轻易套进去的框架。更重要的是，这是一个全新的类别，而且还是一个正在飞速变化的类别。通常创建新类别要花很多年，很多时候是十年、几十年的事；但 vibe coding 这个东西，热度几乎是一瞬间就起来了，真的一下子击中了市场的神经。我们既站在正确的时间点上，也身处快速流动的水里，所以更像是在抓住需求，而不是自己去生成大量需求。可这也意味着我们并不能控制自己增长的很多部分。口碑传播真的非常强，我们只能尽量放大它，确保别让增长撞墙，同时把车轮都润滑好，看看这台车真正的引擎会是什么。

Lenny Rachitsky那我们顺着这个思路往下聊。哪些事情在这个赛道里不值得再花时间？哪些事情真的在拉动增长？

Elena Verna在增长里，大多数人都会把大量时间花在优化既有用户路径上。你已经知道某些增长飞轮，也知道从获客到激活中间有大掉点，于是就去调参数、拧按钮。但在这里，我发现优化不值得花太多时间。很多时候我的增长团队实际上在做的是新功能，或者连续搭建新的增长飞轮。没错，“飞轮越多不代表增长越多”这句话永远成立，但市场变化太快了，你必须先把一堆动作做出来去抓住它，因为机会是会过期的。再加上竞争者太多，几乎人人都在做 vibe coding，我们必须想办法跑得比他们快。领先不是把问题优化得更好，而是重写答案。所以我现在大概有 95% 的精力都放在增长创新上，只有 5% 在做优化。过去我大多数方法论都来自优化，可创新本来就很难形成固定框架，因为它的定义就是“新”。

Lenny Rachitsky我听下来，你们的新功能推出，本身就是最大的增长杠杆之一。你们不是只是在做一堆酷功能让体验更顺，而是在把这些功能直接推到产品里。

Elena Verna对。比如我们增长团队就做了 Shopify 集成，直接支持电商场景。因为我们看到已经有人在这么用了，而 Shopify 也愿意和我们集成，所以我们就顺势去做，让大家可以用 Lovable 去 vibe code 自己的店铺前台。这个项目本来按照传统认知，绝不会出自增长团队之手，但为什么不能呢？我们还给产品加了语音模式，让用户可以直接用声音和 Lovable 交流，而不只是打字。这个其实也是核心产品功能，但我们会想，它能不能帮助用户更频繁地对话，提升参与度。我们在激活这个环节上花的时间其实很少，因为通常我会把大量时间花在激活、漏斗和首单体验上，但在这里，产品本身就是 agent。核心团队本来就在盯着这件事，所以增长团队就不需要重复做一遍。现在我们自己也开始做更多 agent 工作，也就是把 agentic workflow 和 agent 指令直接编码进去，帮助用户更快激活。

Lenny Rachitsky你不是在说别管这个体验，而是核心产品团队已经痴迷于把激活体验做得更好。

Elena Verna对，完全就是这个意思。因为这已经是核心产品功能了。以前大家会更多去做深层功能、拓展场景，或者改进平台层能力。但现在核心团队本身就对第一段体验极度执着，因为它就是产品的一部分。

Lenny Rachitsky我在 Lovable 上尤其明显看到的另一个点，就是创始人和团队直接在社媒上说“我们现在在做什么”。这和新功能发布也有关。比如 Anton 直接发推说：“我们出了个新东西，增长数据也更新了。”这是不是也是一个大增长杠杆？
听起来压力很大。我想起我采访过 Mirage 的 CEO Gaurav，他们有个原则是每周都要发一个“可营销”的功能，整个公司都这么运转。其实本质就是：做出你能讲的东西。

Elena Verna在开发团队里，发布速度就是第一核心价值。我们会尽一切可能让它持续向上。顺便说一句，这也意味着每个人都得多少具备一点营销思维。我们是非常精简的产品组织，很多产品工作都压在工程师身上。我们叫他们 product engineers，他们得自己去发布自己做出来的东西，不是所有事情都要先过市场部门。要达到这种速度，就必须给团队很大的自主权和责任，否则你需要一个庞大的市场团队来兜底，所以团队角色本身也得重新定义。

Lenny Rachitsky那我们聊聊 marketing。你之前也写过，营销的角色正在发生很大的变化。它在这套体系里怎么发挥作用？

Elena Verna一方面，营销渠道本身在变；另一方面，营销参与产品的方式也在变；第三，营销组织招什么人、招到哪儿，也在变。我先说第二点，因为刚好接着我们在聊的“发布”这个话题。你当然还是有 product marketer 和 channel manager，但他们更多聚焦在大叙事上。问题是，叙事本身也在一直变。以前一个定位和信息可以用好几年，现在三个月就得换，因为产品变了。周期短到这种程度，很多小变更根本没法由营销团队承接，你必须让产品和工程团队自己去完成自己的营销，否则你就得配一个巨大无比的营销团队。与此同时，营销渠道也在变化，而且我觉得大家对这个变化还不够紧张。以前你要问我“有机增长策略是什么”，我会说 SEO，去谷歌上做搜索优化就是了。但现在如果你问我，我会说有机增长就是社交媒体。CEO 在发什么？团队在发什么？创作者生态在发什么？影响者营销在发什么？跨所有社交平台都是。对我来说，这才是现在的 organic。坦白说，B2B 也越来越像消费品，搜索已经不再是绝对中心了，社交才是眼球所在。

Lenny Rachitsky这很有意思。那具体到社媒，哪些平台最有用？X、LinkedIn、YouTube、TikTok，还是 Instagram？

Elena Verna对于创始人和员工社媒来说，X 和 LinkedIn 都很有效，尤其是 B2B，因为那里聚集了大量 B2B 买家。但你不能只是让 ChatGPT 帮你写一段文案然后发出去，你必须让它带有人味，要有个人性格。不是每个人一开始都自然擅长这么做，起步时会觉得很别扭，但对用户来说，看到是谁在造这个公司非常重要，因为现在功能层面的竞争太激烈了，大家需要愿意为某个团队站队。要做到这一点，你得展示脆弱、真实，当然也要做自己，企业化的那层“打磨”要彻底放掉。随着公司变大，这会越来越难，但至少在早期，这是你脱颖而出的机会。再往下就是你的客户自己在分享你。口碑真正的本质，是你做出一个值得被讲述的产品，让用户愿意把自己解锁了什么说给别人听，就像在分享一个秘密。他们会为自己做出来的东西感到自豪。这也是我们在 Lovable 特别重视的：让用户感觉“天啊，我现在有超能力了，我迫不及待想告诉别人、展示别人”。如果你不是做 B2B，那 Instagram 和 TikTok 也会很好用。

Lenny RachitskyCEO 显然是其中非常重要的变量。就这件事来说，Anton 直接发推：“这是 Lovable 的近况，这是我们的增长速度，这是我们学到的东西”，这确实很有帮助。

Elena Verna对，客户才是最难的一环。你真正要建立的是口碑飞轮。唯一能形成口碑飞轮的办法，就是在用户真正体验产品时，把他们震住。我们有一个几乎“不公平”的优势，就是我们的产品就叫 Lovable。所以从默认值上，我们就在努力创造“可爱”的体验。这个东西已经变成了内部文化：如果不 lovable，我们就不发。Lovable 修 bug 最快的方法，就是大家一起说“这不够 lovable”，然后所有人立刻扑上去把它修掉，不管有没有 sprint，现在就修。这种文化已经写进品牌里了，名字本身也帮了我们很大忙。更重要的是，用户在每个交互里都能感受到这个品牌。我经常跟设计师讨论，怎么往产品里塞进更多 love marks，怎么设计更独特的交互，让产品真的像在和你说话，有性格、有温度。所以我们把品牌工作基本都做进了产品里。别人想到 Lovable 会想到品牌，但我们其实还没有一个传统意义上的 brand marketing team；我们的品牌来自产品交互，也来自那些围绕产品互动发生的“公开构建”时刻。

Lenny Rachitsky有意思的是，影响者营销对我们的效果居然是付费社媒的十倍。我们也会做一些付费社媒，效果还不错，但回本周期比较长，还在优化中。可影响者营销从一开始在 Lovable 就非常有效，因为它给了用户一个看到“哇，这东西真的能做出来”的短视频和交互场景，而 Lovable 的核心就是让人立刻意识到：天啊，原来这能做到。我得自己试试。
谁能想到，一个传统上被认为是数据、指标、表格和 KPI 的增长负责人，居然会说：“我们怎么让它更 lovable？怎么增加更多让人惊喜的瞬间？”

Elena Verna我知道。我的玩笑是，等我在 Lovable 的职业生涯结束时，如果真有那一天，我大概会变成一个“品牌型增长人”了：大家好，我现在做品牌了。但我其实一直把这看成增长策略的一部分，就是要让品牌透过每次交互都发出来。我也一直和团队讲这一点，因为这确实是我们增长故事里非常大的一个杠杆。

Lenny Rachitsky对，我觉得这里有个特别重要的点要强调。Lovable 之所以增长这么快，是因为它是一个用户真心喜欢的产品。你们真的做出了人们想要的东西，而且口碑会传播，因为它确实像你说的那样，能把人“炸飞”。

Elena Verna对，但首先你得站对位置、踩对时机，而且你得身处一个高速流动的赛道。这个类别本身就在飞速爆发，不能拿到每个类别都能套这个逻辑。可在这么拥挤的赛道里，要想脱颖而出，就必须做出会和人说话的体验。我觉得很多人会低估这一点，因为他们仍然把功能性放在“人味”前面。但我觉得我们正在进入一个新的软件时代：软件必须让人感觉像人，必须让人愿意互动，而不只是“有用”。因为现在软件开发成本在下降，我们终于可以把精力投到情感体验上，而不是只做实用功能。对我来说，这是一个特别喜欢的变化，因为我最讨厌的就是那种用起来非常痛苦的软件，和它交互的时候感觉脑细胞都在掉；而好的软件会给我能量。对 Lovable 来说，我自己最期待的事情之一，就是去 vibe code 我自己的项目，那几乎就是我一天里最亮的时刻。我会带着女儿一起做，问她：“你觉得这里该怎么做？”因为这个过程真的会给我很多能量，而这种感觉不可能只靠“工具效用”来做出来。

Lenny Rachitsky我理解你的意思。你的描述让我觉得，门槛被抬高了，现在大家都会做了，所以最大的差异化不再只是功能，而是体验、设计和惊喜感。

Elena Verna完全对，而且这种感觉必须贯穿每一个交互。所以现在创业公司里，设计师应该是最早招进来的几个岗位之一。不能只盯着工程和功能。每一次交互都得问自己：这有没有把我们的品牌说出来？还是没有？

Lenny Rachitsky说到这里，我想回到你前面提到的一个点：新功能发布是一个巨大的增长杠杆。问题是，怎么保证大家都可以安心发东西的同时，产品不会变成一个 Frankenstein 拼装怪？你们有没有什么机制，能保持质量和一致性？

Elena Verna有一部分不是能写成流程的，而是你招什么样的人，决定了他们会怎么发东西。我们在 Lovable 会尽量去招我们能找到的、最强的人才，而不是只看他们是不是在大公司待过、拿过多少 logo、讲过多少成功故事。我们更看重的是：这个人是不是真的热爱自己的工作。他是不是把这当兴趣？是不是发自内心地想做？是不是心里有火？这不是一份普通薪水，而是他觉得自己人生最大的机会。对我们来说，这点非常重要。你走进办公室就能感受到：这些人都被点燃了，他们一直在想怎么做得更好，怎么给用户更多价值。这和很多公司那种“技能对上了，打勾，招进来”的逻辑完全不同。
第二点，是我们非常认真地定义“什么叫成功”。我们到底在建什么？我们是在为哪些场景建东西？而因为我们招的人本来就很热情，所以另外两个特别重要的能力就是高 agency 和高 autonomy。意思是，很多和自己不直接相关的事情，你也能自己搞定，不需要另找专才。你不一定要找一个营销来替你发东西，你自己就能把它做出来。我会自己承担到底，从开始到结束都自己负责。这个也是我们文化里很看重的东西。然后你就会看到：想做什么由你自己决定，所以地面上的监督其实很少。我们当然有目标，也有大家一起往前冲的大版本，但很多具体工作，开发、营销、产品怎么做，其实都由个人决定。要让这种高速运转成立，就必须允许大家去试。失败也没关系，我们会快速转向，不是非要一直赢。

Lenny Rachitsky招到这些厉害的人之后，大家都知道现在招人很难，尤其是最优秀的人。Lovable 到底做了什么，才能把最强的人招进来？

Elena Verna尤其在斯德哥尔摩招人更难。我们的主办公室就在这里，很多人得搬过来，这本身就不容易。某种程度上，我们确实因为产品带来的热度而占了便宜。很多人主动来找我们，说他们很喜欢我们在做的事，想加入。这一点对我们来说是“作弊码”，因为我们大多数时候去联系别人时，对方都会说：“好啊，我很想聊聊。”所以，做出一个足够 lovable 的产品，本身也会给你一个非常好的招聘品牌。第二，我们会给很多候选人做试工，让他们先实际做几天。这个试工我们是付费的。我们也会有试用期，因为这家公司并不是适合所有人的。正如我前面说的，这里的节奏真的很疯狂。我第一次休假是在入职六个月后，休了十天，回来以后感觉自己像是重新入职了一遍，因为一切都变了。等我在里面的时候，我觉得这是演化；但仅仅离开十天，就像整个公司经历了一次革命。这个节奏不是每个人都能适应的，这没关系。我非常相信，不同的人适合不同的文化和环境。我们会很坦白地告诉大家这里有多混乱，也会优先招那些不需要“明确答案”的人，因为我们可以把混乱变成清晰，但如果大家一开始就非要清晰，我们是很难成功的。

Lenny Rachitsky你说休假回来后像换了一个公司，这听起来就像几天没见孩子，结果发现他们完全长大了。

Elena Verna对，完全就是这种感觉。

Lenny Rachitsky那我来总结一下你说的增长杠杆，看看我有没有理解对。第一，做出一个真正 lovable 的产品，能把人震住，但它还得处在一个本来就在快速成长、大家愿意花钱的市场里。你可以做出很可爱的东西，但如果没人关心这个领域，或者没有顺风，还是不行。

Elena Verna我把它叫做最小 lovable 产品。现在已经不该再叫 MVP 了，2010 年代的“可行性”已经过时了。现在最重要的是“可爱”。只有这个才算数。

Lenny Rachitsky我很喜欢 AI 工具让我们这些 PM 终于能真正做“涂门测试”了。以前就会做个假门、假页面，现在 AI 让这件事更容易，而且它还更完整。

Elena Verna对，反馈周期被彻底压缩了。你可以在一天内从想法走到一个能跑的产品，再拿到用户反馈，完全看你想跑多快、产品多复杂。我们有一个项目叫 Missions，把它 vibe code 到能用状态花了几周时间。我团队里有一个全职 vibe coder，特别厉害。他还想做视频，所以又自己设计了一堆东西。现在我们在测试，之后才会推到产品里。但开发生命周期已经完全不同了。以前会经历很多步：用户研究、设计冲刺、排工程路线图、先做一个最小可行版本、再做长周期测试。现在更像是：“直接上。”如果只是为了视频部分更完整，其实一天就能做完，但我们还是花了几周把它打磨到位。

Lenny Rachitsky你在 LinkedIn 上发的时候，看起来就像一次正式产品发布。听你这么说，它其实只是个原型。

Elena Verna对，它就是最小 lovable 产品。

Lenny Rachitsky最小 lovable 产品。那我得问了，你说你有一个全职 vibe coder，这到底是什么角色？是工程师吗，还是别的？全职 vibe coder 到底是什么意思？

Elena Verna这是一个正在冒出来的新岗位，特别有意思。因为我看到 vibe coding 正在被越来越多职位描述吸收，设计师、产品经理、营销人员都开始要会这个，我觉得这很有趣。终于，Excel 可以往后排了，我们有了一个新的技能，而且它超级有赋能感。这个岗位的名字叫 Lazar，他之前其实是 chief of staff，一点都不技术，但他是自学把技术部分学起来的，而且在 vibe coding 这波浪潮里特别早就开始了，所以对很多工具都很熟，包括 Lovable。
我刚来这边时就想，自己有好多项目都想亲手 vibe code。我办了一个只面向女性的黑客松叫 SheBuilds，最开始那个网站和报名流程就是我自己 vibe code 出来的，后来还有别人基于它继续开发。但我自己时间不够，毕竟我得到处跑，还想把很多新项目推到市场上去，所以我们就在社媒上联系了他，问他愿不愿意加入。他先是兼职加入。我当时就觉得，“你给我们带来的价值太大了。”比如我们和 Shopify 合作时，他直接帮我们 vibe code 出了一堆 Lovable 的 Shopify 模板。能有这么一个人一直在推东西真的太有帮助了。而且他还是个绝对的专家，会反过来教我们：Lovable 到底还能做什么，因为他一直在前沿把产品推到极限。我很喜欢这个角色，我以前从来没有过，也没在团队里见过。

Lenny Rachitsky我一点都不意外。我以前也没把这个当成一个真正的全职工作。你觉得以后非 vibe coding 公司也会开始招这种人吗？

Elena Verna我觉得 vibe coding 现在完全可以写进简历里，算一项技能。我自己也折腾了一阵子才搞明白，大家会以为“进去就自动成了”，其实不是。你得经过几轮迭代、做几个项目，才会知道自己该怎么翻译意图、该怎么思考。但对我来说，当我开始规模化去做这些项目的时候，他的价值就特别明显了。因为我已经知道哪些东西是可能的，也知道哪些东西必须实现。而且有些应用我希望它几乎是完整产品，哪怕它不会很快并入主产品，也不需要。那我就直接从头部导航栏连过去就行。他真的把我的速度提了上去。一旦你在组织里看到 vibe coding 的价值，找一个这样的人就会像给团队加了个工程师，只是他们不一定是传统意义上的工程师；对我来说，他算半技术，但也可以完全非技术，只要足够强。

Lenny Rachitsky我想快速总结一下刚才说的增长杠杆，然后换个方向。第一，做一个能把人震住的产品；第二，在市场里制造噪音。Lovable 的做法是 CEO 持续发声、产品本身足够惊艳让用户愿意自己分享，再加上影响者营销和公开构建。还有一个点是，激活这个环节已经嵌入产品团队本身了，也就是说，不是增长团队去想怎么激活，而是做 AI 魔法的产品团队本身就在盯着激活。这个我理解得对吗？

Elena Verna对，另外还有一条非常重要的杠杆：社区。我觉得社区特别关键，因为当大家都在探索这些能力、都在看“能做什么”的时候，他们需要一个地方互相碰撞、互相帮助。社区会放大口碑、放大社媒发布，也会帮你增强留存。Lovable 的社区对成功贡献非常大，而且这是很早就开始做的。它跑在 Discord 上，没什么花哨的东西，也不是我们从零开发的。现在已经有几十万成员，而且非常活跃。我们有社区经理会确保问题都被回答，也会把不同的小组组织起来；现在还有非常棒的 ambassador 计划。我觉得这里再次体现了“让软件更像人”的重要性。当然不是每家公司都能建立社区，但至少接入别人的社区也很重要。
另一个杠杆就是大量把产品送出去。对 AI 产品来说，这听起来可能有点反直觉，因为每次交互都有成本，LLM 还有模型透传成本。很多传统科技公司会立刻把 AI 功能挡在付费墙后面，因为它们利润率很高，一旦把 AI 免费放出去，毛利就像拿刀切黄油一样被削掉了。但同时，AI 又是这么新的东西，能力又变化这么快，你必须降低门槛，必须让大量产品可以免费用。这里说的免费，不只是 freemium；freemium 只是底线。如果你处在一个新类别里，就必须让人先免费探索，先拿到第一次“哇”的瞬间。
而且这个瞬间不需要是“aha moment”，现在已经不需要了，只要是“wow moment”就够了。对 Lovable 来说，就是用户第一次输入提示词后看到的那个预览生成。它肯定还不是最终想做的完整产品，但你会突然意识到：“这居然真的能做到？我以前完全不知道。我想继续做下去。”这就会变成一种上瘾式体验。
我们还会把很多 Lovable credits 免费送到各种活动和黑客松里。只要你想办一个 Lovable 黑客松，我们就会赞助，而且给所有参与者免费额度。我们把这些额度像糖果一样送出去，并且把 freemium 和赠送造成的 LLM 成本都算作市场营销成本，而不是当作需要压缩毛利的费用。相反，我们把它当作应该增加投入的部分，因为这就是增长秘诀的一部分。

Lenny Rachitsky我想再多听听这个增长秘诀。我以前没把“免费送产品”当成一种策略，但我能理解它为什么成立：如果目标是把人震住，让他们告诉朋友，在所有社媒上发，那最重要的就是让更多人先试。这个东西太新、太疯狂了。为什么我一开始就愿意掏钱？为什么我会愿意费劲注册？我甚至都不知道这是什么。所以我能理解为什么靠免费能把这个循环越转越快。

Elena Verna对。再说一次，这件事对很多公司都很不舒服，尤其是那些习惯了高毛利结构的公司。AI 公司普遍毛利更低，这是事实。现实里要找到毛利率 80%、90% 的 AI 公司几乎不可能。所以当你把这些 AI 成本当成“成本中心”来管理时，你就危险了。你必须换个说法，告诉自己：我要把“什么是可能的”展示给用户，并且把变现摩擦尽量移掉。因为你不这么做，没人会愿意试，或者你很快就会被愿意免费提供的竞争者赶超。说到底，一旦你把人抓住了，他们更有可能留下来，所以留存策略还是要做。但在我们的场景里，比如用户站出来说：“我要在公司里用 Lovable 办个黑客松，能不能给我们一些免费额度？”我们为什么要阻止一个愿意主动帮我们做营销、做激活的人用产品？当然是立刻给啊。你要多少给多少，我们全包。我们就是尽可能支持那些愿意把这种魔法展示给周围人的人。这其实适用于所有产品。老实说，我以前从没在职业生涯里把“尽可能免费发产品”当成一条增长策略，但现在它越来越像是不可或缺的东西。

Lenny Rachitsky我的感觉是，越是让人震撼的东西，就越应该免费给出去。

Elena Verna对。

Lenny Rachitsky尤其是在竞争这么激烈的市场里，大家都在做这件事的时候更是如此。你越强，反而越应该免费。

Elena Verna没错。

Lenny Rachitsky这也解释了为什么这类公司总得融那么多 VC 钱，因为这玩意儿不便宜。你们还要给基础模型厂商付很多钱。

Elena Verna对，也不完全对。以 Lovable 为例，我们 ARR 已经超过 2 亿美元，现在只有 100 人，所以人头成本其实很低。六个月前我们还只有 30 个人，也就是短时间内把公司规模扩大了三倍。我们很快还会继续扩大。就头部成本来说，这部分非常小。我们并没有在大规模做付费广告，所以这不是一个由付费广告驱动的公司。我们确实在做 influencer marketing，但它不是增长的主体，只是低两位数比例的补充，因为它不是我们成功的原因，只是在放大成功、帮助我们触达新受众。我们也没有特别大的销售团队，只有少数销售，企业销售也才刚开始起量，所以企业端的 demand gen 也不重。换句话说，如果你不在付费营销上大撒钱，不在销售上大撒钱，因为我们主要在做那些已经举手表示想买的人，那你就有更多空间把钱花在产品上。

Lenny Rachitsky这个点非常重要。不是说你们没钱，而是因为收入已经够大了，所以可以拿一部分去补增长。你说的是：因为主要靠口碑扩散，而不是靠大量销售和广告，所以这更像一种营销成本，而不是毛利被砍掉。

Elena Verna这就是 product-led growth，只不过被超级加速了。
对，超级加速版的 product-led growth。因为你是在用自己的产品去驱动认知，把产品免费给那些会替你做分发的生态参与者。

Lenny Rachitsky太有意思了。免费送东西给所有人，这真是个疯狂的新世界。

Elena Verna对，这对消费者来说是好时代。现在做消费者太爽了，因为选择太多了，每个人都在向你抛出产品、送你免费额度。软件行业过去并不总是站在消费者这边，因为以前我们只能在有限选择里被动接受别人给我们的方案。现在供给几乎是无限的，所以消费者可以非常挑剔，最后会是那个最能服务用户的人赢。

Lenny Rachitsky我还是要强调一下，这不是某种 VC 补贴泡沫。这里面确实有大量真实收入在生成，你们是拿自己的收入去加速增长，不是单纯融资后撒钱。当然，融资有帮助。

Elena Verna我不能评论具体的毛利细节，但我可以说，我们融来的 VC 资金是为了未来的发展和加固业务，不是因为没有它公司就活不下去。

Lenny Rachitsky好，那正好接上。我想聊聊产品市场契合和竞争。你写过一篇很有意思的帖子，我觉得很多人还没真正理解：产品市场契合不再是“我们做到了，然后就一路向上增长，接下来招销售就好了”。你说的更像是，产品市场契合不再是一次性达成，而是要不停地重新夺回。聊聊你看到的这个变化。

Elena Verna我先说说以前我对产品市场契合的理解：当然，PMF 本来就是会变化的，但过去这种变化是按“年”来算的。你什么时候需要下一次 PMF 的跃迁，也就是所谓的 second horizon、third horizon，很多时候要五年、十年，甚至更久，取决于你初始 PMF 有多强。你会用很多年去扩张最初那套 PMF：先是 blitz growth 阶段，营销、销售、增长都很重要，目的是把它推给尽可能多的人。等到市场饱和，或者触达边际用户的成本太高了，你才会开始想：那我还能提供什么，帮助我触达更多人，或者让现有用户买更多？
关键在于，以前你会花很多年才走到必须正面面对这个问题的阶段。现在只需要三个月，你就又要面对一次。为什么？我觉得有两个原因。第一，AI 技术本身变化太快了，每次模型发布都会让 LLM 能力出现跃迁。我想未来会慢下来，变得更边际化，但现在还没到那一步。所以几乎每三个月，任何一家 LLM 厂商都会给底层能力带来一次阶跃式变化。当底层技术一下子打开了新的可能性，你能在上面建的东西也会跟着多出一层天花板。难点在于，你不能等技术更成熟了再慢慢开始建，你必须提前下注，因为等模型发布时，你就得已经有对应能力了。我从没待过一家产品能力变化这么快的公司。
第二个变化来自市场。消费者预期的变化速度前所未有。八个月前大家对 ChatGPT 的期待和现在完全不同：它应该怎么回答、怎么和我们说话，现在和过去简直天壤之别，尤其是 deep thinking 模式出来之后。消费者认知的变化也从没这么快过，过去可能要几年才会转变。现在会出现这种奇怪现象：一个月前用户还在用，过了一个月就说“它还不行，我撤了”。过去技术可能已经能做到了，但消费者还没意识到，所以还得等很久。现在产品和市场都在超快变化，所以我感觉我们每三个月都要重新夺回一次 PMF，而且不只是“同一批技术上的 PMF”，而是技术和市场两边一起变。这有点吓人，也很混乱，因为我们明明已经是 2 亿美元公司了，却不能只专注销售和营销，还得重新找 PMF。找到 PMF 的团队和扩张公司的团队本来就是两拨人，但我们现在必须找一支既能找 PMF、又能持续扩张的团队。每一家 AI 公司都在这条 PMF 跑步机上。希望这个跑步机速度能慢一点，不然按照这个节奏，AI 会逼出很多更夸张的东西。现在的状态就是：每三个月我们得把扩张速度踩一下刹车，先重做，再重新扩张，不是那种按年计算的长周期冲刺，而是一轮一轮短促的增长爆发。

Lenny Rachitsky这让它变得更真实了。就这一周，OpenAI 据说还搞了个 code red。虽然它是全球最领先的 AI 助手，月活接近十亿，几乎就是 AI 的代名词，但 Gemini 3 一上线，它的市场份额就开始快速下滑，一周里好像掉了六个多百分点。连 OpenAI、ChatGPT 这种原本看起来最稳的玩家都不安全。

Elena Verna对，没人未来是绝对安全的。十年前如果你问我，一个年经常性收入 2 亿美元、月增速还有 10% 的公司，会不会在三个月内丢掉 PMF，我会觉得你疯了。但现在这就是现实。很奇妙，也很刺激。

Lenny Rachitsky是很刺激，也很有压力，但最后的回报也很大。做这件事不只是为了钱，更是因为它会改变世界，改变人们构建和交付产品的方式。

Elena Verna对，可能性的上限被抬得非常高，我们甚至还没接近看到它的边界。我觉得最激动人的就是这点。

Lenny Rachitsky你写这块时，我理解你的意思是：传统方法是先抓住核心用户，再往相邻用户扩。现在你们几乎是在不停重夺核心用户，连去相邻用户都没时间。

Elena Verna对。Bangaly 很久以前写过一篇很棒的文章，讲相邻用户理论：当你处于非增长阶段时，产品市场契合扩张最大的机会，就是去抓核心用户之外、但需求相似的“相邻用户”。他们可能在地理上不同，场景稍有不同，但需求相近。继续增长最好的方式，就是抓住这批人，不一定非要去下一层 horizon。我现在的感受是，我们当然还有核心用户，而且这些核心用户现在大多是那些对新能力非常兴奋的先行者；然后还有一大批潜在多数在等着。但我最担心的是，我们这个类别现在一直在忙着重新夺回先行者，根本没有时间去碰相邻用户。我担心这样会不会把潜在多数晾在一边，因为我们太专注于让先行者始终对最新能力有感知。可我也不知道有没有更好的答案，因为没有先行者，潜在多数也不会跟上。但如果你把先行者推得太远，潜在多数会不会永远追不上？也许这只是多虑，但我确实会想这些问题。按现在的阶段，我们其实应该去做相邻用户。我会说 OpenAI 已经在这么做了，毕竟他们的平台上有那么多人，但大多数其他 AI 公司还没有。

Lenny Rachitsky我完全理解你的担心。一个品牌可能最后只会被认为“只适合创业公司和原型”，而不适合正式工作。

Elena Verna对，或者只适合技术圈的人。它从来没有真正走出我们这个小泡泡，进入更广的人群。

Lenny Rachitsky我们刚刚也有点提到，在 AI 公司工作很挑战、很累、工作量大。你会给那些在想“我要不要去 Lovable？要不要去 Cursor？还是干脆去 Google？”的人什么建议？

Elena Verna我真的觉得，关键是要搞清楚什么样的环境适合你。AI 公司现在都很忙，也很不稳定，这是由产品市场契合跑步机、分发方式变化、产品开发方式变化共同决定的。如果你很能接受这种“混乱中间态”，而且擅长把混乱变成清晰，那 AI 公司会是一个特别适合你吸收新技能的地方。我在加入 Lovable 之前，虽然一直都在看 AI，也会觉得“天啊，AI 无处不在，它真的在改变世界吗？真的在改变工作方式吗？”我在 Dropbox 时也会用一点 AI、会用 ChatGPT，但我从没像在 Lovable 这样高强度地用 AI，也从没在那么短时间里学会这么多。如果不是来到这里，而只是靠读文章、听别人讲，我不觉得自己会这么快完成这种跃迁。待在一群本来就默认“这就是工作的方式”的人中间，和自己一个人想办法是完全不一样的。这里不是“可有可无”，也不是有人要求你做，而是“就该这么做”。你必须一直想：这里 AI 能做什么？我能在哪儿创造价值？在传统工作里，我会先从自己的价值出发，再用 AI 去增幅；但在这里，思维方式已经完全变了。
我并不认为 AI 会取代所有人的工作，所以别把它理解成那句老掉牙的话。我反而经常把 AI 叫做“平均智能”，它帮我把底盘先搭起来，然后我再把人的思考和创造力加上去，推到下一层。至少底层这部分，AI 能非常快地帮我搞定。
所以如果你想快速跨越到“AI 原生员工”该怎么工作、怎么用这些工具，我会建议你去 AI 公司。但如果你很清楚自己的超能力更偏向结构化、定义清晰、某种高度专业化的东西，那你可能不适合。因为 AI 公司通常都比较小，你会被要求泛化很多、拥有很多本来不一定属于你的领域的责任。AI 公司未来也会变得更稳定，但那是时间问题。总之，还是要看你自己的强项和什么样的环境真的适合你，这样你才会开心，不然很容易 burnout。

Lenny Rachitsky我的感觉也是，如果你要工作和生活平衡，最好别去这种公司，因为它们本来就不是这么运作的。

Elena Verna我不想说得这么绝。我有家庭，有两个孩子，我觉得自己其实工作生活平衡得挺好，但前提是我给自己设了边界。我知道什么时候该休息，因为我能感觉到脑子开始过热了。但我也知道工作是我的爱好、也是我的热情，而我现在做的是人生中最好的工作，我别无所求。我觉得你需要更认真地保护自己需要的边界。不过说实话，我不觉得任何公司里的人真的有“工作生活平衡”，不管是在 Google、Microsoft 还是别的地方。大家其实都在拼命跑，只是跑在不同的结构里。

Lenny Rachitsky我很高兴你这样纠正我。也就是说，人在一家历史上增长最快的公司之一，仍然是可以真正睡觉、陪孩子、陪家人的。

Elena Verna你得拼命保护这些边界，而且要非常现实地看待别人对你的期待，同时也要确信自己能交付。顺便说一句，如果不在很多工作场景里用 AI，你根本不可能达到这些预期和速度。所以 AI 其实帮你满足了这些结果和节奏要求。我非常保护和孩子在一起的个人时间。既然有了孩子，如果我都不陪他们，那我为什么要生孩子呢？所以这些是我在每一份工作里都带着的非谈判项。

Lenny Rachitsky对那些不太会设边界的人，有什么实操建议吗？比如怎么让别人知道你什么时候得走？

Elena Verna首先，我不会把这件事理解成“工作生活平衡”。根本没有所谓平衡这回事。平衡听起来像是“我有足够时间做所有事”，但我其实没有足够时间做任何事。我只是在某些时刻优先家庭，某些时刻优先工作，我不试图让两者“平衡”。我只去我该去的地方、做我该做的事，而且我希望今天做的选择不会让我将来后悔。我会不断把自己放到未来去想：如果我现在这么选，未来的我会不会怨自己？如果答案是会，那我就不这么做。有时候我得对 Anton 说不，比如“我去不了”或者“我今天不在，我得陪家人”，或者“我今天得取消行程，孩子生病了，我得带他去看医生”。对我来说，临时的判断、按小时做决定，比试图平衡一个根本不可能的东西更现实，也不会让人更焦虑。我还会优先保护睡眠、健康、锻炼、孩子、家庭、丈夫和自己的空闲时间，因为我知道，只要离开工作一段时间，我反而会更有创造力，再回来的时候输出更好。所以对我来说，休息本身就是做好工作的组成部分。

Lenny Rachitsky这个建议非常好。我还想聊聊在 Lovable 工作是什么感觉，因为它看起来像是未来产品工作的前沿。你提到大家一直在和 AI 对话、一直在提问。还有没有什么关于 Lovable 的运作方式，特别独特、奇怪、好玩或者有意思的例子，能给别的公司一点启发？

Elena Verna当然。我们在 Lovable 里大量使用 Lovable 自己。内部工具基本都是在 Lovable 上搭的。我们下周还会在 Lovable 上办第一次全员黑客松，全公司会拿出整整一天来 vibe code，看看能做出什么。我们几乎所有东西都会先在 Lovable 上原型化。文档当然还在写，但一定会配一个 Lovable 原型，大家都能点进去、互动、给反馈。每个人也都会顺手改一点，如果有更好的想法就直接加进去。比如我要改定价页，我会先截个图，再去 Lovable 里重建这个页面，把我想的变化做出来，然后发给工程团队说：“我想的是这个效果。”后面就交给他们了。
ChatGPT 我主要拿来做头脑风暴，尤其是 deep thinking 模式，我很喜欢。虽然它要花很久，但非常值得。有时候它会冒出很疯狂的点子，有时候又会说“这对我没什么新意”，但它总能逼我换角度思考。
我也很常用 Granola，因为它能帮我把会议自动总结出来，对我特别有用。Wispr Flow 我也用得很多，因为我已经觉得自己没时间打字了，所以我现在一直是对着手机和电脑说话。我们甚至还在考虑，把所有客服自动化都交给 AI。我们做的每一个事情，都会先问：AI 能先在这里做什么？然后我们再把人放进去补位。
对我来说，Lovable 给员工无限额度这个福利真的太爽了。我有时候都要掐自己一下，感觉像是在“被付钱做 vibe code”，这工作也太好玩了。

Lenny Rachitsky感觉那个 vibe code 工程师才是真的在被付钱做 vibe code。

Elena Verna他简直就是我梦想中的工作。我想他的岗位。

Lenny Rachitsky对，就是这个意思。

Elena Verna对，我真是进错行业了。

Lenny Rachitsky说到这儿，我其实想到一件事。我以前采访过 Perplexity 的创始人，那个年代我们会先问 ChatGPT 再去问人，我当时就在想：“这也太疯狂了，怎么可能这么工作？”可现在大家都这么干了。我很好奇 Anton 平时是怎么工作的。还有没有人已经站在很前面，能让我们看到“未来也许就是这样”的工作方式？

Elena Verna对我来说，尤其在产品、增长，甚至某种程度上的营销里，当我脑子里有个想法的时候，它听起来真的特别酷。有时候我把它写下来，也会觉得“这事必须做”。然后我真的去 vibe code 一遍，就会发现“哦，魔法感没了”，或者我已经没法继续想象它了。有时候我又会觉得“对对对”，然后又能继续往下延展。所以对我来说，vibe coding 其实帮我把想法形成的过程补全了很多，因为我真的去做了之后，就会拆解出哪些元素重要、哪些不重要。这样我就能把产品开发周期往前推进很多步。与此同时，它也让我和工程团队的沟通更顺畅，因为我能更准确地告诉他们哪些东西重要、哪些不重要。
这对我很有帮助，因为我们有时候想象出来的东西，比现实好太多了。以前在交给设计之前，设计师会帮我们把它做得很酷；但现在我经常会在很早期就自己把想法按住，不再继续往前推。有时候我又会推得太远，甚至在设计排期或向管理层提案之前就已经走太久了。我觉得这种过程特别有价值，因为它能很快帮我校准。

Lenny Rachitsky最后一个问题。我想聊一个你写过的很重要的话题：你有一篇文章叫《I'm Worried About Women In Tech》。你在这里观察到了什么？你觉得哪里在往不好的方向走？

Elena Verna确实有一些互相矛盾的数据，关于女性在 AI 浪潮里有没有跟上。很多报告显示，女性采用 AI 的速度远低于男性，这讲的是一个很现实的问题：男性在继续扩大技术可及性的差距。而现在最早拥抱 AI 的人，拿到的钱最多、机会也最多。我们现在经常看到很夸张的 acqui-hire，人才拿到的钱甚至比自己创立的公司还多，而且这个趋势和 AI 浪潮高度相关。但女性在这里并不算多。如果你想想最近新闻里有什么百万级 acqui-hire 的女性案例，我一时都想不出来。看 AI 公司 CEO，绝大多数都是男性；看公司内部构成，也大多是男性。对我来说，这个问题在我来 Lovable 的时候变得特别明显。我当时想：品牌是粉色和紫色、还有心形、而且叫 Lovable，这不就应该很女性化吗？我本来以为男女比例应该五五开。结果虽然我们不直接采集这个信息，但从第三方自动填充数据里看，最多也就 20%。我当时就想：怎么回事？怎么又是这样？为什么女性还是没有大量进入这里？
当然，我不可能知道所有答案。我觉得现在还早，我们是有机会把这个差距补上的。顺便说一句，我也不想把这件事说成是“男性的错”，因为我觉得男性整体上在非常努力地开疆拓土、展示可能性、带头冲锋。我只是担心，很多女性还卡在那个迟迟没有跟上的潜在多数里。我的担忧是，这会影响到未来可招的人才，会让职场构成、团队多样性再往后退一步。这个事情值不值得在意，每个人看法不同；但我认为，产品应该为全世界的人而建，那就必须由一个更具代表性的建造者群体来做。让我很烦的一点是：即使现在建东西的门槛已经大幅降低，不再需要计算机科学学位，而很多女性本来也没拿这个学位，我们还是看到了性别之间的采用鸿沟。

Lenny Rachitsky我从你那篇文章里最有感的一点就是，过去十年已经有很多进展了，而 AI 现在好像又把它往回拽了一下。

Elena Verna希望不会。我觉得我们现在还早，所以还能把这道缝补上。我觉得很多女性只是需要空间和机会去发现它，而这就是我们在 Lovable 做的。我们有一个叫 SheBuilds 的项目，专门给女性办黑客松，给她们 48 小时无限使用 Lovable，大家一起作为社区来建东西。里面会冒出很多我之前完全没想到的美好作品。很多参加者会做帮助年迈父母、孩子、家庭、教会小组，或者孩子篮球队的解决方案，这些都非常本地化、非常相关，也非常必要。过去因为软件太贵，她们根本不可能做这些东西，因为它们也许永远不会变成一个上亿美元公司，但现在这已经不重要了。所以我想鼓励更多女性去 build、去 vibe code，让软件创作本身更有多样性，因为我相信每个人对问题都有不同的理解，而我希望大家的声音都能被听见。

Lenny Rachitsky我把 SheBuilds 的网址给大家翻出来了：shebuilds.lovable.app。

Elena Verna这个网站本身就是在 Lovable 上 vibe code 出来的。

Lenny Rachitsky太酷了。

Elena Verna那它算不算最小可行产品？

Lenny Rachitsky最小 lovable 产品。

Elena Verna最小 lovable 产品。

Lenny Rachitsky就是这个。那它什么时候开始？是 12 月 15 号、18 号吗？哦，已经快到了。

Elena Verna对，我们一直在持续办。

Lenny Rachitsky不错。

Elena Verna下一期从 12 月 15 日开始，但后面还会有更多。

Lenny Rachitsky那就现在报名。

Elena Verna我们还计划在国际妇女节做一个超大型活动。如果你能来，欢迎加入。

Lenny Rachitsky很好，所以还是有一点希望的。我不知道你有没有看到我前几天或者今天 tag 你的那条推文。我在看自己最近一期播客视频的表现，排名前四的全都是女性，而且全都是 AI 相关内容，甚至比 Stewart Butterfield、Gamma 的 Grant 都高。也许这是个好兆头。

Elena Verna对，绝对是。我觉得希望很多。我们只要一起努力，确保没有人在这波浪潮里被落下就好。这不是为了阻止那些已经在往前冲的人，而是为了给我们身边的每个人都打开机会。

Lenny Rachitsky好，我也会把那篇文章链接放上去，方便大家更深入理解你在说什么。Elena，在我们进入最后一个问题之前，你还有什么想补充的吗？

Elena Verna还有一点我想说，AI 公司在招聘上也在发生很有意思的变化。我看到的人才画像，和我以前工作过的地方很不一样。市场上一直有一种说法，说新毕业生没有工作了，因为入门级岗位都被自动化了。我其实觉得这说法不太对，尤其是 AI 原生的新毕业生。也就是说，年轻人进入职场时，真的应该懂 AI；而我们学校现在并没有把 AI 教给学生，这其实是另一个必须修的系统性问题，不然我们就是在把年轻人直接推向失败。但我也真的很惊讶于一些新毕业生进来之后能做出什么。Lovable 里现在就有好几个应届生，我从他们身上学到很多。你当然需要有合适的环境，让像我这种“老一代”能认真看见、听见“新一代”，并根据他们的做法去改变自己的工作方式。所以我很建议你把这些新鲜人才招进来，他们可能会有点难管，但他们会给你带来最好的新项目。另一个很有意思的变化是，现在 ex-founder 的需求特别高，尤其是那些真的很有 agency、很能自驱的人。也就是说，以前在大公司体系里不一定最被看重的那些“失败创业者”，现在在很多 AI 公司里反而成了香饽饽。传统上我们不太会优先招的那些人，现在正变成最抢手的资源，这一点我觉得很有意思，也很能说明公司内部文化正在怎么变。

Lenny Rachitsky这其实很让人受鼓舞。你这意思是，如果你是应届生，还是有希望的，不会没工作。

Elena Verna绝对有希望。

Lenny Rachitsky而且你可能还有优势。

Elena Verna对，你得带着这个优势去做。关键就是要带着你已经会的东西，知道 AI 能帮你做到什么，因为很多公司，尤其是传统科技公司，还是在等别人先示范给他们看。自己摸索真的很难，但如果有人先做出来了，你只要看着学、直接复制，就容易多了。

Lenny Rachitsky好，Elena，我们终于来到很短但很刺激的最后问题。因为这是你第四次来了，所以我不问你一堆固定问题了，只问一个。Lovable 在瑞典斯德哥尔摩。你最喜欢、但原本没想到会喜欢斯德哥尔摩的什么？食物、餐厅、城市氛围都行。

Elena Verna当然得说瑞典肉丸。我以前从来不喜欢肉丸，但这里真的太好吃了，所以我一天里总有一餐会吃这个。不过我其实更喜欢这里的环境。

Lenny Rachitsky听起来很好吃。我还没吃过。

Elena Verna对，它们的味道真的不一样。

Lenny Rachitsky而且闻起来像宜家，但又不是那种宜家味的瑞典肉丸。

Elena Verna我确实去过这里的宜家，因为它本来也是一家瑞典公司。它让我感觉像“线下版亚马逊”，真的很震撼。这里的宜家完全是另一个级别。除了食物，斯德哥尔摩本身也很棒：城市特别干净，建筑特别完整，像明信片一样精致。和我去过的大多数大城市比起来，它没那么破旧，真的不太一样。

Lenny Rachitsky太有意思了。听得我都想去吃肉丸了。

Elena Verna对，而且最好夏天来。冬天这里的日照真的很紧张。

Lenny Rachitsky夏天去，对吧？好建议。
Elena，非常感谢你今天来。这期正是我想的样子，谢谢你分享这么多。我知道你还有很多工作要忙，所以特别感谢你抽时间来参加。

Elena Verna谢谢邀请我来，真的很感激。

Lenny RachitskyYou're ahead of growth at Lovable on track to be the fastest or one of the fastest growing companies in history.

Elena VernaWe're over 200 million in ARR. At this point, we're 100 people large, the pace here is insane.

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

Elena VernaI 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.

Lenny RachitskyWhat do you find is actually moving the needle?

Elena VernaOne 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 going to 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?

Lenny RachitskyThe trick is get more people to try it, just ship things you can talk about.

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

Lenny RachitskyToday, 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 $6 billion 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.

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The result, faster iteration, and a shorter path from idea to implementation. Vercel built vO 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. Elena, thank you so much for being here and welcome back to the podcast.

Elena VernaThank you for having me.

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

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

Lenny RachitskyWhat 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 we'll hear in the intro, you're head of growth at Lovable, which no big deal on track to be the fastest or one of the fastest growing companies in history, 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 intro, but just what are some stats you can share about just how things are going Lovable?

Elena VernaSo, we are just a little bit over one year's old since we launched. 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, for us, we've hit over $200 million in annual recurring revenue before we even hit our one-year milestone since being launched. Which is pretty incredible. You, Lenny, actually have a really great 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 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 users too, we already have over eight million users 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, so things are going great and we'll talk about why.

Lenny RachitskyOkay. 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.

Elena VernaYeah, yeah. I think still you're doing pretty well if you have a million ARR in one year. This is one of the once in a lifetime type of 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. In some categories, it might be even faster as we continue evolving technology, but I don't think that it's realistic to expect it out of your business that you're starting right now.

Lenny RachitskyThat is such an important point you're making there, it's so discouraging to founders to hear these stories of getting 200 million. And again, this is ARR. There's a lot of companies, especially in the data labeling space, I've had them all on the podcast, that are 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. Recurring $200 million a year is absurd.

Elena VernaYeah, it is absurd. I really want to make sure that people understand 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 and how it's moving. So, when you're setting yourself as a benchmark, so you know which benchmarks you actually to use, and whether Lovable is the benchmark that you should be using.

Lenny RachitskyCool. I'm going to 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 give people confidence, is this real, this is going to last, this is a really durable business.

Elena VernaWell, I saw Stripe receipts, so it is real, as far as I'm concerned, unless Stripe dashboard is lying to us. But it is money getting deposited in our bank account. But let's talk about who is actually contributing to that number. We do have a really large use case of people 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 some of them are already monetizing it, some of it just using it for other services, or some physical goods, for example, that they're selling. Some of them are just still building. And we monetize on the act of building, so that progression of 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 in terms of the price, but it still takes time. So, we have a lot of founders, whether it's B2C, whether there's B2B, so consumer products, business products, e-commerce, whatever it is. But on the other side, we have a lot of employees within companies using Lovable as well, where they're building internal tools, or they're building prototypes, they're building landing pages. So, that is another use case that is very relevant and quite efficient for us, but then there is a hype and discovery that is happening as well. Because when I think about software, I think about it, I talked to John Cutler actually, and he gave me this framework that is completely stuck in my mind, of software always goes through capabilities stage first, so what is possible to actually create with this?
Then, it needs to transition into value, of how is it that am I going to get value out of this? And then you can start thinking about scaling it, of which aspects of my life and my work that can 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, you constantly need to come back and you need to see what has changed. So, a lot of people use it for personal reasons. I build myself apps, tutoring apps for my kid, so he has to answer questions in order to get some screen time accumulated for him. I build my own portfolio.
I see people doing wonderful things, my favorite story that I always say, there's this man that created a proposal on Lovable. So, his fiance had to answer questions and she had to complete this game, and then at the end there was 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 both conversion and retention rates.

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

Elena VernaYeah. So, retention, really, I look at it in two ways, retention, that it comes as a subscriber retention. So, how much subscribers do we get, and how many of them are we capable of renewing? There's also 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 NDR that is over 100. And then there's actually engagement retention as well, because that is the leading indicator for how your paid retention is going to look like. For paid retention, I know there is so much on the market of, oh, this is a high product, and it's a leaky bucket, and it has really high churn rates.

Although, I shouldn't share, it's not public numbers for us to share actual retention, however, what I can say, it's on par with benchmarks of other B2B SaaS products that I've ever worked at. And I worked with Miro, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, Netlify, Amplitude, and others. So, are we absolutely crushing with paid retention? No. Are we where most of the other companies are? Yes. Our NDR is quite good because when people build, they want to buy more credits to build. So, we're seeing really good 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 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.

Lenny RachitskyThat is incredibly interesting, and I'm optimistic to hear because of the growth rate. Rarely is growth rate this high and retention is on par with great companies.

Elena VernaYeah. And I'll just say too, which is a little bit maybe counterintuitive 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 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 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.

Lenny RachitskyLet'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 a lot of really successful companies. Lovable is growing incredibly well, 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 learned about what it takes to drive growth at a company like Lovable.

Elena VernaYeah. I would say that in any other role that I've come into before, 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 applies. I know a lot 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, I felt very repetitive in a way, 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 doing the same job over and over again. When I started at Lovable, the one thing to me that was very clear is that this company was growing like crazy before I joined.

So, I want to make sure that there's not that much value on what I have even added today, because this company is on the tear, and yes, we're rounding the edges and removing barriers for growth, so we're not standing in our own way, but 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 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 a 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 really get that much hype and adoption around it. Versus with vibe coating, this hype 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 the demand that is coming to us, 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 the really big downfalls of we're not in control of a lot of our growth. 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 to enable as much of that as possible, but the company is moving, we're just hanging on to it as fast as possible, and making sure that we're not going to hit a wall, so to speak, in front of us, and that the wheels are greased, and that all of the pieces are in places. It's like your race car framework that you have as well.
We're really just putting a lot of oil into it, and figuring out what is our engine actually going to be that is going to take us forward. But 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 some of it is very straightforward, okay, this is how you're going to do paid marketing, this is how you're going to do some of the habitual retention, here's the free to pay maybe monetization frameworks that still stand. But the rest of it, honestly, it 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 to the moon and beyond, which I usually be focused on in a scaled business like this.

Lenny RachitskyLet'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?

Elena VernaNot worth it, in growth, most of the people spend most of the time optimizing existing user journeys. So, 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 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's of course the saying of more growth loops does not mean more growth, but at the same time, the market is moving so quickly, you need to stand up a bunch of initiatives 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 in 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, 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 there, by definition, they're innovative.

Lenny RachitskyWhat I'm hearing here is new features. Launching new features, product is one of the bigger growth levers, versus you have a bunch of cool stuff, make it easier to use, increase activation, reduce friction, things like that.

Elena VernaYeah. And for example, we on growth team launched 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, Shopify was open for integration with us, let's go lean into it so people can vibe code their storefronts. That came out of growth, that usually would never come out of growth. Why would growth team ever invest into a core product integration? Or we enabled voice mode for people so they can actually chat with Lovable using their voice, as opposed to only having type. And that's also, it's a feature, it's a core product feature, but we're like, hey, it's going to help people to converse with Lovable more, it's going to increase the engagement.

One area that we've spent very little time in is activation, because usually I spend majority of my time in activation because there's so many awareness things that need to happen, and so many things that we need to smooth out experience for the users in order for them to get through that setup moment, to aha moment, to the habit loop, and here you're just interacting with agent. So, we, at the beginning, we're like, the agent team that we have here is working a lot on it. Why would we go in there 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 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.

Lenny RachitskyOkay, 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 to get people to this aha moment, realize the value of this product, that increases retention and 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...
... basically all it is. And so the impact is to make that agent better at that thing, versus micro-optimize every step.

Elena VernaAnd our agent team spends night and day thinking about it. So I've never been at a company where core team thinks so much about activation, thinks so much about that first generation, thinks so much about reaching a-ha 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 experience all the time.

But I feel a lot more at ease, because everybody's thinking about it and everybody's working on 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 improves the entire lifecycle immediately as opposed to having to only work on that first experience per se.

Lenny RachitskyAnd what you're not saying is, "Don't care about that experience," it's, "The team building that is already obsessed with making that activation experience better and better."

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

Lenny RachitskyAnother lever that I've noticed, especially with Lovable, and I'm seeing it more and more on social media is just founders telling you what's going on. I think this connects really deeply with the new features. Launch 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?

Elena VernaYeah. So one of our biggest strategy is building in public. Building in public, and it's coupled with employee socials, founder-led socials for sure. This is difficult for larger companies. But when you're smaller and you still have a little bit more narrative control with everybody on your team, plus you have so much more trust within the organization, where people are going to say the right things because they understand what actually has happened, that ability to just really quickly deliver the message to the market becomes really important.

Now, we still do the big launches, so we still have everything tiered into tier three, two, one. Tier ones are going to happen as big moments that we're going to really rally as a company behind. And it's going to be something that is meant to step function, change our product market fit, and we're going to 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 fantastic resurrection strategy, because people are like, "Oh, there's more things here. I need to go check it out."
It also works as a great reengagement strategy. So instead of sending newsletters to say, "Here's the market trends or here's the user stories," people are literally logging into their social to say, "Okay, what has Lovable shipped now?" It's like, "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 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 a certain amount of noise that it feels like the product is alive. It's changing every single week. And then there's these big amplifications, turbo boost so to speak, in the race car model, that then go out and they fundamentally create a step function change in that product market fit as a whole. And 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.

Lenny RachitskySounds stressful. This reminds me, I had a... Gaurav, he's the CEO of Mirage. Used to be called Captions, which is a really successful AI video company startup. And they have a policy of you ship a marketable feature every week. That's how their company operates. And it's the same thing, it's just ship things you can talk about.

Elena VernaVelocity 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 into the right. And by the way, this also means that everybody has a little bit of marketer within them. We have very lean product organization. We actually lean on our engineers to do a lot of product work. We call them product engineers, and they have to go and they have to announce the thing that they've shipped. It doesn't just funnel through marketing.

So there is a lot of autonomy, a lot of agency that needs to happen with this type of velocity. Because otherwise, you have to have enormous marketing team to staff that. So it has to come with some roles and responsibilities. Redefinition on the team as well.

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

Elena VernaOn 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 hire the most 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... Yeah, you still have your product marketers, you still have your channel managers. 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 a positioning and messaging, and you can have it for years and create all of the campaigns around it. Now, you have it for three months, and then the product changes. So the cycles here are really, really short. And for smaller changes, because cycles are so short, they spend so much time actually focusing on it as they should.
But 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, because otherwise, again, you'd have to have an 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 not enough people I feel like are freaking out and talking about it, as opposed to moving just in the same direction over and over again. And the changes that I'm seeing is that it has been very clear to me that when you're talking about marketing organic strategy, if you asked me that five years ago, I would've said that's SEO. It's search engine optimization. Go on Google, that's your organic marketing strategy.
If you ask me what's your 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 creator economy doing? Influencer marketing, and across all of the social platforms. That is my organic, which is... That one's 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 it? What are they sharing?
Which is 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.

Lenny RachitskyThat 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?

Elena VernaFor founder socials, our employee socials, X and LinkedIn are fantastic sources. Especially for B2B, because that's where all of the BBWB people are at. But you cannot just have ChatGPT write your copy and post it, you need to show personality. There needs to be humanity that it goes through it. And it's not natural for everybody, and it feels very awkward sometimes to start. But it's important to people to see who is 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. That corporate scrubbing has to completely fall off, which is obviously going to pull in as the company scales. But at least at the beginning, that is your chance to stand out.
And then your customers posting about you. So that word of mouth of 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. 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 superpowers 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. If you aren't a consumer, then Instagram, TikTok are very much a go as well.

Lenny RachitskyThe CEO clearly is an important variable in this, them. In this case, Anton just tweeting, "Here's what's going on Lovable. Here's how fast it's growing. He's something we've learned."

Elena VernaIt is.

Lenny RachitskyWe had the CEO of Gamma on recently, granted, 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 influencer component.

Elena VernaYes, 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 when they actually experience your product. We have a almost unfair advantage, because our product is called Lovable. So by default, we're trying to create absolute lovable experiences. That is a mentality internally. If it's not lovable, we're not going to ship it. And the best way to fix a bug at Lovable is to say, "This is not lovable," and everybody just jumps on it to fix it right there and then. Sprints, no sprints, it doesn't matter, it's getting fixed right now.

So from that perspective, we have that culture already embedded as part of our brand and it's part of our name which helps us a lot. But the point is that you feel that brand through every interaction. 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 feeling of this product is speaking to me. It's like, "It feels something that is unique." It has personality behind it.
So we put all of the brand work actually into our product. When you think about Lovable, 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 those product interactions 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, and it's working decently. It's quite expensive from payback period, 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 from the beginning at Lovable. And a 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 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. Nobody knows what vibe coding is. But you watch 10 seconds of it and you go, "Whew, that's new. Let me go give it a try."

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

Elena VernaI know. My joke is at the end of my Lovable journey whenever... Hopefully it never comes to an end. But at the end I'll be a growth brand person. 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. And I always talk to my team about it, because that is one big lever in our growth story.

Lenny RachitskyYeah, so I think that's 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 got to get right.

Elena VernaYes. Well, 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. 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 the 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 a... I love this move, because I hate nothing more than going to software that is just so painful to use that I lose some brain cells as I'm interacting with it, versus software that I feel I get energy out of. And for Lovable for me, I cannot wait on some of the projects that I have to go and vibe code myself. That's the highlight of my day. I bring in my daughter and I'm like, "Let's go do this." Like, "What do you think that needs to be done?" Because I just get so much energy out of doing it. And that is the feeling you cannot create by looking at it as a utility problem.

Lenny RachitskyThe way I think about it, the way what you're describing is it's almost table stakes have increased, and now it's so easy to build. Now the big differentiator is experience, design, delight.

Elena VernaExactly, 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 engineering, so to speak, utility. And you have to think through every single interaction of, does this communicate our brand or not?

Lenny RachitskySo along those lines, I want to come back to something you talked about, which is launching new features as a huge growth lever. 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 else there you've seen that works well to help avoid just the Frankenstein product that's endless features that you want to tweet about?

Elena VernaYeah. One part of it is not something that you can codify, but it's the type of people that you hire that are going to 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 to grow with. And what do I mean by that best talent? It's not that somebody who has been at really large companies, or somebody that has really 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 deliver more to our customers? And that's very different compared to usually how companies grow where like, "Okay, yeah, the check, check, check. They fit the skillset, let's bring them in." But is that passion, is that fire behind it?
And then the second piece is that we work really hard on just addressing what's 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. 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. I'm going to own it all the way from start to finish. Those are very important, something that we screen for and something that we look for in our culture.
And then you just see... What you want to do is up to you. So there's very little supervision that happens on the ground. Now, we all have goals and some of the big launches that we're all marching towards, but some of the work that is completely up to developers, up to 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 will get through it. We are not here to just win all the time.

Lenny RachitskyOn 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?

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

But second of all, we do a lot of trials for people. So trial work to see them in action.

Lenny RachitskyYeah, a work trial.

Elena VernaA work trial to see them in action for a couple of days. We pay them as part of the work trial. We have some probation periods that we start people on, because this company is not for everybody. As I said in the podcast in the beginning, the pace here is insane. I went on vacation for the first time. So I've been here for six months. I went on vacation 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. That pace is just not for everybody, and that's okay. Because I'm a 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. We can create clarity out of chaos because it is absolutely chaotic otherwise. And if we start to look for people that can explain it to us, that's the only way that we can succeed.

Lenny RachitskyThe way you described going on vacation and it feeling very different, it feels like when you don't see your kid for a few days and they're just completely different. You're like, "How did you grow up so fast in three days?"

Elena VernaYeah, exactly. Exactly.

Lenny RachitskyLet me try to summarize the growth levers that you're finding are working, and I'm trying to think about this from the perspective of an AI startup trying to think about, "Hey, shoot, how do we grow faster? What has Lovable figured out?" So it feels like number one is just 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. You can build something lovable that nobody actually cares about, that there isn't much money going to this space. There's no tide pushing it forward, and it won't work.

Elena VernaI call it minimum lovable product. It shouldn't be minimal viable product anymore. Viability is left back in 2010s. Now it's minimal lovable product. That's the only thing that matters.

Lenny RachitskyI love how these AI tools are letting us... PMs have always had these smoke door test, or what's the term? Or it's not a real product. Paint the door.

Elena VernaPaint the door. Paint the door.

Lenny RachitskyPaint the door, there it is.

Elena VernaYeah.

Lenny RachitskyYeah. 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 more full-featured.

Elena VernaYeah. Well, it's the feedback cycle. It's just completely collapsed. You can go from idea to some product that is functioning to user feedback within a day if you want to, 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 to where... I have a full-time vibe coder on my team. He's amazing. So he wanted to create videos. He did a bunch of designs for it too. It 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 lifecycle.

Before, it would just take so many more steps from user research to the design sprints, to prioritizing an engineering roadmap, to build something minimal and viable to actually test to little long testing cycles. Now it's just like, "Boom, let's go." It could have taken us a day, we just decided to take a couple of weeks to get all of the video pieces correct.

Lenny RachitskyI saw you launch this on LinkedIn. To me, it looked like a full product launch. It is interesting to hear this is just a prototype.

Elena VernaYeah, it's minimum lovable product.

Lenny RachitskyMinimum lovable product. Okay, I got to ask you, you said you had a full-time vibe coder. What the heck is this? Is this an engineer? Is this something else? What is a full-time vibe coder?

Elena VernaGreat question. This is a new job role that is actually popping up here and there. It's absolutely fascinating to watch this development, because I see vibe coding as a skill being added to a lot of job descriptions. For designers, for product managers, for marketers, which I think is a really interesting shift. Finally, Excel can move over. We have a new skill to add that is super empowering and not-
... it's super empowering and I'm not 30 years old, but vibe coder, so 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 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 user of all of the vibe coding tools, Lovable included.

And 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 woman only hackathon, SheBuilds. I vibe coded the first version of that site and submission process for applications, and then other people came in and started building on top of it. But I vibe coded, but then 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 product. So we connected on social and I'm like, "Would you join us?" And he joined us first part-time. I'm like, "You're bringing so much value."
For example, we partnered with Shopify, and he created a bunch of Shopify Lovable templates, vibe coded for us. And it's been so helpful to have somebody like that that is just pushing 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. I really enjoy having that role, which I've never had before in my life and in my team.

Lenny RachitskyI'm not surprised. 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?

Elena VernaI vibe code myself so I would put that as even as a skill on my resume now. It took me a while to figure out, by the way, everybody's like, "Oh, you just go in and it all happens automatically."

It takes you a couple of iterations, couple of projects until you know, okay, 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 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 our header, so to speak. And 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 on your team. It's just they're not, to me, he's part technical, but they can be non-technical if they're really good.

Lenny RachitskyThat is fascinating.

Let me go back to summarize just real quick the growth levers, I want to move in a somewhat different direction. Things that help Lovable grow. One is just build something that blows your socks off, as you said. I love these phrases out here. The second is 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 embedded within the product team 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. It feels like those are the main growth levers. Is there anything else that I missed?

Elena VernaCommunity. I think community is really important here because 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. I would say community also amplifies that word of mouth. It amplifies all of the social posting. It amplifies retention mechanisms for you as well. The 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. And it has hundreds of thousands of members and it's 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 program now as well of people doing it. 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 in into somebody's community is quite important as well. And then there's another one, unless you have a question on community.

Lenny RachitskyNo, keep going.

Elena VernaAnother one is 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's an LLM pass-through cost that is coming through. And a lot of, especially traditional tech companies I see are gating AI immediately behind the paywall because they're sitting on a really cush, high margin profile, and the moment that you start giving AI away for free, you're cutting into those margins 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. But by the way, I don't just mean freemium. Freemium to me is just a baseline. If you're in the new category, you need to let people explore what it is free and get that initial wow moment.

It's not aha moment, by the way. It doesn't need to be aha 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? 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. We give them away as candy and we basically track them over our LLM costs on freemium and giveaways as our marketing costs, and it doesn't go into our something we need to reduce 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.

Lenny RachitskyOkay, I want to hear more about the growth secret sauce. That is extremely interesting. 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 socials, the trick is get more people to try it. And it's such a new, crazy thing. Why would I pay money? Why would I even go take the effort to try sign up for an account? 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.

Elena VernaExactly. And again, this is very uncomfortable sometimes for companies that A, either used to really... AI companies have lower profile of margins. That's absolutely true. To find an AI company with 80%, 90% margin profile is absolutely impossible, let's be real. We're all sitting somewhere in a 40% 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 going to try it, or you're going to 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 the 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 going to 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 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 giving product away as much as possible, but it is something that is more and more becoming something that I see that is absolutely non-negotiable.

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

Elena VernaYeah.

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

Elena VernaRight.

Lenny RachitskyAnd this also explains why 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.

Elena VernaYes and no. I'm only going to say no is because, so take a look at Lovable, we're over 200 million in ARR. At this point, we're 100 people large so our headcount costs are very low.

Lenny RachitskyWait, let me just make sure people hear that. 200 million ARR, I didn't realize 100 people work at Lovable.

Elena VernaYes. And six months ago, we had 30 people working at Lovable so we triple. So for us, it's a really big deal. We tripled our company size.

Lenny RachitskySuch a big company now.

Elena VernaWe're going to quadruple it by the end of, yeah, I know. We're big boy and girls now. But for perspective of the headcount costs, it's minimal. 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 low double digits to be fair because it's not why we're successful. It's amplifying our success and it's helping us reach new audiences. We don't have really large sales team, we have only a couple sales folks, and they're just starting to ramp up their enterprise efforts so we don't have really big enterprise demand gen costs as well.

From that perspective, if you look at the equation and you say, "Well, okay, if you're not going to do a lot of paid marketing, if you're not going to 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 you don't have big costs, so you can spend it on product."
That is the beautiful part because when we are giving our product away to our customers, we're not competing with other companies in that space, because they're just going to use Lovable in their hackathon. We're on their own, and we're not competing on AdWords or in paid Google where everybody's buying real estate for eyeballs. From that perspective, I think about it more as a shift of where we spend in costs. And honestly, it's more efficient way to do paid marketing almost in a sense 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.

Lenny RachitskyThat is an incredibly important point you're making there. It's not like you're generating an incredible amount of revenue, so there is money 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, you're not spending tons of money on paid ads. This is just an amazing way to get more people to use it, so it's like a marketing cost.

Elena VernaThis is product-led growth.

Lenny RachitskySupercharge.

Elena VernaTo the max, 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.

Lenny RachitskySo fascinating. What a wild world we're living in. Free stuff for everyone.

Elena VernaYes. I mean, it's great for consumers. This is a great time to be a consumer. You have so many options. 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 the power should be with consumer always, but with software, power has not been with consumer previously because we were forced to use towards 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 from the consumers can be very picky and the one that serves the best will win.

Lenny RachitskyAnd I think again, it's important to highlight. This is not some kind of VC subsidized bubble-ish sort of thing. There is a lot of money being generated that you are spending to help it grow faster. It's not some kind of, we're just raising more money to give away more money. You're actually making your own money. It's not driven by VC money. Obviously, it helps.

Elena VernaI can't comment on specific margin details for us, but at the same time, the money that we're raising on VC is for future development and hardening our business, not because we will not be able to survive without it.

Lenny RachitskyAwesome. Okay, great segue too. I want to talk about product-market fit in competition. You have this really interesting post that I don't think people grasp yet, which is that product-market fit is no longer this, we've done it. Product-market fit and we're up into the right. Now we just grow, go, grow. Now we hire salespeople, it's going to be great. 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.

Elena VernaI'll first start with 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. 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, depending on how good 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 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 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, in AI technology of what LLM is capable of doing changes still very rapidly with new model release, with each new model release. I think we'll stabilize at some point and then it's going to become more marginal, but we're not there yet. So every three months or so, every single AI LLM provider creates a step function change in what is possible with that LLM. And when you have this new possibility in just an underlying technology that opens up in front of you, then it creates another ceiling of what is possible to build on top of it.
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 make a bet and then it's the LLM to catch up because when that model releases, you already need to have that functionality available. 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. The product can leap to the new expectations, but let's not 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 the deep thinking mode, and how deeply you can go into answering questions and what is capable of building on top of it.
Consumer perception has never changed this fast too. It's this unprecedented time of consumers all of a sudden in a month saying, "Oh, it's not doing this yet. 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 been changed yet so it would take a long time. We're 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 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 $200 million company, and we're not solely focused on marketing and sales because we still have to recapture our product-market fit.
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 the team that is capable of doing both on ongoing basis. Now, I think every AI company is on this product-market fit treadmill. Hopefully that treadmill speed slows down. If not, I think we're going to come up with crazy things of what this LLM and AI will be able to do if it's going to continue at this cusp, but 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 blitz of growth, not these long year long commitments.

Lenny RachitskyWhat 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 assistant over almost a billion, I think monthly active users, basically synonymous with AI around the world, with Gemini 3 launching, their market share just started to dip really quickly. I think they lost six something percent in a week. And so even OpenAI, ChatGPT, the original, the one that everyone uses constantly is in danger.

Elena VernaIt's like 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've said, "You're crazy." And now that's the reality that we live in. And I don't know, it's fascinating to world in. What a time to be alive.

Lenny RachitskyTime to be alive and very stressful, but the prize at the end is massive. That's why this is worth doing, not just monetarily, but just the impact it's going to have on the world, the way we people build and ship.

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

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

Elena VernaYeah. Bangaly wrote a really wonderful article. It was many years ago at this point on adjacent user theory in that your product-market fit expansion when you're in no growth stages, the biggest opportunity for you to go after is this what you call the adjacent user, which are just outside of your core user. They have 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 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 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 going to be a gap in the space where we actually going to alienate the latent majority because we're so hyper focused on just staying top of mind and top capabilities on the pioneers. But I don't know the right answer here, because without the pioneers, 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? Maybe this is a fruitless concern, but it's just something that I think about because at this stage we should be working on adjacent users. I would argue maybe OpenAI definitely started to do that with how many people they have on their platform, but not most of the other AI companies.

Lenny RachitskyI completely see what you're thinking there. A brand could just become known as that's just for startups and prototyping and it's not for serious work.

Elena VernaYeah, or it's for techies. It's for tech people. It never actually enters the people outside of our little bubble that we live in.

Lenny RachitskyWe touched on this a little bit of just 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-
... are thinking about, "Should I join a Lovable? Should I join a Cursor? Should I just go work at Google?"

Not to throw them under the bus or anything. Although Google, very, very successful in AI now, maybe a less AI-focused company.

Elena VernaI 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 distribute 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 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 even before joining Lovable, when I kept seeing AI, I'm like, "My gosh, I'm so tired of seeing AI everywhere. Is it really changing the world? Is it really changing the way people work?"

And 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've made that leap so fast unless I joined Lovable. If I would've 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, "What can AI do here versus where do I add value versus in a traditional sense of work?" because I start with my own value and then I augment it with AI. And here, the mindset has completely shifted.
Now, I don't think AI is replacing everybody's job, so please don't look at it as that cliche saying. I actually often call AI as 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 and more definition and a really high specialty of things, because in AI companies, they're all fairly small, so you'll have to generalize quite a bit and have a lot of ownership, all 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.

Lenny RachitskyYeah. 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.

Elena VernaI 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, but I put in boundaries for myself. I know when I need time off because I know when my brain starts to overheat, so to speak. But I also know that work is my hobby and it's my passion, and this is the best work of my life that I'm doing right now. There's no other place that I'd rather be 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 I mean, let's face it, I don't think anybody has work-life balance, regardless of a company that they work at, even at Google or 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.

Lenny RachitskyI'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 have work-life balance to get sleep, to spend time with your kids and family.

Elena VernaYou just have to protect it 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 the piece that helps you actually get to hit those expectations of outcomes that you need to do and the velocity. But I'm very protective of my personal time with kids. Why did I have children if I'm not going to spend time with them? So those are part of the non-negotiables that I bring along with me in every single work.

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

Elena VernaSo first of all, I would not think about it as a work-life balance. There's no such thing as balance. So 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, "I can't make it," or, "I won't be there. I need to be here with my family," or, "Today I need to cancel my day. My kid is sick and he needs me, and I need to take him to the doctor."
So I think that just making in the moment, in every day, when 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, my health, my workout schedule, my kids, my family, my husband, and just my downtime because I know that I'm most creative once I have separation from work, because then I come in with 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.

Lenny RachitskyThat is really great advice. 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 in product is going to be. So you mentioned a little bit about how you're always talking to AI, asking questions. Is there any other kind of anecdotes of just 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?

Elena VernaYeah. I mean, we use Lovable at Lovable a lot. All of our internal tools are built on Lovables. We actually have our first hackathon on Lovable happening next week, where our entire company is just going to take full day to vibe code and see what we actually have happen. We prototype everything on Lovable. So our specs, yeah, we do still have a written spec, but it always accompanied by a lovable prototype that everybody can interact with and to click around with and provide feedback. And everybody bunches in and also does some edits if they have any better ideas.

So I create mocks on Lovable. So for example, we need to make some pricing changes, or pricing page changes. I take a screenshot of our pricing page. I go to Lovable as I 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 they take it from there.
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. Sometimes it has crazy ideas. Sometimes it was like, "Yeah, this is nothing new to me." So it's not interesting, but it gets me thinking and it gives me a look at the different angles.
And 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 Wispr Flow a lot because I feel like I have no time to type anymore. So I just talk to my phone and talk to my laptop all the time in order to do it. But we're even thinking about all of the customer support automations that are done through AI. Every single aspect of what we do, question is asked, what can AI do here first, and then how we can add ourselves into the equation.
But Lovable for us, having unlimited credits at Lovable is a pretty awesome perk, I have to say. I sometimes have to pinch myself. I'm like, "I get paid to vibe code." It looks so fun.

Lenny RachitskyFeel like that engineer, that vibe code engineer, he's actually getting paid to vibe code.

Elena VernaHe has my dream job. I want his job.

Lenny RachitskyYeah, exactly. Exactly.

Elena VernaYeah, I got into the wrong line profession here.

Lenny RachitskyOh, man. Okay. Is there anything else about Lovable? Because what I think about, actually, I interviewed the Perplexity founders back in the day years ago. Before we talked to anyone for advice, we first asked ChatGPT, and I was just like, "That is the most insane thing I've ever heard. How can you possibly work that way?"

And now that's how everyone works. And so I'm curious, I don't know how Anton works. Is there anyone else that's just way in the future of here's how things might be?

Elena VernaSo for me, especially for product and growth, and even marketing in some capacity, when I have an idea in my head, it sounds so freaking cool. And sometimes I put it on paper and it's like, "Ah, we need to do it."

And then I go and try to vibe code it, and I'm like, "Oh, I don't see the magic anymore," or I can't envision it anymore.
Or sometimes I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah," and there's more, there's more. So to me, it actually has helped really complete the ideation process for me quite a bit, because then I actually try to go and build it, and it breaks down some of the elements of what's important, what's not. So it's taking me on a product development lifecycle so much further down. And then it creates a much better communication vehicle with my engineers too, because I then can tell them exactly what's important and whatnot.
So to me, it's been great because sometimes we envision things that are so much better than the reality. And before, until it hands it off to design, designers would do it for us and try to make it awesome versus I often stop my ideas in tracks super early on without pushing it forward. Versus other times I might've pushed it for too far too long, even through design queue or even pitching to leadership. And I find that very powerful because it calibrates me really quickly.

Lenny RachitskyAwesome. Okay. Last question. I want to talk about something that you've written about that I think it's a really important topic, something that we should surface, is you wrote this post called I'm Worried About Women In Tech. Talk about what you're seeing here, what you're noticing, what you think might be going in the wrong direction.

Elena VernaYeah. There's actually conflicting data points about how women... You're talking about women, right?

Lenny RachitskyYeah, women in tech.

Elena VernaWomen in tech? Yeah, yeah.

Lenny RachitskyYeah.

Elena VernaThere's conflicting data points about how women are keeping up with AI technology and wave, because there's a bunch of reports that has been done that show massive gap between women adopting AI versus men adopting AI, which points the story that men are just widening the gap of accessibility for technology. And whoever's adopting AI right now is getting paid the most, gets the most opportunities. I mean, we're seeing insane acqui-hires right now, where people are getting paid more for their talent than for the companies that they've created. And that's a really interesting trend that is occurring, and a lot of it is fueled on this wave of AI.

And women are not really present there. If you can think about one million-dollar acqui-hire that has been in the news that is a woman, I can't think of one. If you look at AI companies and their CEOs, most of it is men. If you look at the company's composition in AI companies, it's mostly men. To me, this really came to the head of when I came to Lovable, and I'm like, "It's pink, it's purple brand. It's a heart. It's lovable." I'm like, "I'm sure this is where it's 50/50 men versus a woman."
And although we don't collect this information, but just through third-party autofill, we saw it's like 20% at most. And I'm like, "What is happening? Not again. Why is this, again, not being adopted by a woman?"
And obviously I don't know all of the answers. I think that this is early on that we can shortcut it. And by the way, I also don't want to put this as a indication that men are to blame because I think men are doing wonderful job really spearheading the horizons and showing us what's possible and leading the charge. I'm just afraid that so many women are stuck in that latent majority that is just not catching up. And my worry is that it's going to affect the hireable talent. It's going to step us back again in the composition of the workplace, of the diversity. And maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't, like whichever side that you sit on. But I think that it needs to be built for everybody in the world, and for that, it needs to be built by a representative sample of people that are behind the product as well.
So I just find it fascinating that even when the barrier to building has been lowered versus you don't need computer science degree, which I appreciate there's not that many women that are getting. We're still seeing the gaping gap on the adoption between genders, which, I don't know, there's something very frustrating about that.

Lenny RachitskyYeah. The thing that struck with me from your post is there has been a lot of progress being made in the last decade, and now AI is just kind of turning it all back, turning it all around.

Elena VernaHopefully not. I think that we're early on enough that we can bridge the gap. I think sometimes women just need space and ability to discover it, and that's what we're doing at Lovable. We have this initiative, SheBuilds, where we create a hackathon for women only and we give them unlimited access to Lovable for 48 hours, and they come together as a community and they build together. And there's beautiful things that start to come out of it, which I've never anticipated before. But so many women in that hackathon for us build help with their elderly parents or with their kids or with the household or for their church group or for the kids' basketball team solutions, which have hyper-local, hyper-relevant, very needed for what they need in their life and something that was never been able to build before because of how expensive software was, because it would never going to become potentially a hundred-million-dollar companies, but it also doesn't need to be anymore.

So I just want to bring women to build more and vibe code more so we can have more diversity in software that is even created because I think that we all have a unique take on what problems that we can solve, and I want everybody's voices to be heard.

Lenny RachitskyI'll give the URL for SheBuilds. I pulled it up while you're talking, shebuilds.lovable.app.

Elena VernaIt's fully vibe coded on Lovable.

Lenny RachitskyThat's so cool.

Elena VernaIs there a minimum viable product?

Lenny RachitskyMinimal Lovable product.

Elena VernaMinimal Lovable product.

Lenny RachitskyThere it is. So when is this happening? Is this December 15th, 18th? Oh, yeah, it's coming up.

Elena VernaYeah, we're running it constantly.

Lenny RachitskyCool.

Elena VernaSo our next cohort starts December 15th, but we're going to have more.

Lenny RachitskyNow or never. Sweet.

Elena VernaWe're planning a massive one on International Women's Day. So that's the one that if you can, come join us.

Lenny RachitskyAwesome. Okay, so some glimmer of hope. I don't know if you saw this tweet where I tagged you the other day, or maybe it was today. I was looking at my most recent podcast video performance, and the top four are all women and they're all AI-oriented. And they're above Stewart Butterfield, founder of Slack, above Gamma's CEO, Grant, so maybe a glimmer of hope.

Elena VernaYeah, absolutely. I think there's lots of glimmers of hope. I think we can just all lean in and make sure that nobody's left behind in this wave. And that's not to stop people that are marching ahead. This is just to open up opportunities for everybody around us.

Lenny RachitskyAwesome. And we'll link to that post if people want to get a deeper perspective, what you're saying. Elena, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Is there anything else you want to remind people of before we get to your one-question lightning round?

Elena VernaI guess the only other thing that I will share is for AI companies when it comes to hiring. It's really interesting, also, kind of the shift in the type of personas that end up being hired that I see. For me, at least it's quite different compared to anywhere that I worked before. And that is, there's this narrative going in the market always that new hires, sorry, new grads have no jobs in the market left because all of the entry-level jobs are automated.

I actually think that's quite false, because new grads, especially AI-native new grads... So it's very important for kids that are entering into the, I shouldn't say kids, young adults that are entering into the workforce that they really know AI, which there's another really big issue that our schools are not teaching AI students. So this is something else that we need to fix as a category, because otherwise we're literally setting up our young for a complete failure. But I think it's incredible to see some of those new graduates come in and what they're capable of doing.
We have multiple new graduates at Lovable that are working, and I learned so much from them. And you need to obviously have the right atmosphere where people with experience, like a old guard like me, that can look at the new guard and really hear them and see them and really change the way that I operate based on how they do things. So make sure that you bring some of that fresh talent that doesn't understand any of the baggage that we came from and that can really look at the future in technology and what can unlock from a completely new lens. So highly recommend putting those into your team as little fireballs that are going to be sometimes hard to contain but can start the best initiatives for you forward.
And then it's also interesting that there's a really high demand for ex-founders now, for those people that truly have a lot of agency and high autonomy. So instead of just having people that have been working in the corporate world, the failed startup founders are now hot demand for a lot of these AI companies. So these personas that we traditionally would not prioritize in companies to hire are now becoming the hottest commodity and the highest-going talent, which I think is fascinating and is the wonderful thing that is changing how the culture inside operates.

Lenny RachitskyThat is really interesting and really empowering, just this idea that if you need grad, there's hope. You're not going to be out of a job.

Elena VernaAbsolutely. Absolutely.

Lenny RachitskyAnd you might have an advantage. Yeah.

Elena VernaYou have to lead with that. That's the thing. You have to lead with the things that you are capable of achieving, knowing what you have with AI, because that is a lot of people. Especially in traditional tech or in more traditional companies, they're looking for somebody to show them because it's really hard to figure it out on your own versus coming in and seeing and then copying.

Lenny RachitskyWell, Elena, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Because it's your fourth time, I'm not going to ask you all the questions I always ask you. So I'm just going to ask you one question. So Lovable is based in Stockholm, Sweden. I'm curious, just what's something you love about Stockholm that you weren't expecting? Is there a food, a restaurant? I don't know, something.

Elena VernaWell, you always have to say Swedish meatballs. I mean, I've never liked meatballs before, and now it's so good here. It's so good. So every time, one of my meals here throughout the day involves it. But I actually really love their-

Lenny RachitskyIt sounds really good. I actually haven't yet.

Elena VernaYeah. I don't know, they just taste different and they're-

Lenny RachitskyAnd they smell like the Ikea. It's not like the Ikea Swedish meatballs.

Elena VernaWell, I have been to Ikea here, because that is a Swedish company too. It reminded me of in-person Amazon. It was absolutely incredible. Ikea here is next level. But food, Swedish meatballs for sure. Honestly, how clean the city is, it's kind of incredible. The architecture, everything is so built out. It's picture perfect like it's on a card. I don't know. It's different compared to most of the large cities that I've been at that are little bit more worn down.

Lenny RachitskySo fun. Makes me want to visit and get some meatballs.

Elena VernaYeah, and visit during the summer. Otherwise, the daylight here-

Lenny RachitskyDuring the summer? Okay.

Elena Verna... is really tight during the winter.

Lenny RachitskyOkay. Good tip. Okay. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, maybe learn more? And how can listeners be useful to you?

And how to be useful to me? Really pressure test my thinking because so many things are changing right now. I'm honestly not even sure myself of what is a pattern versus what is just a data point. So I'd love to just engage in as many conversations as possible and hear your opinions because that will help us as an industry just understand what is actually happening and makes more sense out of this whole thing.
Elena, thank you so much for being here. This was amazing, everything I wanted it to be. Thank you for sharing. I know you have a lot of work to do, so I appreciate you making time for this and for joining us.

Elena VernaThank you for having me. Really appreciate you.

Lenny RachitskyBye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.