Elena Verna: How Lovable Launches Product & Hacks Social to Go Viral

Growth is a trust problem now. Every

single employee at Lovable expected to ship code to production.

>> Today we have one of the best heads of growth in the world, Elena Verer, head of growth at Lovable. They are now at over $350 million in ARR. Their latest

round put them at over $6.6 billion.

They are one of the fastest growing companies in the world. This is an incredible breakdown inside their growth machine.

>> For any founder, in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth is a death trap. Unless you've been in the business for 5 years plus, you do

not know your LTV. Period. Do not lock people in subscription as the only way to monetize you.

>> Do you think lovable removes the need for Figma and the design process?

>> Ready to go.

Elena, it is so great to have you back on the show. It's been a while since we did this. So, thank you so much for

did this. So, thank you so much for joining me again.

>> Yes, thank you for having me again. What

has been a couple of years at this point?

>> Yeah, it's been a couple of years. I've

actually aged about 15, but it's only been technically two and a half. So, you

look younger and I I look 15 years older. I I I want to just start with a

older. I I I want to just start with a really hard and unfair question, which is we as investors feel it. The sands

and the technological winds are moving faster than ever. What are the single biggest ways that growth is changing in a world of AI?

>> I have couple of ways that I think it's changing. Thing number one is that as

changing. Thing number one is that as software creation is becoming democratized and functionality is becoming available to anyone to build whether you buy it from

somebody whether you build it yourself and honestly doesn't matter anymore. If

you want to actually sell software and grow your business growth is a trust problem. Now, who do I trust to actually

problem. Now, who do I trust to actually purchase it from? Who do I trust to use it from? Do I believe in the team that

it from? Do I believe in the team that is building behind it? Because

otherwise, I'm just going to go create my own if I don't believe that they're going to continue worry about my needs and they're going to continue evolving it. So, to me, there's just so much

it. So, to me, there's just so much behind not just tactics, growth tactics, growth hacking, channel optimizations.

It's literally winning trust of your consumer to have them vouch for you, to have them believe in you, to stand behind you as you're building your business. And then the second thing,

business. And then the second thing, which kind of goes along with the trust thing, is that it's no longer about the software functionality that you're trying to grow. You're really trying to

create um what I call minimum lovable product out of every single little thing that you touch. because software is now almost being judged by the emotion that

it can invoke with a human as opposed to just core basic functionality that it can do. I actually almost compare it to

can do. I actually almost compare it to um Moslov's pyramids of needs like the bottom the layer of just like okay it works. Okay, I can kind of believe that

works. Okay, I can kind of believe that it'll do security and all of the other pieces. Now I need to be able to connect

pieces. Now I need to be able to connect to it. And we as humans always want to

to it. And we as humans always want to connect with something. We don't like utilities. We don't like tools. And the

utilities. We don't like tools. And the

more software starts to have actually some sort of personality that helps us trust it to uh is almost becoming like a minimum bar to in order to even kickstart the growth. And then the last

thing I would say in terms of growth h uh tactics themselves all of the performance marketing or like the optimizations are just becoming something is getting automated pretty

quickly. It's actually fascinating to

quickly. It's actually fascinating to watch. So to me a growth work now is

watch. So to me a growth work now is trying something new, trying to be innovative, creating these really

uh once in a lifetime campaigns so to speak to try to win the eyeballs and trust of your customers. That's all I'm doing and by coding all day long and

trying to find the ways to really capture the hearts and minds of our customers, not just optimizing pricing port into pricing page into oblivion. I

I want to just go through a couple of elements there. You mentioned trust

elements there. You mentioned trust being so optimal in a world where trust is primary. What becomes more important

is primary. What becomes more important as a channel and what becomes less important?

What becomes more important is your product as a channel where you actually earn that trust that drives that word of mouth that drives that likability and

what becomes less important is um something uh across marketing sales like more old traditional techniques that we would use to try to drive growth.

>> Is SEO as a channel dying? We had Aaron from Monday on the show and he said that there was like 10% decline in their conversion on SEO since they did Google AI.

>> Yeah, there's decline but you have to understand like it's so enormous. Even

if it's dying, it will take years for it to die. Like I'm not going to make a

to die. Like I'm not going to make a prediction of whether SEO is dying. It's

declining. The habits are changing absolutely. But is SEO still fruitful?

absolutely. But is SEO still fruitful?

Abso fuckingutely. Like you you still have to invest in SEO if you want to have the baseline of growth. But is SEO going to be the reason that you're going to win in your business? I don't think so. It's just something that you have to

so. It's just something that you have to do. This is not going to be the reason

do. This is not going to be the reason why you're going to stand out and win.

>> How important is Anton's brand to lovable's user acquisition? You know, I think Anton's amazing. Every new hire, he does the picture with them or maybe senior hire, but he does the picture with them. I think it's brilliant. And

with them. I think it's brilliant. And

he's so mastered the founder brand. How

important is his founder brand to net new user acquisition? I think that lovable is where it is right now because

of the founder socials that Anton has really leaned into and has done at the beginning. How important is his brand

beginning. How important is his brand right now to existing success less important because we've diversified away from it and we have other channels in which we're growing. Our users are very

active. Our community is very strong. We

active. Our community is very strong. We

have a lot of user generated content. Um

we we have other people on the team including me that are pushing our brand along as well. But at the beginning was he the reason that lovable spiked I

think at first and got to the traction that allowed it to scale where it is right now. I think so. Uh but I I I have

right now. I think so. Uh but I I I have no way to prove it but like looking at the data and looking at the early traction that was it.

>> Welcome to being a venture capitalist making bold statements with no data to back them up. And that that is our job.

Um when we look at that, we have so many growth leaders, marketing leaders who are like, okay, we have a channel that works. Do we double down? How do we

works. Do we double down? How do we think about channel makeup when we're thinking about growth? What lessons do you have on when to concentrate, when to

diversify, how many to diversify to? Was

it right to diversify from socials, from Anton? Love your thoughts.

Anton? Love your thoughts.

>> Yes. So when I say diversify from Anton, that's not to say that Anton is not a meaningful channel anymore. I'm just

saying we have other channels running in parallel. So he's not the only one that

parallel. So he's not the only one that he was at the beginning. And that's a really big difference because he's still growing his channel and it's still very important. We're just not it's not we're

important. We're just not it's not we're not relying on it as the only uh single failure point. Second of all, I would

failure point. Second of all, I would say that if I was any company, I would really heavily invest in social, but not in social in the traditional sense of

you uh posting from your company account or hiring an intern who is your social man media manager that is posting some puns on Twitter here and there. I really

mean where you start building in public and you encourage your employees to build in public and grow their social followings and really reach your

customer through your own team's voices.

I think that is the channel that so many companies underestimate how important and how powerful it is, how much trust it builds, how much it unites people behind you in your mission because they

see the people that build the company and they want to connect to other people. We're with our little lizard

people. We're with our little lizard brains still want that connection like we earn for it. And in the world where we're bombarded with marketing messages everywhere we turn, be able to see and

be able to connect is what it's all about. That trust piece that I'm like

about. That trust piece that I'm like circling back over and over again. So I

think it's first of all I wouldn't for any founder I would suggest really deploy founder le social employee le social build in public recruit people to

be your biggest fans to be your uh cheerleader so to speak and then you can start thinking about okay where else do I want to be do I want to buy a billboard do I want to invest into paid

marketing do I want to do this do I want to do that but first organic strategy that everybody every startup should be going into is founder le socials >> build in public for your own employees.

If I'm a founder listening, what what do I actually take from that? I should go in tomorrow and say, "Hey guys, you do amazing work. Why don't you actively

amazing work. Why don't you actively share the work that you're doing and how you do it and build your own personal brand to which many founders will go, why would I encourage people to promote

themselves when they'll then get hired and taken in a very competitive labor market?"

market?" Well, I think that okay, I have a couple of things against that statement. Number

one, if you think that your employees are so easil easily swayed to go somewhere else just if they get reached out by the right company, what are you doing? Like there is some really bad

doing? Like there is some really bad cultural issues in your company where whether it's motivation based whether it's just like ambitions based with who you hiring because you're hiring just

warm body to be in there that whenever it's given an extra dollar somewhere else or a better logo somewhere else it's just going to run. So I would look at your recruiting practices if that's actually your worry that people are

going to be stolen if they're going to be known. Second of all, if you can use

be known. Second of all, if you can use your company to help people build a better social presence that they can use to do marketing for your company, then

who cares if they build a personal brand in the meantime? They become your biggest marketing agent, the most powerful marketing agent. And

encouraging that, I think you have to look at it as a marketing channel that you almost uh invest into. And by the way, you get two for the price of one.

you get for example an engineer and a marketer at the same time who wouldn't want that as opposed to seeing oh well if they rotate this way then I'm going to lose it on one way or the other are

very multifunctional people we can do multiple things and I think a little bit of an encouragement and obviously leading the way by showing example goes really far

>> does function matter at all anymore I know that sounds strange but growth is marketing and growth is also product and like I don't really see the divide between any function today.

>> No, there's a massive blurring of lines and that's been happening for a long time. I mean, every product manager had

time. I mean, every product manager had to do their own analytics for the last decade. Every marketer was expected to

decade. Every marketer was expected to build some landing pages and do some no code solutions for the last decade too.

I think we've been going in this direction for a long time, but the line of the blurriness is accelerating. like

the speed of the blur is accelerating and what I see >> how you hire like if you're hiring for a growth role today how what >> I think that there's still a path to

hire hey there is a generalist and then there is a specialist uh so somebody kind of like jack of all trades at the kitchen sink of all of the problem solving those people are very powerful especially very early in company stages

as you start to grow and you actually say okay these are the channels that are really working for me I really need to hire specialists that truly can fine-tune every single channel and get like the squeeze the last 5 10% out of it. So you

still need specialists and like SEO specialist that's still a thing. It's

very much still a thing and uh there's need for that. However, everybody now is also expected to do everybody else's job in some capacity at least on the average

level. So the level of the capabilities

level. So the level of the capabilities that all of us do has increased. So for

example, I now ship code to production.

I have never done that before. But I

also go and I ship my own apps and run my own campaigns completely without anybody's support. I build apps. I go

anybody's support. I build apps. I go

out there. I create uh noise around it.

I drive engagement to it. It's part of like all all of the growth works to me.

I write copy. I make prototypes to for our engineering team that that is designing it. Sometimes design shits all

designing it. Sometimes design shits all over it. Sometimes they say good job.

over it. Sometimes they say good job.

You can go through it. All I'm saying is like I'm doing all of this now myself versus 10 years ago I would say I was very specialized and more on more narrow lane and that is expectation to me for

every single employee. Every single

employee at lovable expected to ship code to production. Every single

employee is expected to build their own satellite apps or to build their own products or even have a side gig that is running on lovable. Every single

employee at lovable is expected to do their own marketing. Everybody's

encouraged to post on social to build their brand to go talk about what they are doing at lovable and building in public and every single employee is still has their daytime job and their specialty that they actually need to

execute and um perform and that is the norm now that is the AI nativeness to me to at at the root of it because the only way that is possible is by becoming AI native.

>> Don't laugh. Is that possible at very large companies where you have compliance? Is that one of those is that

compliance? Is that one of those is that one of those things where actually it don't no where it's only possible in a world of growth but the minute you're a public company and you have compliance

me and you both know how this works. I

mean it's a nightmare. You can't post anything on social. Everything has to go through someone. Some product person

through someone. Some product person posts an update that hasn't been announced in earnings and oh my god is this an advantage that is only available to private companies?

>> It's a great question. I do think it's very much an advantage that is available to startups.

>> Yeah, >> there's also a question of how much of the large companies functionality can be eaten away by the current

technical advances that everybody's getting via AI nativeness and what everybody's able to code and do on their own as opposed to needing to buy software. There's like an interesting

software. There's like an interesting question in that and I do think that the world of very large complexity compliance securitydriven enterprises

will be at major disadvantage in this future. Now how long does that going to

future. Now how long does that going to really take to materialize for us to feel I have no idea but maybe I'm in my bubble too. I don't know maybe like I'm

bubble too. I don't know maybe like I'm completely like not seeing the big picture here but it just feels like that is where masses are going. That's what

masses want to interact with and that's where the trends are going. So, I don't know. I get like I have a reasonable

know. I get like I have a reasonable LinkedIn following and I've been penalized for it in the larger companies. Like they were like

companies. Like they were like absolutely no, don't post. Delete the

post. This is not good. I we want to uh we want to prove anything that you post on social and I'm like it's just like feel suffocating. So, it almost was held

feel suffocating. So, it almost was held against me that I had it. At Lovable is honestly one of the first companies that is like leaning into is like go post more more where like can can you talk

about this? So I don't know may we we'll

about this? So I don't know may we we'll we we'll see in the next year of how this is going to play out and whether this is a truly trend that is an advantage or it's a blip and a just a

hype zone.

>> I think the employeeled content branding marketing is so helpful to like seed communities especially in the early days when you need to seed them artificially so to speak. What are the biggest

mistakes you think that people make when trying to build a community? I mean,

Jesus, Elena, I'm maybe I'm old and grumpy, which is very possible. Uh, but

like I'm so bored of community being banded around as a word. And I think what are the biggest mistakes you see in people trying to embrace community?

>> I think that they well the biggest one is that they treat us as just their support outlet. Our support team cannot

support outlet. Our support team cannot get through the queue. Let's create a community for it to be a community support so people can help each other and it just becomes a dumping ground of

negative sentiment because when people cannot get in touch with you through support channels they go to community to vent about their issues. So it's becomes a very negative place. It's not filled

with inspiration. It's not filled with

with inspiration. It's not filled with positivity and accomplishment. It's

literally filled with problems. And then in order to solve for that, companies start going after tooling and they start creating these community platforms and forums basically trying to almost

replicate what Microsoft has created or like another like core so to speak. And

um it just becomes cold not connecting support forums that are then indexed by the way by SEO for all of the negativity that is being shared within it. And it

it just becomes it's not a community.

It's like a >> You're not selling it. This sounds like a hole of depression.

>> But that is the but that is a community.

It's like it's a it's an outlet for negativity that has not been addressed by your support team. That's literally

nine out of 10 communities because they're not spawned from the place of connection. They're spawned for the

connection. They're spawned for the place of hey there needs to be additional way for people to solve their problems. >> Can we seed it? Can we like pay for UGC?

you see UGC marketplaces, you see like head of UGC. Is there a way where we can artificially UGC community?

>> So you can see it, but I actually think that what you need to find is your early super users and your early super adopters. Those people that are really

adopters. Those people that are really excited about your product and you should pull them in to be your community managers. You should pull them in to be

managers. You should pull them in to be your community ambassadors. You should

deploy them to be your biggest advocates and for them to start bringing other people around them because of their excitement for the product. But you do need to identify them very early and

build community around them. That is the right way to do it because then they will bring the positivity into it as opposed to it being just a support outlet.

>> Totally get that. Can I ask what do you do when you have a competitor who spends so much more money than you in the same space? You know, we chatted when we had

space? You know, we chatted when we had Omar from Wix on the show and Wix bought two Super Bowl ads. I'm not saying whether that's good or bad.

>> I watched them.

>> I I actually didn't. Um I shouldn't have mentioned that, but I >> marketing research on my part.

>> It's a big spend. What do you do when you have a player who is just spending a lot of money and you are on the other side of that?

>> Well, you can obsess about it. You can

get upset by it. You can try to match it or you can say our growth strategy is completely different. Our growth

completely different. Our growth strategy is through organic word of mouth and delighting people and showing them that we're actually better as opposed to trying to pay for their

attention. So, we do we look at it yes

attention. So, we do we look at it yes absolutely. I I watched Super Bowl ads.

absolutely. I I watched Super Bowl ads.

I took notes. I was We discussed it the day after. Like, did we think that we

day after. Like, did we think that we should have been in Super Bowl? We

decided we shouldn't have been. After we

saw the ads, we're like, we were happy with our decision not to be. Will we

support some other big sporting events?

Maybe. Uh that's not out of the question. Are we doing ourselves paid

question. Are we doing ourselves paid marketing, for example, now? Yes,

absolutely. We're overtaking New York uh in subway systems. We have a bunch of ads running in London. We're taking more uh billboards in San Francisco. So,

we're doing some of the paid marketing spend as well.

>> Why why did you decide on that as the channel to invest in paid in New York, London, San Francisco on billboards in particular? I'm fascinated

particular? I'm fascinated >> because we're going after latent majority now, not just the early pioneers that are looking for solution.

We want to educate the rest of the market that uh this what is possible and the capabilities uh that technology now has that they should be taking advantage of because there's a really short window

of opportunity where people can really get ahead if they really lean into it because otherwise they're going to be left behind and I think a lot of businesses will be disrupted if they're left behind. A lot of people will be

left behind. A lot of people will be disrupted if they're left behind. So we

do feel like we need to start educating larger masses which is why we went into billboard subway advertising uh type of situations but again this is also very short in the timeline period from

lovable's perspective. I would never

lovable's perspective. I would never recommend a company to do it this quickly but lovable is not a normal company because we're already well past over 300 million in AR even though we're

only like a year and couple of months old. So like we just need to move into

old. So like we just need to move into that space a little bit faster. But all

I'm saying is that's not our primary strategy of how we're going to drive growth. This is just branding awareness.

growth. This is just branding awareness.

We want to play in the field. We want to drive awareness across masses out there because we believe our product is very relevant for them. And we our ICP is very broad. Ideal customer profile is

very broad. Ideal customer profile is very broad. So we can go after billboard

very broad. So we can go after billboard advertising and feel like we appeal to most of the eyeballs that land on us. In

a PLG AI world, what is a good organic to paid ratio in your mind? I'm not

asking for yours. I'm saying what's a good for founders listening.

>> All right. Well, you're starting to immediately go into attribution. How is

it that you attribute? Where is the traffic coming from? Is it paid? Is it

organic, which is impossible to do if you're doing any sort of last click or digital footprint only? But I would say that for any founder in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth

is a death trap because until you actually figure it out your true stable product market fit and until you are able to drive it in some sort of organic way, whether it's your organic socials,

whether it's organic search, whether whatever it is, investing into paid, I think is a really horrible idea because you haven't even optimized or really

learned all of your funnels. You haven't

even grabbed people that are already looking for your solution in organic ways and figure out how they progress through your product. So to pour money on your top of the funnel when you the experience is not even optimized for

those who are looking for you is just like lighting cash on fire. So I would say that less than 10% should be paid.

In the more scaled mature company it can be 30 40%. But anywhere over 50% I would be very uncomfortable on a reliance on paid because I'm now competing with

everybody else on third party platforms for the attention as opposed to relying on my organic pool and my product itself to drive growth for the company. I'm

just thinking of so many companies that I see who are like 60% paid in the first year and I'm like >> I would be very nervous like that dependency I would look at it as a

single point of failure >> even if the economics work out. I'm

thinking of one of my companies in particular where the economics are working out and they're profitable on a cohort basis but they are they are heavily paid.

>> Yeah. And the problem is just like yes it might be working out now. So, first

of all, even if you're going to do paid, at least make sure that the paid payback cycle is really quick. Like the biggest issue that I see with paid is people look at as just a cap to LTV. None of

the small companies know their LTV. So,

you're literally just looking at CAC and like kind of trying to guess of what it's actually going to be. Think about

actually when you recoup your investment. How fast will you put $100

investment. How fast will you put $100 into your system? Can you recuperate that $100 out of the system uh back? If

it's under three months, fine. Maybe

it's a little bit better. Put it into the system. have it regenerate for you

the system. have it regenerate for you really quickly. So, it's a

really quickly. So, it's a self-contained system that keeps on giving to you and and paying for itself.

But anytime that goes in anywhere close to 8, 9 months, even a year, it's a it's a it's a sink of money at that point that you need to constantly put back into the system more and more. You're

going to constantly have to raise to do it. And the problem is that if Google

it. And the problem is that if Google doesn't hit their earnings, what are they going to do? Hey, let's go to AdWords and jack up all of the CS by 20% so we can hit our earnings. and that's

coming out of your budget so they can hit the Wall Street numbers. So you have to be really careful because you're literally at mercy of other super giants needing to hit business performance on

the market and you are paying for it. So

if that's how you want to do your growth, fine if that's working at least on a really fast quick payback period, but other than that I just feel like that is not a sustainable way to grow.

So you agree that counting to LTV for the majority of newish companies today is respectfully irrelevant metric.

>> It's absolutely irrelevant. You don't

know your LTV. Unless you've been in the business for 5 years plus, you do not know your LTV. Period.

>> So what numbers matter to you? If we go you you acquire a customer, you're like, is that good? Cuz we've got no idea how much they're going to pay over time. You

look at lovable, you know, and bluntly you can spend a lot or you can spend little. It's nice in that way, but you

little. It's nice in that way, but you don't know how much they're going to spend. How do you determine what numbers

spend. How do you determine what numbers matter?

>> So, if I'm doing a paid marketing, the payback period is the only thing I look at. How quickly do I recuperate my money

at. How quickly do I recuperate my money on average from any given campaign? And

I try to really try to do at least the last click attribution perspective, especially if it's performance marketing. A pretty tight um tie in

marketing. A pretty tight um tie in between those numbers. If your

conversion windows are really long, so not everybody converts within 24 hours, let's say, and if it takes you six months, a year to convert, again, very dangerous to invest into paid marketing

because then you don't even know if you're going to recoup that money. So

unless your conversion window is under 3 months, I would say don't start with paid marketing as your growth lever because you will never be able to make it spin fast enough because you don't

you have such a long conversion windows.

If you have shorter conversion windows, I think it's very important to also look at any of the signals beforehand. How

people are activating, how many of activated people are actually converting to paid because there's going to be many KPIs that you can look into predict conversion or even predict retention

that are not monetization based. So

really understanding that behavior and your user base becomes the number one concern for you to be able to even know do I go into this or do I not? And

again, paid marketing to me is a is a cheap way out and it's not competitively defens I should say to you, it's actually the most expensive way out and it's not competitively defensible at all

and it's not sustainable. You paying

somebody else to generate demand for you. If you haven't figured out your

you. If you haven't figured out your unique way, your competitively defensible and sustainable way to generate demand without relying on other

platform then I think that you are just buying time in the market before the collapse is imminent.

>> How do you think about true activ like what does an activated user mean for you? It's someone who lands and

you? It's someone who lands and converts. It's someone who lands and

converts. It's someone who lands and converts and pays. What is true activation? So I live in a world where

activation? So I live in a world where not everybody who uses your product is a paid customer. So I also live in a world

paid customer. So I also live in a world where every single customer has other value besides just paying to you directly. So for example at lovable we

directly. So for example at lovable we have a ton of free users. A lot of our costs are within our fremium. Not with

our paid marketing, not with employees, not with marketing or sales budgets.

It's with fremium because we view fremium as actually marketing channel.

What I mean by that is that a free user where they come in and they get delighted by what they accomplish for free. They go and do marketing on our

free. They go and do marketing on our behalf. They go talk across socials.

behalf. They go talk across socials.

They go refer to our friends. We very

carefully measure. We have such thing as called lovable score where we measure how often people actually refer us to somebody else and we keep a really close eye on it because that is an earned

channel that you cannot buy that you cannot compete with and that we own. So

free user holds value to us. So even if we acquire through paid marketing channels let's say free users they hold value to us. It's not all about conversion. But back to your activation

conversion. But back to your activation question to me it's purely engagement based. that has nothing to do with um

based. that has nothing to do with um monetization whatsoever. So what is it

monetization whatsoever. So what is it that your aha moment is with the product? What is the steps for you to

product? What is the steps for you to set up to get to that aha moment and um what are the first habit loops that you're going to start falling into to start using product on ongoing basis. So

it's purely product engagement based that is an incredible signal for both monetization and long-term retention.

>> With respect, do you want great product engagement? And what I mean by that is

engagement? And what I mean by that is if you want simplicity, it wouldn't necessarily be depth of product engagement. Hey, make me a website

engagement. Hey, make me a website that's like BBC News, but make it just for VCs and for funding rounds. Bof,

that's not very deep engagement, but it could be a happy user. How do you think about that product engagement need versus actually just what's best for the user?

>> So, I think about it on multiple vectors. There's intensity of

vectors. There's intensity of engagement. So, how deep do I go? How

engagement. So, how deep do I go? How

much time do I spend? How complicated of the task that I'm trying to accomplish?

That's one vector, intensity. And you're

right, intensity is very powerful for social platforms because the more intense you are on them, the more the better user you are for them. For simple

productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-tric because intensity means like I'm getting stuck. Uh like I'm doing too much where this actually supposed to be easy. So um intensity is

often the anti-tric. However, there's

also frequency. So how often do I come back and do it? Frequency is a big one.

You always want to be in a habitual zone for our minds. Habitual zone for our minds is somewhere on daily or weekly basis. Anytime you move into being

basis. Anytime you move into being monthly, you're in a forgettable zone. I

don't remember what I did last month.

Like the world is moving too quickly. I

don't even remember if I looked at the like some software last month or even if I tried it last month. So trying to be in that daily or weekly habitual zone is super important. And then on top of it,

super important. And then on top of it, you look at just what actions are meaningful. The worst thing is when you

meaningful. The worst thing is when you create frequency of engagement based on login. That's a vanity metric. Everybody

login. That's a vanity metric. Everybody

can log in. That doesn't mean they get value. So setting up that frequency

value. So setting up that frequency engagement on something a little bit more meaningful. Like for us, for

more meaningful. Like for us, for example, it's both either building an app and lovable, so you're prompting to make some changes or receiving traffic on the app that you already published.

So you're on both sides of the engagement coin of either still editing or now reaping the benefits of what you've already published that are both counted as an engagement signal and then

we count frequency of it to see how many of them are active on daily basis um which we call active builders. So you're

right intensity is an anti-tric often for us. So you pick just an action that

for us. So you pick just an action that provides value but it can be fairly light but not as light as login or just like a visit because that is just like nonsensical in terms of doesn't mean anything.

>> Do the majority of sites not require very limited interaction when you think about like habitual usage like if I'm a venture fund creating what you we use um lovable for project Europe amazing we have a beautiful site much better than

20 VC site by the way which cost us thousands and thousands. I'm so ashamed of that money. Um, but like we don't change it. Is that a good thing or a bad

change it. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

>> Uh, it's an okay thing. If you if it's live and it's functioning and it's getting traffic, you're getting value out of it. That's great for us. So, we

count it as engagement. Uh, some people are just going to have apps that they're still building. Some of them are just in

still building. Some of them are just in the consumption state. Both are good.

There's no uh preference for us of one versus the other value whatsoever. If

anything, we just like measure and watch for proportions just to make sure that there is a good enough amount of apps that are getting traffic and receiving value that way. So, it's we're not just

about building, we're also about value capture after the build is complete.

>> What are your biggest lessons on conversion to paid in this new world of PLG AI proumer tools?

>> My biggest uh lessons are a couple of fold.

Lesson number one, do not, and I mean do not lock people in subscription as the only way to monetize you. I know that we all love our annual recurring revenue

and our multiples are decided by annual recurring revenue. But if your product

recurring revenue. But if your product is anything like a bursty usage where it's not super consistent when creativity strikes or project strikes, I need to go and I do a lot of work in it

and then I might have some periods of more of a downtime or much lighter usage. Allowing flexibility in your

usage. Allowing flexibility in your monetization model for ad hoc purchases can mean the world of incrementality for your overall monetization capture

potential. We just introduced topups at

potential. We just introduced topups at Lovable and it's been absolutely wild because in every other job I've ever held in my entire life, I've always

thought about something like an ad hoc purchase on top of the subscription. and

I've always shut down or I was too nervous to even move it forward because of the scares of affecting um that treasured ARR. Uh that's not true. It's

treasured ARR. Uh that's not true. It's

like a complete fallacy. You should do both and it adds on incrementally and your AR only continues growing and your retention improves. So that is one big

retention improves. So that is one big learning for me especially with AI where people are still explo exploring and the usage is not super consistent for most of the products. And then I would say

that the second one is that your monetization model right now is not the correct one for every single AI company out there. We just fundamentally have

out there. We just fundamentally have not found how to best monetize AI because we're all just passing through highly expensive LLM costs to our users.

But when LLM costs will collapse and they will collapse eventually. Every LLM

themselves are betting on it. Our

monetization models will have to evolve.

And whoever evolves their monetization model to be more outcomebased first is going to be the winner in the market. So

you better set up the right infrastructure and the right team around it to be able to change your monetization model and test it really rapidly as opposed to leaving it as something that is not touched for years

and years because um most of the businesses it is something that is a taboo uh subject that cannot be adjusted because it feels so complicated. A lot

of startups today have subsidized LLM costs very much like AWS did and Google Cloud did with credits for years and Anthropic and OpenAI have done. Uh now

very much with this generation of startups, should they account for them in cost or should they let themselves be artificially impressed by their margins

despite this clear steroid injection of free for this time period? Why would

Open AAI sell the LLM under cost? Yes,

it's a like market grab for sure, but I fundamentally believe that they think that LLM's costs are going to have to come down to the point that they're not going to have to raise the prices, but

they're going to start getting the margins to actually make those prices make sense for them and potentially lower it even further because LLM is going to be like a commoditized feature

very soon. And it doesn't feel so right

very soon. And it doesn't feel so right now, but it will be like access to internet or access to the cloud. It's

commoditized. It's cheap. So I think that I believe that they're also believe that it's going to come down quite a bit once we get efficiency gains out of how

LM are constructed. And uh this is where when it becomes completely commoditized, you cannot monetize on it anymore. You

have to start moving towards monetization of outcomes. And again,

whoever evolves their monetization models first there will win.

>> Speaking of kind of commoditization of models there, how do you think about creating stickiness in what is seemingly a very transient transactional world?

You know, when especially when you look at like the switch from cursor to claw code for a lot of developers, it's almost been overnight for a lot of them.

How do you think about creating stickiness in a transient transactional product environment? I think this is

product environment? I think this is where brand comes in, that trust comes in. You have to rely on people believing

in. You have to rely on people believing in you and your team because like otherwise, like I said, all of the SAS functionality is getting commoditized and democratized and it's just like

anybody can do everything now. So, who

do you >> think that's a bit woo, Elena? Honestly,

>> listen, I'm like I'm like terrified of the fact that I'm becoming a brand marketer because I'm just like because like it's becoming so much more

because of brand like people will follow the brand because of its promise because of its relation because functionality is going to be available everywhere. So I I don't know what else can differentiate

you besides creating an absolutely delightful experience stressing about the most littlest pieces of friction in your product. Being really fast on

your product. Being really fast on innovation because you still cannot fall behind but at least being like on the forefront even even if you're not the leader but it's that relationship that you develop with your customer is

everything. How lovable are you? Because

everything. How lovable are you? Because

if you're not lovable, I think the end is near for a lot of companies that are only purely focused only on just pure functional ability of the products.

>> If I gave you an unlimited budget, Elena, what would you do differently?

>> With what?

>> Growth, spend, marketing. Would you do Oh, [ __ ] I don't know. Sponsor a Real Madrid shirt. Would you do an F1 car?

Madrid shirt. Would you do an F1 car?

Would you pump money into Anton's brand and give him a media team to do daily vlogs and videos of what he does in a day? And

day? And >> okay, a couple tactical things come to mind. I would still do out of home

mind. I would still do out of home advertisement. I think that is coming

advertisement. I think that is coming back in spades because that's where eyeballs are at. That's where you can actually like capture attention. I would

go very heavily into video and talking, not just visual ads because then you can explain things so much easier. Uh, so I would like go after Amazon Prime Videos,

Spotify, um, and all of those of the world because there's just like not a lot of competition. I would go after a creator economy so hard. I would have every single newsletter, every single

podcast, have my ad on it, and just box out everybody else. And then I would send every single one of my customers my own t-shirt with a hat and just have them being my work walking billboards

all over the place. and they would be top quality, the things that they actually would want to wear and they would feel like they're like absolutely kick-ass thing that is a cool thing to have. So, I would just deploy as much as

have. So, I would just deploy as much as possible at the end of my customers and people where they're already spending eyes and eyeballs at uh to have my brand all around it.

>> If we go through them, one out of home, I think most people do out of home really badly. I stare looking at

really badly. I stare looking at billboards or banners and I'm like, I have no idea what this person with a laptop is doing randomly typing in a very large drawing room with nothing but

an orchid around them. I think also billboards can be deployed almost in a performance marketing way. So, one of my favorite stories is um I worked with

Maya who was at Segment um and the way Segment has worked and I don't know that story like just sticks with me that when they wanted to close an enterprise contract, they would buy a billboard right in front of that office and they

would put their ad on that billboard addressing that company specifically and it would be like the cheapest way to close a six sevendigit contract because they're like directly targeted every

single employee in that company with the billboard. So, I think that you can be

billboard. So, I think that you can be like a lot more creative with the billboards the way that people think.

Everybody thinks constantly San Francisco 101, like where am I going to be in the AI slop of billboards uh on that freeway? But I think you can do it

that freeway? But I think you can do it so much smarter with um movie theaters, with the with the taxis, with um the

subway systems, with buses. Like, go

back to the bus stops. like go back to the basics because you can do some real cool [ __ ] there.

>> I remember one of the founders that I once invested in was doing a recruitment platform and they were trying to get people away from Goldman Sachs and join startups and it was a startup recruitment platform. So they got a

recruitment platform. So they got a billboard outside of Goldman Sachs and they put I bet your parents are proud of you working for Goldman >> and then do you know what's amazing

though the big newspapers wrote about it because it was funny and aggressive and characterful and you get these multiplier effective media because it's really out there.

>> But like you said it needs to be funny and it needs to have character. It

cannot just have your tonedeaf AI marketing slogan of something collaborative platform on cloud with AI like you transformation nothing like

those words cannot be used and yes you will not appeal to everybody and it doesn't matter just appeal to people that will have a smile a chuckle that will have a memory from it that will

want to talk about it like we are in the era where we need to start taking more risks in marketing and Um, it needs people just need to get out of their I don't know boxed minds of how we've been

trained for the last 20 years of what good creative and good copy looks like because I think we live in a different world and if you want to capture people's attention, you have to think outside of the box.

>> When we think about video, what would you do with video? How would you think about what would work, what doesn't work, what you see that's cool, what's not cool? How would you approach video

not cool? How would you approach video in a world of unlimited no constraints?

>> So I think AI generated video is the future. I was just playing uh with video

future. I was just playing uh with video platform where just I uploaded my uh just still photo and then just created a full thing of me moving my hands doing

the full ad with like back and forth transitions with with an app screen. I

think that there's still going to be a place for manual video creation and those are always going to be like artisan videos where it's just like handcrafted hand hand created it's like

a craft that it's like think about like taking a picture versus painting the picture uh with the with watercolors is like there's still going to be some differences there but I think for

advertising needs AI is where videos and even any creatives are going to be at AI models on video creation and just visual creation are improving in such a rapid

way and they can create these striking images and they can animate you in the way that you would never be able to record properly in one shot. Uh that I

think it's the future. I'm like playing around even with creating animation for myself when I'm reading my own blog as opposed to like me recording it. let me

just put in my screenshot, give it the blocks transcript, and let it do it for me. So, it looks like I'm reading it out

me. So, it looks like I'm reading it out loud and like annotating it. But it's

not me. It's just AI doing all of the work. So, I think the future of

work. So, I think the future of advertising is going to be almost purely all AI.

>> Creator economy, sponsoring newsletters, creators, people try and do this and they spray money, I think, pretty badly.

How would you think about doing it?

Well, what you would avoid? Would you go horizontal? Would you go vertical? How

horizontal? Would you go vertical? How

do you think about that?

>> So, every creator has their audience.

You need to find creators that align with your ideal customer profile audience the most. I think that you cannot look at creator economy as one and done. Like, I'm doing one ad

and done. Like, I'm doing one ad placement and I need to see performance out of it. It's somewhere between performance, but it's most definitely brand awareness touch point because their audience is not going there to

like discover new products, so to speak.

And I think that consistency here matters. Like you have to be in it for a

matters. Like you have to be in it for a long haul. I think the coverage matters.

long haul. I think the coverage matters.

So you cannot just be let's say one newsletter. You have to go across

newsletter. You have to go across multiples. And you have to just look at

multiples. And you have to just look at it as a hey, I'm going to do billboards or I'm going to do creators. Um I can do influencers uh on social or I can do newsletter creators. I can do

newsletter creators. I can do podcasters. Some of those slots are

podcasters. Some of those slots are super cheap too because people like they're not educated how much to charge.

you can go and like get thousands of impressions for based to like based to nothing. Um, I don't know why more

nothing. Um, I don't know why more people don't do that. And I think that most of the time they think, "Oh, what is my going to be my click-through rate through my ad?" But it's not an SEM,

it's not an Adwords ad. It's not a paid marketing advertisement top of Google search results. And I think people

search results. And I think people underestimate association of their brand with that creator and their ability to target very specific audience that that creator earned by creating content for

that audience that is just completely unappreciated. as a channel in marketing

unappreciated. as a channel in marketing right now at scale.

>> Do you try and get attribution from it?

Do you try and do uh like referral codes, discount codes, whatever it is to get attribution or you like, you know what, it's in the it's in the brand bucket. Fine.

bucket. Fine.

>> I think discount codes are always nice uh just to give that audience a little something. I truly believe in I wouldn't

something. I truly believe in I wouldn't say like a pure discounting strategy but using your product uh for giving your product away for free for people to try

as the biggest portion of your marketing budget I think always has to be the case. So what do I mean by that? Let me

case. So what do I mean by that? Let me

just explain real quickly. Yes, you can do discount codes. You can just give free offers. You can ex uh make your

free offers. You can ex uh make your premium even bigger. But if you look at your overall marketing spend, your free giveaways, whether it's part premium, whether it's discount codes or whatnot,

has to be bigger than your paid marketing spend. That I truly believe is

marketing spend. That I truly believe is the right ratio for every single company. Because if you're not using

company. Because if you're not using your product to acquire customers in some sort of offers way, I think that you're just giving too much money away

to Google's metas of the world and not putting enough pressure on your product to wow people. But discount codes are good.

>> I I saw I saw I saw you a post of yours and this power of social and your personal brand. I saw your um offer on

personal brand. I saw your um offer on women's day where Yeah. and making it free. With respect, does that work? Like

free. With respect, does that work? Like

do do you get a lot of take up on that?

Does it lead to conversion or is it kind of good brand?

>> Well, ask me after Women's Day. We'll

see how much it actually leads to conversion. Lovable has had couple of

conversion. Lovable has had couple of free weekends before where we would offer product completely for free. The

first free weekend was quite good from acquisition perspective. It was in early

acquisition perspective. It was in early 2025 when the brand was only a couple months old. The second free weekend was

months old. The second free weekend was summer last year. So about 7 months in after we just about almost hit 100 million in AR. So like a little bit like on the lower medium stage of where the

product has been. And that one has been incredible for re-engagement and resurrection of existing users, deepening their use cases. So it was more of a retention play than acquisition play, interestingly enough.

But this time for women's day, I don't know about you, maybe algorithm is like boxing me out, but all I see is people talking about lovable free day. So the

social impact of just people being so excited about it, rightfully so, product is going to be completely free for a day. To me, that is something that you

day. To me, that is something that you cannot pay for. That is like a marketing campaign like bigger than that would cost us millions of dollars to execute

on and our users are doing all of the marketing for us and grabbing everybody around them to bring into lovable. So

we'll see how it performs because this is the first time that we gave notice so early. Usually we did it like a day

early. Usually we did it like a day before. So it was like very last minute

before. So it was like very last minute and this is the first time that we aligned it with a mission as opposed to just saying it's a free day. So, we're

always experimenting and this is a large test, so to speak, that we're running to see how it's going to go. But just the market coverage and the buzz that it creates, I think is fairly priceless

because it's created by our own users.

>> How do you think about setting effective KPIs to determine the success of a campaign like this? So we obviously have really big KPIs on how many people we expect to bring in, how many new signups

we expect to get, how many people we expect to resurrect, how many existing users that are already active are going to come in. We're going to see how many apps are created or deepened uh in the editing that day. We're going to see how

many of them go published. So our

northstar metric is daily active apps.

So we expect that to shoot up and the main goal is how far is it going to just come down to previous growth levels or is it going to be a step function change and then we're going to grow from there.

So our goal is to really understand the new exposure and deepening engagement with our existing users on engagement level. Monetization obviously will just

level. Monetization obviously will just be a result outcome of that but that is not primary KPI that we're optimizing against. I love the like taking

against. I love the like taking advantage of like women's day or uh a weekend of like free giveaways or whatever that is. When we think about product launches, what are your biggest

lessons or piece of advice on how to do product launches well as a growth tactic?

>> So such a great question. lovable has a I've had some practice Elena, you know, I've done this for a while.

>> So, I think product launches uh lovable the way product launches are done are very different than any other company that I've seen. Most of the time your product launch maybe once a month if you're lucky, most likely once every

three months or a quarterly launch. Um

if you're very unlucky in the larger company, it's like a semianual or annual launch. It's like very slow cadences and

launch. It's like very slow cadences and you try to create like big moments around it because that is like your time to make buzz to acquire new users or to re-engage existing users. At Lovable, we

are committed to launching every day.

So, there's like ongoing buzz that is happening. It's almost like a chaotic

happening. It's almost like a chaotic lovable is evolving every single day.

Every single day it's getting better.

Something is improving and that is very important for us to just stay relevant in the category. And then on top of it every one to two months we make big what

we call tier one launches which bundle a bunch of functionality where there is a story behind it where there is a like a step function change in what is actually happening but it's like really

interesting strategy of like just constant noise in the market and then big spikes in what we're actually launching and I actually think that that constant noise I actually think sorry I

know that that constant noise is part of our retention strategy. That constant

noise is what drives a lot of resurrection for us as well because people feel like it's a living breathing thing that is constantly growing and evolving and they always want to come back and try it again as opposed to us

getting into forgettable zone almost a month 3 months away and seeing competitors launch. So it's like a

competitors launch. So it's like a really different way to think about launches alto together. But

>> how do you have a launch every day?

Everyone would love to have a launch every day. Is it just like the product

every day. Is it just like the product velocity and being very vocal about every single little thing?

>> So, we're not vocal about every single little thing. Our marketing does not get

little thing. Our marketing does not get involved in every single day launches.

Uh why those are just maybe I should just say call them releases. Our

engineering releases multiple things every single day that improve customer experience. Not just bugs. I don't I'm

experience. Not just bugs. I don't I'm not even talking about bugs and actual changes in product that are based on frustrations that are based on lack of capacity that are based on lack of capability. And then we encourage them

capability. And then we encourage them to go post it on social and then we have a channel that's called beeswarming uh at lovable where they post their post and we all go beeswarming on that post

to try to get it more amplification. So

we try to make a marketer out of every single engineer or we pick out things that we're excited about and post about it on social too. So, it's like an employeeled marketing for these releases

and then marketing comes in and puts all of its firepower behind tier one or some partner launches that are really meant to tell the story to the customer. But

staying top of mind is important.

>> Relevancy is everything. Everything

>> everything.

>> People almost forget what you said, but the impact of you being there is what's important. And again, relevancy is

important. And again, relevancy is everything. Uh bewarming, I love that.

everything. Uh bewarming, I love that.

and 11 Labs do it as well which is interesting. Does it really make a

interesting. Does it really make a difference when you have 100% lovable like something within a minute? It makes

a big difference to alos.

>> Yes, it makes a big difference. It's

actually not so much about like, it's more about comments. So, yeah, you like uh maybe you repost, but it's the comment that makes the biggest difference uh where the algorithms pick up uh right now. And it's not all

happening in the first minute. People

get to it when they get to it. So, it's

spread out throughout the first couple of hours, but I go to that channel at the end of each day and I just go down the line. Okay, let me go support all of

the line. Okay, let me go support all of the things that people have said and uh that um I can get them more visibility through my platform as well. So, we

support all each other and it works quite nicely. We had employees that have

quite nicely. We had employees that have grown their followings uh quite a bit since they've started because of that because we just all beeswarm on them.

>> Final one that you mentioned there was like swag. I have the most inordinate

like swag. I have the most inordinate amount of swag, Elena. I'm sure you do, too, of [ __ ] t-shirts and [ __ ] caps and the I don't know what it is. I'm so

sorry to lump you in as One Nation, but you are One Nation Americans. And you

have these the big drinks that you have, you know, the like the soccer mom drink things. I don't know.

things. I don't know.

>> Stanley Cup.

>> Those ones. Yes, I have about 50 of them.

>> You do? Can you send me some my way? My

daughter loves them.

>> I'm I'm going to write a note. You You

can have an array of some of them. By

the way, the startups are dead, but the Stanley Cup survives. Okay. Um, like

what would be your advice to someone on like, okay, me, I want swag for our portfolio companies, for our LPS, you you name it. What advice, what to do, what not to do, what you'd like to do.

Help me out.

>> I can't say that at Lovable we're doing right either. We do it like on a one-off

right either. We do it like on a one-off basis. It took us for a while even to

basis. It took us for a while even to get the swag to all of our own employees. Uh because we wanted it to be

employees. Uh because we wanted it to be top quality. We didn't want to just

top quality. We didn't want to just outsource it and get like another shitty t-shirt on everybody that like falls apart after the first wash. So it's

actually a pretty big friction in the market right now like how to do this at scale because a it's quite expensive to do it right and two it's really hard to find partners that can scale the

operations for you. Uh so I don't know if I have the right answer for you. I

just know that if if a if your customer wears your t-shirt, that is the best thing that you can possibly do. So, how

to get to the moment where well, we for example, when we did She Built Hackathon first two times the first time to every single participant. We sent t-shirts. We

single participant. We sent t-shirts. We

sent uh and people like posted about it on LinkedIn like, "Oh my gosh, I got a lovable t-shirt. I'll wear it all the

lovable t-shirt. I'll wear it all the time." So, there's like some element of

time." So, there's like some element of at the beginning of like it's a hot brand and I want to be affiliated with it and you need to lean into it as much as possible. at the same time like does

as possible. at the same time like does anybody want a Google t-shirt? I don't

know. It's like it's just like it's it's all over the place and you can buy them in gift shops that like just say Google or something on them. So, I think there's a time and place for that strategy and it's most of the time when you're hot and you're growing really

fast and people want to feel that affiliation with your brand lifts them in some way.

>> You can call yourself up the night before you join Lovable and say, "Elena, you should know this. What would you say to yourself if you had the ability to

call yourself up and say that >> that every month at Lovable feels like a year in a normal company in terms of how much change it goes through and how much

my role even evolves and how many priority shifts we have in a given month. And one more thing that I would

month. And one more thing that I would really tell myself is that I'd be in awe at what I'll be doing 6 months from starting the job and that'll be completely different from anything I've

done in the last 20 years of my career.

>> Okay. So I'm a startup founder and I'm like wow you know Sarah led growth at uh [ __ ] I don't know notion and I'm not picking on them just like choosing a

random company. Amazing amazing company

random company. Amazing amazing company led growth at notion. Gosh you must be amazing. Does it matter if she's amazing

amazing. Does it matter if she's amazing because it's a different world or actually is it about mental plasticity towards growth?

>> I think it's about agency. It's about

people's autonomy. It's about people's drive and wantingness to explore of how this world is changing with AI. I do

still think that Sarah's matter. Like I

consider myself a Sarah. I've been there for 20 years. Like I've I've so deeply written in patterns and frameworks and like how things used to be done because that's been my entire professional

career and I do have a lot of patterns that will help company to not trip up over obvious things. I do bring that value to the business but I also need to

be paired with people that are not burdened with those decades of knowledge. I can just go that can open

knowledge. I can just go that can open my horizons that can teach me the new ways of how to do it because every single thing that I do I still rely like how did I do it before let me do it now

and I'm constantly pressed by everybody at lovable that like no this is the way to do it and at first my mind breaks and like no I've never done this before this is not how you do it and I have to constantly try their way but I think

both of us together it's almost like old guard of Sarah's and new guard of like truly employee employees that don't have that context that don't have that baggage is what creates a perfect

harmony that pushes the company forward because you can prevent stupid mistakes from happening with Sarah but then you can push into AI nativeness with the new guard that is not burdened by those

patterns and history.

>> How do you prevent morale from reducing when numbers are down in very transient worlds? when it's summer, people are

worlds? when it's summer, people are outside more, they're not on lovable as much, say, how do you prevent morale seeping when numbers are not there?

>> So, I think step number one is try to have premortems about what would happen if your numbers are start to go down.

So, you have the action plan at the earliest time of noticing those numbers.

So, you're not reacting to it. you

already have a go to war plan so to speak when something goes wrong. So this

should be happening before any big release, before any big launch, before end of the year. You should look at and do premortems on the best on the on the

best path forward is the worst things happen to you competitor enters and so like I really believe in having those conversations early on. Number two,

knowing the key predictive indicators that will lead you into the decline, not just looking at revenue because when moment revenue starts declining, it's already too [ __ ] late. I so like you

need to know like beforehand what will I see, what will lead, what will warn me of that decline just so you at least have couple of months, maybe six months to react before actual revenue impact is going to get hit. So those two things I

think are important and I think number three we just have to accept the fact that some people don't do good with negativity of the business. They are not going to be the ones that are stand up

and try to reverse it out. And you need to look at your culture and say there are going to be people that are passionate about what they do that are passionate about the product that are going to be up for the challenge and that are people that are not. And I'm

not going to be able to change people that are not. So, I need to invest into people that will lead the change and that I believe will help me be able to get out of it. It's so much just about

people's attitudes, but you need to find the ones that bring the right step function change into your organization, but get yourself prepared as much as possible beforehand.

>> Often people say row your own race.

Don't worry about competitors. Today,

you kind of have to worry about competitors. Luxury not to.

competitors. Luxury not to.

>> I think so, don't you?

I think you have to keep an eye on competitors.

>> If if claude code releases something and you don't know that that could be why you're seeing numbers reduce in some way, you wouldn't be able to make data informed decisions.

>> Okay. So, I think the question is what do you define as worry? I think that you have to watch your competitors very carefully and know what they're doing because you need to know what you're

playing against in the field when the customers are making a choice. But do

you obsess about your competitors and let them dictate your roadmap and your growth and marketing activities? I don't

think so. You have to look at it through the lens of what works for them may not work for us. Do we have an alternative way to do it and capture the market? But

do you have to know the team you're playing against? Absolutely. There's no

playing against? Absolutely. There's no

question about that.

>> I agree with that. Has that changed over time?

I think that we're when the functionality was very expensive to produce, we could afford to obsess about competitors a little bit more. With the

functionality and the speed of development happening so much faster now, it almost paves the way for you to just have a very opinionated uh point of

view of where you need to go and pull all efforts behind that hypothesis and praying and hoping that it plays out.

But you cannot just copy your competitors and win anymore because it's going to be a summ game.

>> Do you think lovable removes the need for Figma and the design process?

>> I think that there's always going to be tools for vertical use cases for specific

specialties for now. However, can you design beautiful prototypes in lovable without Figma?

Yes. And AI is only going to get better at design. So, I still still very much

at design. So, I still still very much see time and place for Figma for specific uh workflows. And there's no question about that. But my question my

my bigger just worry for Figma is what will happen a year from now when AI is going to be so good. it will be able to do all of the little changes down to

like even outside of software design like to CAD files to 3D designs. What if

it'll be able to do all of that? Why

would you need design software at that point where it can shortcut all of those stages for you?

>> If you still see a need for Figma and they have Figma make, how do you think about that?

I think that most of the non-technical users don't start with Figma. Uh, and

there's a pretty large population of there's designers that start in Figma and Figma make makes a lot of sense for them if they want to have their functional prototypes, but there's

product managers, analysts, marketers, sales, um, even engineers, uh, operations people, HR people, ops people, all of those people, they never

live in Figma. They never start with Figma. They start with lovable because

Figma. They start with lovable because that is an easier way and we build specifically for their persona. This is

why I'm saying the technicality of it and your specialty matters quite a bit.

>> Who do you think is the most challenging competitor?

>> I always worry about the big boys and girls in the world. So, open AIS, Anthropic, Google's, Apples more so than

our competitors that spring up from the bottom or from sideways. And the reason that I worry about them more and I think everybody should be worried about them more, they just have the distribution

hold in the market that is unparallel.

And in the world where product functionality becomes more commoditized of what you can create, distribution and growth becomes the reasons to win. So

whoever has the best distribution that is earned, that is competitively defensible, that is sustainable, uh that is predictable is going to be the winner in the market. So I worry about the

companies that have that figured out.

>> Do you think Anthropic has that level of distribution now?

>> I think they're making really great gains.

>> What worries you most? What worries me most is that we're going to create a little bit more maybe like a big world big picture uh

answer is that we live in the AI bubble as tech workers and we're taking advantage of it and we're pushing each other forward and we're challenging each other but there's a whole world out

there that hasn't even tried AI and how far behind they're going to be left if they're not going to get on the train is that it creates such a huge disparity between people or it will

create really big set of concentrated winners and a very large masses of losers so to speak behind this technology change and that what worries me the most that we're not going to

bring everybody along with us because all of the companies and all of the startups and all of the AI technology is really so heavily focused on the pioneer

and not the average person that would benefit the most out of it. And I I just worry what that's going to do to our society as a whole.

>> Listen, I'd love to do a quick fire round and I'm going to start with a super easy one following that conversation. If you're advising your

conversation. If you're advising your kids coming out of university today, what to do? What advice do you give them?

>> I would tell them to first of all be AI first and everything. make AI do so much work for them that otherwise they would have expected to learn somewhere else or be able to do something else and start a

side hustle right now. Right now is like the world is prime for everybody to have meaningful side hustle that they can monetize and the window of opportunity is pretty short. And if you have a

founder profile on you, you're going to be more likely to be hired by a company if you want to get hired by a company.

But listen, there's so much money in creator economy and so much money in just being a solarreneur right now. I

truly believe there's going to be a company of a billion dollar company running solo by some by somebody. I

would challenge my kids to be that soloreneur with a billion dollar company.

>> I think there is Peter Steinberger with openclaw. I mean it was unannounced how

openclaw. I mean it was unannounced how much he got bought for but um >> maybe he's the one maybe let my kid be the second one then >> from a growth perspective alternative as

I'm not saying competitor like who else in tech do you think has done growth brand so well in the last year

>> I think granola has done a wonderful job and uh from the products perspective I see the uh whisper flow also spreading like fire across many people and again It's mostly like a people

talking about it so much. So, it's

really like customer le customers are being the biggest marketing agents and I think it's genius.

>> I have to say I couldn't live without it.

>> I I I never ever type emails anymore.

>> I type them to LPS because I need to make sure that there's >> I never type on my phone like granola.

Sorry, not granola. Whisper flow is like the only reason that I can >> thing is the integration though where I'm going back swipe up back [ __ ] Apple just buy it already.

>> I know, right?

>> Apple seriously a $4 trillion market cap and you can't do a [ __ ] dictation tool. I am pissed.

tool. I am pissed.

>> Well, listen, Apple still has Siri and Siri is dumb as a doornob. I mean, it's honestly like my kids try to talk to Siri sometimes and I'm like, "Oh my god, how is this still like live and

functioning and like how is this not has been like deprecated by now?"

>> I mean, just appalling. Um, what channel did you spend on that you wish you'd never spent on?

>> Never.

>> Why?

>> Just uh very little incrementality.

uh just a bunch of pass through views that don't materialize into anything. Uh

channels like even um as I say like like creator economy to me is just like so much bigger. So I still do influencers

much bigger. So I still do influencers through social platforms but not just like full on just meta ads. It just I haven't seen them work in a little while.

>> If you were to call up a growth leader today before they start a new role, what would you tell them? Get ready to drop 80% of what you know and lean into the

new way of working and growing company.

>> Well, that's reassuring.

>> It's also super exciting because I don't know, I've been bored in the space for last 5 years thinking everything looks and feels the same. And now I actually see a rapid change in how things are being done. I think it's the most

being done. I think it's the most exciting thing in the world.

>> I love that. When you Let's Let's end on that. I like a tone of positivity. What

that. I like a tone of positivity. What

what are you most excited for when you look forward next 5 to 10 years? Like my

mom's got MS. I'm super excited for drug discovery and potential MS treatments that never were possible. What are you excited for? I'm actually very excited

excited for? I'm actually very excited about AI advancing our medical research quite a bit faster, fixing some of the human imperfections that we've always dealt with and that we've never had cure

because we're so incentivized on just medicine and not actually prevention or cure of the diseases because medicine makes more money than the than actual cure of the disease for our economy. But

I'm really hoping that AI can change and just eradicate a bunch of diseases and disformities and just issues with human bodies to make our life more comfortable.

>> Elena, you are a star. I I think we need to solve for anyone. We're doing a request for startups on high quality swag that is like customizable and great.

>> Please hit me up. Please hit me up.

>> Um you're a star. I always learn so much from you. So thank you so much for being

from you. So thank you so much for being so amazing.

>> Thank you for having me here. I

appreciate you.