Lovable CEO, Anton Osika: The State of Foundation Models, Grok vs OpenAI, and Replit vs Bolt

I think university is not the best place to learn. Doesn't matter what you're

to learn. Doesn't matter what you're studying. I'd invest in Grock and I

studying. I'd invest in Grock and I would probably short anthropic. No, I

would I would short.

Why? I think it's more the slope on the Grock team. They're doing something

Grock team. They're doing something which I respect a lot which is to hire missionaries for the data curation part.

The morale is super high. OpenAI has

gone through all this mess. Right. Do

you think there will be a leading model that has not been created yet?

Yes. From China. Do you worry about China?

I do think there's like a 50/50 chance they will have the best model. We'll be

using a Chinese model at some point because ready to go.

[Music] Anton, dude, I'm so excited to be here with you in person. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

It's great to see you and thanks for coming to Stockholm. Dude, it's great to be in Stockholm. Um, I want to start, you just recently raised a great round and I want to start with that. We're

seeing a lot of money going into the space and I just wanted to start with is it a capital arms race and a case of who has the most money wins or is it something else? I

something else? I I think it's an arms race to build the best team and then it's an arms race to build the the best brand and trust from your users and I mean capital can help.

For us, it's not a constraint at all.

Um, if you're building something like the best foundation model, it might be a constraint just because the compute for training and so on is so so large. But

for for us, it's all about moving extremely fast and collecting the best talent. So, if we think about talent as

talent. So, if we think about talent as the number one there, we've seen Zuck pay NFL style contracts. I mean, like

mega mega sums for the best people. How

do you think about and analyze that and how difficult it will be to get the best talent moving forwards?

I I think for for me it's actually more difficult than for Tuck to know who which engineers are going to really thrive, push the culture forward, push the ways of working in the products forward. For Zuck, it's like there's

forward. For Zuck, it's like there's this 10 people that know everything about how to train foundation models and he's more paying for that knowledge than for like these people. This talent

itself is so good. It's probably it's pretty good as well. So it's very different.

Do you think you do not need the same caliber of engineering talent if you're working in the application layer?

You just did very different. I I think like I a person one of those people suck is hiring. They wouldn't perform as well

is hiring. They wouldn't perform as well as as the engineers in my team doing what we're doing. So it's it's very different type of talent. Um, and like I

if I knew who was like the perfect engineers to hire, I could maybe step up our like our compensation bands to get exactly those. But but I don't know who

exactly those. But but I don't know who are the best people. So I um I need to just like figure out are these really really good people to work with? Are

they moldable? Are they going to work well together in this team? Um and then and give like the compensation that you give on the top of market compensation rates for that. You've built an

incredible team also like of less obvious talent in the early days and then you hire amazing rock stars like Elena Verer. When you look at your

Elena Verer. When you look at your hiring process, your talent assessment process, is there anything that's nonobvious? So like for us, I look for

nonobvious? So like for us, I look for people who have either extreme trauma or extreme masochism.

Yes.

And being serious, I think not enough people are opinionated. You said brand is important. Great brands are

is important. Great brands are opinionated. People love them or hate

opinionated. People love them or hate them. Lovable. Good. Good example. Um,

them. Lovable. Good. Good example. Um,

but what is yours that is non-obvious about hiring or talent assessment?

So, I like to think a lot about slope and that like if I talk to someone and I learn a lot of things talking from them and I I notice that my conversation is like very dynamic and exciting that that

is usually feels like a very good indicator that they're going to adapt to the organization and their slope will be very high. Um I otherwise I think there

very high. Um I otherwise I think there are good ways to just understand how did they perform like if I could be there with a video camera when they worked in

the past uh that gives me a lot of signals. So that's that's usually what I

signals. So that's that's usually what I spend a lot of time uh when I talking to new candidates. When you think about a

new candidates. When you think about a slope it's noticeable with you do like we haven't known each other for a huge amount of time but when I compare when I first met you to when I met you today it

is still very different in terms of your leadership.

Where have you not progressed where you would like to still?

I think I still operate lovable in a very scrappy startupy way even though we're like at the later growth stage right now. So being adding a bit more

right now. So being adding a bit more structure in like in a few key areas is some somewhere I'm looking to progress or to start like being a excellent operator in the joys of this show and

being friends is we can have a discussion not like a one back and forth interview.

Do you think you actually need that?

We've had founder mode be so uh propagated and praised and being close to the metal Jansen having 52 direct reports. I would say structure and that

reports. I would say structure and that middle layer is where slowness and apathy comes.

True. Yeah.

Do you think you need that?

That's a good question. I I think I'm going to always operate with this with most of my impact coming from like founder mode, but I do need uh given that there's so many things thrown at me

and coming in from all the different directions to have kind of protective layer that introduces a lot of order in like how do we prioritize all these incoming things and and that comes down

to a well-running organization. Um if

I'm and and then you for a well-running organization you need a very organized manager. uh somewhere at the top and I'm

manager. uh somewhere at the top and I'm not planning to be that like percentile manage manager myself but surround myself with great leaders who who do

more of the like organizations.

Do you have a protective layer today?

Cuz I get probably 25 intro requests for you a week and I probably make one a month.

Do you have someone who does filter?

Yeah, I do. Yeah. and and it's it's a kind of a um wonderful chaotic protective layer that works together as a close team. And I don't really have like a name for it. It's just the people

working closely with me. I'm not sure who you've interacted with in the team, but it's it's so so the team is made up of like previous founder type generalists uh that work closely with me

and I just work in terms of like quick feedback. This is not what we should be

feedback. This is not what we should be doing. This is what we should be doing.

doing. This is what we should be doing.

Um works okay now. I think we can do even better.

So you said talent was number one and brand was number two.

If we think about great brand, what does great brand mean to you? I think super concrete example is the Apple ecosystem where they obsess about details maybe

too much so they move slowly but that's what builds up trust and and a very strong brand and that's what that's what what we're aiming for as well in every interaction like every time we update

the product how do we make sure we roll it out so that we really understand the users uh and how their reactions to all the things we're changing very rapidly in the product in the company

there's a couple of questions which everyone one has where they will kind of throw them as a critique at lovable or at anyone in the space and I think one

is protection um defensibility when you think about defensibility today is brand the core element of defensibility or is there something that

people do not see I think you need to build a product if you want to like maximally defend be defensive where if you are on this product and like the platform that that product is you don't

want to live because you have so much value that's you've created on the platform that you're getting automatically every day. So I that's what lovable is becoming in this product

building platform where you loable today is your technical co-founder. We want it to be your co-founder in general that handles all the admin setting up your finance operations. Uh and if you're on

finance operations. Uh and if you're on a platform like that you you probably don't want want to live.

Would you say to all founders building an AI state from day one don't worry about defensibility. It comes over time.

about defensibility. It comes over time.

Yes. Great question. I I I have a friend who had has this fun analog in terms of an AI startup, which is that AI startups are like chickens shot out of a cannon up in the sky if you if you kind of

start getting traction. Uh and then it's all about flapping fast as a chicken because there are new chickens shot out from cannons every day. And if you keep flapping faster than the other chickens,

then you're going to do great. And I

think that's a good like first level of analysis in how you should operate. I'm

just going to say for any vegans that are listening, no chickens were shot out of cannons. And that is the most

of cannons. And that is the most extremely Swedish way of, you know, it's the Reed um Hoffman who says, you know, it's about kind of running off the cliff or whatever with a power glider and just kind of flapping. That that works too.

Yeah, I think that's my recommendation to just be like execute fast, grow faster. Um and then when when you're

faster. Um and then when when you're starting to get up there, you can start maybe start thinking a bit about about the defensibility.

Totally get you. That's the one criticism. Another is like actually when

criticism. Another is like actually when you look at these businesses and a lot of people are criticizing this with your raplets, your bolts, your lovables, they're not actually very good businesses in terms of you economics and

so much is passed through. So like

bluntly, if I give you a dollar, how much is passed straight through to anthropic and open AI?

I don't give you the exact numbers, but if you look at the paid usage, it's majority. It's not everything.

majority. It's not everything.

Okay. How does that change over time?

Uh, so as our business develops, we're looking to get most of our revenue once you as a user are like I love this platform, I'm never leaving and but

today it's only like in the beginning I'm you're paying to build pretty much.

So over time we just want to create so much value stay on the subscription and the a small uh part of the cost is goes to the to their AI compute. Will you be

able to make money through not optimizing models? And what I mean by

optimizing models? And what I mean by that is in the future you may not need the very best, very latest model to do the simple about me website. And so you

can root users.

Yeah. Yeah. I think um as all applications develop, the AI is going to be adapted to those applications. And

for most things, it's like super simple to do it. It's like you're driving a car and you don't you're not thinking about what you're doing. When you're in a new situation driving a car, then you're like your brain really goes on fire. And

we're not there. We're not close to being there yet. I think for us it's too early to optimize for that because the AI is every month is like doing new completely different things. So we just

want to be able to iterate really fast on what the AI is able to do and not optimize the models for what the what it's doing.

That's really interesting. So you build for what tomorrow's model can do, not what we have today.

Yeah. to to quite large extent. Yes. And

um like what generally in when I think about models uh they're the models that are like very thoughtful and deep thinking um and now we put as much of

work on those models. In the future it's going to be a mix in terms of when it's obvious what you should do then it doesn't cost any money. It's super fast.

But when it's a new situation um which building a software product often results in then it has to think much more.

One other area where you can see real like margin expansion is also in token selling. Like when you think about like how you price tokens given proumers and consumers don't fundamentally often know the price of

tokens. You can actually have quite a

tokens. You can actually have quite a considerable markup on token usage. Do

you think that is a place of real elasticity to gain margin or not?

Yeah. So we we looked at like the number this was a few months ago but we looked at how much revenue is flowing through the AI from lovable applications. Okay.

And it was more than $10 million in AR.

Um and now all of that revenue needs the user to go through this like bit complex process of setting up the connection to the model providers. So that's something

we're just simplifying. uh we're looking at simplify uh so stay stay tuned for how we enable more simplicity first of

all for our users with that um and then if we can reduce the underlying cost may maybe we can add take a margin there as well how do you think about mental plasticity

to delay margin optimization mental plasticity what so like the willingness to wait for margins to come and what I mean by that

it's like if you look at Deliveroo, yeah, it's margins of [ __ ] in the early days and over time they get better and better as you have more and more people use it and more density, more orders in

small areas. You've got to be patient so

small areas. You've got to be patient so to speak. Same with Open AI, same with

to speak. Same with Open AI, same with Lovable.

How long does one think before you're thinking margin optimization? Um I I have these two conflicting pieces of perspectives on it. And one is I speak

to Nick who built Revolute and he just tells me like Anton you need to compute the payback time and then you need to do super hard performance optimization on acquiring new users. Uh and then you of

course need to have a good like payback payback times in terms of profits for per user. Uh which makes sense. And then

per user. Uh which makes sense. And then

if you can do small changes in on margins, it it actually affects a lot on how how fast you can grow. But but the other perspective which I index a bit more on right right now is you just want

to have as much mind share and as many users who just love the brand as possible right now and then you can think about that that later. So exactly

how I trade those two perspectives off is um I mean you need to look at the weights in my neural network but it's some combination of the two.

It's so funny. I think it's absolutely number two and then it's number three which is NYX which is like incredible performance optimization really

understanding funnel metrics from CAC to LTV how you drive efficiency through the channels and then do you know what's ironic you kind of then go back after that stage to

an art which is where Nick is now which is we've done that so well we have to sponsor race cars because brand again becomes the most important thing it's so interesting you know that kind

of bell curve where you see it up and then it comes down again. It's it's kind of like that on brand where you have it at both ends of the spectrum.

Yeah. I think like if you can do everything at once, the company benefits a lot, but you usually can't like you should you should be focused.

What would you most like to do now that you're not doing or can't do?

So I would like to rethink how the applications are built like what is the best way to build an application. Right?

What lovable does now is it takes all the best practices from decades of like how a great software products we built, but that's not how the future is going to look like. They're going all software

applications are going to have some type of AI. They're going they're going to

of AI. They're going they're going to have extremely seamless payment and checkout flows. And that's something I'd

checkout flows. And that's something I'd love to uh for us to spend time on figuring out and making possible for our users not to just have like a superhuman

AI engineer but to have a AI engineer that builds like the future of applications. When we look at we

of applications. When we look at we mentioned um kind of margin optimization there when we look at kind of the model providers we said that it's one where you also have to have that mental

plasticity. We saw OpenAI kind of

plasticity. We saw OpenAI kind of suggest or profer lovable style competitors. To what extent do you feel

competitors. To what extent do you feel open AI and anthropic will come after lovable in the way that claude code comes after cursor? I think uh in the

long term it just comes down to execution of a team. Um and I think many people are going to offer what we're offering today. We just need to offer

offering today. We just need to offer much more when that when that time comes and have a give a better user experience, give a better value proposition to our customers.

Who do you worry more about OpenAI doing it or Anthropic doing it?

I think um what we're betting on is to be um like the gateway for for humans, right? And be the best user experience

right? And be the best user experience for for AI. Um and so far OpenAI is doing that better than Tropic. So I see them as a more serious competitor in in 12 months.

How did you analyze GPT5 and when you look at performance post are you more or less bullish on Open AI?

So we we looked a lot about at how does how sorry we looked at a lot of how uh GPD5 would impact our users before we decided okay let's put this into the product and we looked at the how long

time it took to get responses. We looked

at our qual quantitative evils and and then we just vibe checked it in many different ways and what we concluded was that it's often times too like ambitious

for our users.

So and that's why we decided hey um this is very smart so let's give it to all our users and see what they what they tell us in terms of like what's good and

what's bad. Um what we found was that um

what's bad. Um what we found was that um it's like for the use cases when you have to solve a really really hard problem it's great and in terms of is

open AI doing a great job. I think this was a really smart uh obvious choice for them to say like we have these five different models that you have to select

in chat GBT let's just bring it down into one model GPT5. Um, but so they they should definitely should have done that, but it but it's comes with a lot

of trade-offs and so far I'd say they executed pretty well on it. The model is still too ambitious.

There's also a question of when you set the bar at AGI and then you get model optimization and model routing really essentially which is what it is.

You like capability wise it hasn't been a step function improvement in what we had before. No, I I don't think like the

before. No, I I don't think like the biggest part of GBT5 that's disappointing is that now they have to optimize all these different things into one model. Before it was like different

one model. Before it was like different models and they had to do it really fast. So it's inevitably going to fall

fast. So it's inevitably going to fall short in some dimensions. Um and I mean it just is a disappointment that you can't improve in all the directions at the same time.

How do you use Open AI versus anthropic within lovable today? Um so we have like this very complex agentic chain where we pass the users response the application

information in through many different models and like we take really fast and small ones and then we use for code writing we usually use anthropic um and right now you can say like I want to use

GPD5 and that's better when you're solving a really hard debugging problem.

Super and you've seen it be better than anthropic when it comes to a hard debugging problem. Yeah.

debugging problem. Yeah.

What do models not do today that would be a step function change in what lovable can do?

I think like something I'm I'm super excited about is that the AI has more context about who they're talking to and how they should be answering to guide

them through our specific application and the solving that problem is something that we have to do. And we

have to do it uh both with like how we build this agentic chain uh and over time in building absolutely world class paying hundred million dollars for getting the people

that train the models. So so that's on the on the horizon for us to to get it to like be hyperpersonalized for you specifically. When you think about

specifically. When you think about hyperpersonalized for you specifically and the users that you have, you know, you recently announced 100 millionaire amazing milestone to hit in 7 months.

That was [ __ ] nuts. For years, dude, it was like 0 to 10 million in two years was like the gold standard. That's what

I was brought up on, which makes me feel really old.

Um, which is amazing. Um, to see. My

question to you is when you look at revenue breakdown of the 100 million, just kind of guesstimate what is split between hobbyists, prodevs,

kind of normal people, how does it fit between the different segments?

You're right. So uh people do everything with lovable. They come with their idea

with lovable. They come with their idea to build a software business and product and then there's a lot of people in large companies that that use it as like okay now I can prove show what I

actually think we should build in the business and then they they build a working uh product that then they can like decide are we going to put this into our give it to our our engineering

team and they actually implement it. Um

and then is everyone else who build like their personal website, their small business website in like in a few minutes and 80% of people are are in the first category. They're building real

first category. They're building real complex applications in terms of% in terms of revenue 80%.

Wow.

Yeah. But and then the second segment is actually uh growing very fast because like enterprises are slowing to wake up slower to wake up. But you might have seen this product leader from Google who

says like we're never again writing a document about a product. We have to use Lovable or something to build out a fully working demo. Uh so so that that use case is also growing very fast. And

in terms of the third use case, I mean a lot of people have been burned trying to build nice websites in this like no code website builders W Squarespace and so on. And if you can just always do

on. And if you can just always do everything lovable and with a UX that I think is more sophisticated in moving fast, that's that's also growing. But I

think the the first two are the ones who are really like game changers.

Okay. So we go back. So 80% sorry is like actually building complex apps and then 10% is enterprise and 10% is hobbyists.

Something like something like that.

Yeah.

Is that what you want it to be?

So we want to build for the new generation of AI native founders that um build like maybe one person unicorns soon. Um and then

soon. Um and then the funny thing is that those people also have jobs maybe in large successful companies and they want to help their

friends and their family to build uh simple websites. So I think this is a

simple websites. So I think this is a yeah I think this is a good split. Is

that an optimal market to go after if you're thinking god I sound like such a VC but like value extraction which is like an AI founder building a mega business on lovable great you one have

to have a lot of mechanisms for value extraction and be it payment solutions or you name it but if they're single seat and it's just like tough to get true value extraction from that is it not much better to be hobbyist for

everyone for mom and pop to build the about me website where it's 7 billion people like our mission is to enable a lot of people that have the opportunity to

build businesses but they have been held back by not being able to write code and have access to capital to hire engineers. Um so it's obvious to start

engineers. Um so it's obvious to start with the people who are going to build businesses and then uh it naturally trickles down to everyone else as well as a function of that if like those I

think those are the best people to start building for and where you can extract value I think less about that. I think

about our mission.

We should have like a lovable holiday fund, which is like every year we pay the most talented people within

large enterprises for a week's holiday.

Then they build their business. So they

and then they just use Lovable for the week and after the week they quit their job.

I think it' be the funnest thing ever.

Sounds good.

Yeah. Um but I can just expand a bit on like on the business thinking there as well. So um like the future I I think

well. So um like the future I I think many of the largest businesses they haven't been create started yet today and now with AI you can move move so fast you can meet much faster close to

your customers you can drive prices down and we want to be the enabling tool tool for that movement and and then um I think over time that's going to result

in a lot of revenue but like if we can do every all of these use cases as that you're asking about at the same time what uh our like use case percentage of

adoption or revenue is going to converge towards is just what's this what's the spend from enterprises what's the like the end game spend from enterprises what's the endgame spend for consumers

on tools like this if we continue to dominate this completely new category obviously I'm super grateful for you for taking my money but the reason the number one reason why I would invest in

lovable is because the market TAM or the TAM expansion is actually incomprehensible which is like very much like Uber you could never have foreseen the market expansion that would take

place very much like lovable saying website builders is an ex market is completely the wrong analogy to understand how big lovable could be moving forwards and that's a common thing of the best venture investments

ever made yeah it's really interesting yeah I I think also just want to say on the enterprise use case so if I was a

CEO or like the CTO of a large enterprise company. I I wouldn't think

enterprise company. I I wouldn't think in terms of oh, how can we make our engineers more productive? I would think in terms of how can we get the most information about what we should build

as quickly as possible uh into new products or into existing products and that requires everyone in the company to be able to work in one place to change

and edit their products and propose new changes to it. And it's hard for us and for any or for anyone in that matter to build a product that does that like

tomorrow. It's better for us to start

tomorrow. It's better for us to start with the founders who building it from the ground up and then move it into the enterprise. The same experience into the

enterprise. The same experience into the enterprise.

It also allows for this incredible democratization of ideas within companies. I interviewed the CPO at

companies. I interviewed the CPO at Dualingo for 20 product and he actually said how two designers not traditionally ones who actually come up with obviously building products from day one. um

created chess in Duolingo and they did it with I can't remember what the tool was. I hope it was lovable. Please say

was. I hope it was lovable. Please say

it was lovable. Um and that was actually their first iteration of it which I thought was an amazing instantiation of this. So I totally get you there. Does

this. So I totally get you there. Does

that mean then that we lose the design process and the brainstorming process?

Do we skip that and go straight to prototyping?

Yeah. Look,

so uh to to date what you've done is that you've taken an idea and then you went through many many many steps until it's like a fully fast growing product and all of I call that the product life

cycle. One part of it is writing the

cycle. One part of it is writing the code which is like where AI now has made it much faster. Um there are many steps after that. There steps before that

after that. There steps before that which is to like mock it up, validate it internally, validate it with your users.

And what we've done so far is to take all the first step until like this is validated. This is what we need to ship

validated. This is what we need to ship and and even we have even external users on it into one few minutes or a few hours of building. Uh so that's where we've seen like the most there's the

most maturity on our product. The steps

that come after is something we have to build out as fast as possible so that you don't need like in products design engineering organization. It's one all

engineering organization. It's one all one tool where anyone with the best ideas spend the most time the steps after or the steps before. And

what I mean by the steps before is you see at the other end of the spectrum Figma doing Figma make where they're like hey we'll always have the design process and then we'll move with you into the second phase of that product

life cycle into the build or prototype phase from design to prototype.

To what extent do you worry about entry from that earlier standpoint?

Entry from Figma or yeah entry from Figma given the fact that they own the design part of the like phase to just then move into

prototyping. So I think humans are

prototyping. So I think humans are sometimes too obsessed with small details being perfect and you which makes you move much slower and and the way of doing it right now with the

design what like one person does all the design very slowly very detailed um is going to be replaced by AI doing you you talk much more high level and you you talk about your design philosophy and

then the AI does the implementation of the design um and then you as a human go out and get all the context from the other people think this is looks good and give give it all as feedback into

the AI um and and then there's a very seamless opinionated way of taking it all the way to a product uh with all the marketing and growth functions in

built-in AI behind it as well as all the uh tooling you need to evolve uh high quality software product which comes like testing quality assurance and so on and that's that's a new way of doing it

and and thinking you should be doing design with make and like the Figma tool is um for me most people I I would my thesis is that it will slow you down too

much. Does that make sense?

much. Does that make sense?

It does. What happens to Figma then?

I think for some pixel perfect things it's going to be amazing to continue to use Figma. Um I don't know how the like

use Figma. Um I don't know how the like the distribution will look like in terms of doing it with a more opinionated way which is what our platform is becoming versus uh how many companies want to

continue to do it like you do it now in in a tool like Figma.

Do you think you're opinionated enough?

I think that our tool enables a lot of flexibility at the cost of some velocity on our product development. But I think it's a pretty good sweet spot. you can

build with lovable and then any engineer can come in and edit and take over if they want to. So I think um yes we would we would be moving faster if we were more even more opinionated about how

things should be done.

What are you not opinionated on that you would like to be in a dream world? Like

in a dream world, we would be even more opinionate about how you build an application and we would know what's the future of building applications with AI

being such a core part of it. I don't

think it's possible because how AI works and like what's the best UX with AI for the products that are built with lovable changes so rapidly. So at some point in the future, I'd love to be there. And

when what happens if we can be more opinionated is that you get the um like the right level of detailed adjustments

on how the AI works for your product, how the what backend flows and workflows automations work for your product. And

now we have we support a lot of different things. So it's more um you

different things. So it's more um you need to be really good at prompting right now.

Do you think we will prompt in five years time?

Yes, I think so. But maybe it will evolve in terms of um how you do it. It

will like hyperpersonalization takes care of a lot of detailed prompting that we have to do today.

What does that mean?

So prompting is basically providing context to an AI of what your goals are and how you wanted to do something. If

it's it's like when you have great uh employees for you, right? They they know everything about how you how you want it to work. So you just have to say, "Let's

to work. So you just have to say, "Let's go to Stockholm and do a hackathon." And

then it just magically becomes what you want it to be.

It pretty much does. Honestly, I had I sent a picture to my mother beforehand and she's like, "You had nothing to do with that." And I'm like, "No, I did

with that." And I'm like, "No, I did not." And she's like, "I know."

not." And she's like, "I know."

Right? And you can't just say tell Chachet or something. Let's go, let's go to Sako Hackathon. It's going to come up with something else than what you had in mind, right? Mhm.

mind, right? Mhm.

And so you can either like prompt it very very detailed or you can make sure it knows how you think and that's what we'll be evolving towards.

We said the word opinionated and we spoke about it with regards to the company.

Dude, I love your social media presence because you're also opinionated in your social media presence and I think it's respectfully also just quite blunt and you've been opinionated in how you talk about

competition and specifically like a rapid of the world. How do you think about whether or not to engage in an opinionated stance against competition

or not?

Um, look, I don't think so much about competition. Uh, I what the the only

competition. Uh, I what the the only thing that matters is that we make our product the best product and we continue to deliver on like our value promises to

our customers. uh if there is something

our customers. uh if there is something that happens. So there there was a

that happens. So there there was a competitor that like found a lot of apps that have been poorly made um and they they said oh this is a vulnerability and and I spoke to a lot of security

professionals that wasn't really like how you would normally uh announce vulnerability. So then I went in and

vulnerability. So then I went in and bashed them as a as an outcome of that.

I think that was a very reactive thing and I think it was like something I'd be happy to share in person to that competitor like face to face. Well, I

mean, it was it was interesting because uh Jason Lumpkin, who's a friend of mine, I don't know if you saw it, but he was using Raplet. Um, and then I can't remember exactly what happened, but they

basically had a massive security breach or they deleted all his database or something bad happened and it was like code red for them. And the takeaway for him was like just security on all of them is just nowhere near where it needs

to be.

And like it's wrong for Replet to bash lovable. It's wrong for lovable to bash

lovable. It's wrong for lovable to bash Replet. All of you guys suck at

Replet. All of you guys suck at security. Is that true?

security. Is that true?

Uh yes. I think they Yeah. Like so let me say it different

Yeah. Like so let me say it different way. First of all, we talk about

way. First of all, we talk about security like companywide every week like every day I I hear something about security because we take it so seriously and um there's so many different fronts

to make it much more secure than if a human would do the the application development. And that's why it's so

development. And that's why it's so important for us to be the best in the world at security. So you're saying it's more secure than humans?

Not yet. For I mean I I said this at some point which is if and you take your average developer who like normally

works in a large team where they have a lot of support and then they they that human goes out and builds an application. They are going to create

application. They are going to create software that has security holes on average.

Mhm. Um, and when you build a application with Lovable, it's going to tell you to go through a bunch of security reviews and the AI is going to do a bunch of security reviews and finally it's going to give you green

light like we haven't found any security vulnerabilities. So if you compare those

vulnerabilities. So if you compare those two that average really average developer with lovable, lovable is going to uh have a lower chance of having a vulnerability. And so we want them that

vulnerability. And so we want them that put that to 0%. We need to put that at 0% chance of vulnerability. It reminds

me of self-driving which is like you know for the world's best driver I'm sure you are better than self-driving but for the majority and for the majority who are tired yes

humans have the potential to be hung over high malfunctioning in some way actually wildly dangerous and much much better very much so yeah y so yeah I I I would

say I'm very proud of what the team done so far with security and and but there's more to come so when we look at we we've spoken about many different kind of uh competitors in different ways from your Figmas to your

wrap list. If you move forward three

wrap list. If you move forward three years, what does the space look like then?

Again, I I think I focus on what our product does and how we serve our customers best and like I don't really predict that if if we get all the the majority of the profit share in this market, that's amazing. Um if there's

this is spread out across different companies, that's that's also fine as long as we build a product that lasts for generations. And then I do that by

for generations. And then I do that by building the best product for our customers. Um,

customers. Um, and this is why brand is so important for you.

That's how I think about it.

Do you mind if devs go to Lovable, get 60% of the code from there, and then fine-tune it?

How do you feel about that?

I don't like from the get-go, two years ago, I decided I'm going to build Lovable We for a world where humans don't write code anymore. And we're quickly moving

code anymore. And we're quickly moving there. We're very very quickly moving

there. We're very very quickly moving there. uh today I don't mind at all like

there. uh today I don't mind at all like it should be flexible you some humans have their way of doing things and um it's I think it's good if you have like

ecosystem where you can use many many many different tools on on the product over time I think it will converge towards the very opinionated platform like the ones we're building towards and everyone's just going to look at what's

the cost benefit of doing it with some other tool as well and only using love all is going to be the obvious uh most like velocity high velocity and high quality driving choice. That's

the future today. Does AI make 1x engineers 10x or

today. Does AI make 1x engineers 10x or does it make the 10x engineers 100x?

It does both. It really does both force you to one.

So, uh for the junior engineers, 1x engineers, um they often are bad at something, right? If the AI can bridge

something, right? If the AI can bridge that gap, it takes them from zero to one and to be able to do something they they were not able to do before, it's like a 10x, they go to 10x or even more. Um, so

so if that's the case, then they definitely go, then it's more valuable for them. If it's um a 10x engineer that

for them. If it's um a 10x engineer that is working on something where you need a lot of like many years of experience to work on a system that a new junior

engineer completely doesn't understand.

the user the 1x engineer doesn't understand the system then the 1x engineer is useless so no AI is going to increase their velocity whereas the 10x engineer is going to maybe go to 100x

engineer how will the size of engineering teams change in the next 5 years I think the for the best companies

engineers will really act as this translation layer they will need to be more thinking more in terms of product

being a product manager Um and I think there's like a higher elasticity on such engineers. So you might see many

engineers. So you might see many companies being like oh more engineers we can do even more even faster. They

out talking to the customers and changing things with AI super fast. Um

but the skills required to be a good engineer then change with time. Yes,

definitely like I think being a generalist becomes more and more important with everything in everything with with AI so that you can understand how things come together as a larger

hole and then you use AI for the like deep expertise that you don't need in the future as much when you think about skills required too. There's a lot of

people who are asking today, should I bother studying computer science if we're going to see Lovable be the last software that we ever need? How would

you advise your little brother questioning whether to do CS at university?

I think university is not the best place to learn. Uh that come doesn't matter

to learn. Uh that come doesn't matter what you're studying. uh you should be out there and really understand how the world works in terms of how work translates to value creation and you

don't learn that at university. So

university is like a way to train your brain to learn new things and uh meet a lot of interesting people. Uh so

would you encourage your children to go to university?

So this is now 20 years in the future pretty much. So, so it's hard to say to

pretty much. So, so it's hard to say to say something about 20 years in the future. I think it's a great experience

future. I think it's a great experience to have had in life. Uh, so why not? But

it depends on what outcome you want to reach. If you want to have a

reach. If you want to have a job that where you make the most money, no, you should they should go to university. I think the opportunity cost

university. I think the opportunity cost of those years is very high.

True.

Yeah. In the in the UK in particular, we just get very drunk for three years.

Yeah.

And that's generally how it is.

generally study generalist subjects like geography and history and honestly it is a little bit of a waste of time in which case you can utilize those years so much

better given your stamina your energy the plasticity of your brain at that age which is why I highly advocate against it agree I mean if you just do a very very

specialized job for for those years maybe you'll become less of a generalist so that there's like there's a trade-off there as of course that while as university you're exposed to many different concepts which can be useful.

We mentioned earlier AI and enterprise.

When you look at the biggest enterprises today, they're not able for data, for permissioning, for security to use AI.

Are we going to see the biggest shift in incumbent power in the next 10 years?

So you mean if they're not enabled, there's someone else that come in and be enabled. I think you see this in banking

enabled. I think you see this in banking like for example where a bank is a software company right it's all about software systems and the old banks are

moving much slower I I think yes there's going to be some companies that are like built ground up for an AI to change their their systems uh and anyone who's

exposed to like customers understanding the legal requirements and so on can move much much faster in creating a good customer experience um so Yes, I I

imagine there are also some um benefits of being having been around for a long time in the enterprise in in like banking. There's a certain element of

banking. There's a certain element of trust and so on. Um so I don't know how large the shift is going to be in in the in like across different segments of the enterprise market but um many companies

will get disrupted by cheaper much much better alternatives.

It's interesting you said there about trust. How loyal do you think lovable

trust. How loyal do you think lovable users and customers are? Do you think there's a high propensity to switch and an ease to switch or do you think people fundamentally are loyal?

It's 50-50. Like some people are just super super loyal to a brand. Uh many

people I mean if you do something that hurts your brand they will they will switch and they're just out there looking for um maximizing some kind of

cost versus capabilities objective. So,

so there's there's like you can do um you can think about both of those groups simultaneously. Um and but like if you

simultaneously. Um and but like if you have the best products with the best value, you're going to get everyone.

What question we we spoke about kind of people being um threatened large incumbents. What question should large

incumbents. What question should large CEOs, business leaders be asking today about the future of AI and their companies and how they use it that

they're not asking, do you think? M I

think um one of the biggest bottlenecks for these companies is going to be some kind of change management for the humans in the organization. M um and I think

they should be asking how have similar companies to ours done change management very very very rapidly. Uh and get that conversation into like the leadership

room and then maybe across the entire organization to start study those examples of where change management has been very successful and then look at specifically um which AI tools should we

be using? Should we be adopting like

be using? Should we be adopting like building our product on top of Lovable 100% because then everyone can collaborate or should we be doing some should we hire some new type of people that come in and upskill everyone?

You said about speed there. You said

about talent earlier.

Bluntly, dude, I get really fed up with everyone saying that Europeans are about espresso and take in the summer and it's August and July, we're not going to

work. and I advocate for a very

work. and I advocate for a very aggressive work culture which you know is 996 y and how I say that.

Um how do you feel about the importance of unwavering

hard work over balance in the desire to win? I think over a 10-y year period I I

win? I think over a 10-y year period I I would advocate for some balance but over a two-year per period uh if you really care about something then you should

make sure that you have like you get your exercise your sleep in really really well and maybe something that you know relaxes you uh and then just work your ass off. That's what you should be

doing. Do you agree then with Scott from

doing. Do you agree then with Scott from Cognition who clearly said to all wind surf employees after hiring them or buying the company, it's six days a

week. It's unwaveringly relentless and

week. It's unwaveringly relentless and if you don't want to sign up for that, you can leave. I would say in how we think about it is that you are

here to have 10x impact over other people at other companies. And if you don't have 10x impact uh so for you do that by being very talented, being good at your job and uh being very focused.

Uh and for some people you need to put in a [ __ ] ton of hours and and for the but not for everyone. So I I would prefer I I speak about are you am I seeing the impact? Are you am I seeing

that if you would tell me you're leaving tomorrow I will be like no you are like such an important part of this company you have to stay. Uh and that's how I push performance and impact. Do you do

the keepers test?

Yeah, you do the keepers test.

Has it made you change how you construct teams?

The keepers test.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think um it is always makes it clear to people that um I need to always figure out am I like how can I have more

impact? Uh so that's one part and then

impact? Uh so that's one part and then um I mean I I think in terms of what does this organization look like if it's

in the um is it optimally set up to succeed right now and um I don't I don't do like culture is such an important part if you're just like throwing people

around too much it it hurts the culture and the ways of working but doing this business exercise saying is this organization set up perfectly to win definitely shapes how I build the organization you mentioned Nick earlier at Revolute,

he gave me the best answer I think ever on culture. You know, I've done 3,000

on culture. You know, I've done 3,000 shows. When culture comes up, it's like

shows. When culture comes up, it's like first principles thinking. I'm like,

"Fuck it. We'll edit this bit out." Um,

always but he said the best thing ever.

He said, "I don't think about culture. I

think about winning." The single biggest determinant of human happiness is growth and development. And when you are

and development. And when you are winning, you are most optimally positioned to grow and develop.

And so, if I create the conditions to win, you will grow and develop. And then

supporting that, the other thing that people like to do is accumulate wealth as well as development.

And you will accumulate that by winning because of your share price increase.

It's the most That's a good quote.

It's a really good way to think about it, which and I think it's the same, which is like if we win, everyone will be happy. There's very few places where

be happy. There's very few places where they're losing every day, day in day out, and blissfully happy.

It doesn't happen.

What's not great about your culture today? if you could change it.

today? if you could change it.

So there's a certain uh personality type that has takes a lot of like initiative.

They're very very excited about new ideas and doing like novel things. And

um as your company matures, you like that is still an important ingredient, but you need the first priority to make what you have high quality to continue to be high quality and improve the

quality across everything you're doing.

And I want um us to be even more like mimifying. Let's improve the quality.

mimifying. Let's improve the quality.

Let's improve how we do things. Do move

slow so that we can move really really fast.

And you want to be more thoughtful around where you spend time, where you don't.

Yeah. So this this cowboy versus farmer analog where a farmer is like optimizing things for the long term. And I think we can do a bit more of that optimizing things for the long term. But but we

always strike the balance of doing.

Do you think you're in that phase of company build yet? Like I I actually prefer the optimize for the short term.

I don't know if you spent much time like in China or with like Chinese development teams, but they are unbelievable in their psychology around build. They optimize for the short term

build. They optimize for the short term incessantly and then just like sticky tape the [ __ ] sticky tape the [ __ ] sticky tape the [ __ ] And that is often how they're able to do

so much so fast. Hm. Uh I think if you have um super clear product market fit, you have a brand to defend. Yes, you

cannot you cannot stick is everything.

You you can do that in like sprints to move to innovate. But you really need to focus on like are these pieces put well together. spend a lot of time on moving

together. spend a lot of time on moving things around in the organization in your in your product so that it has high quality, maintains high quality um and you can build faster upon that

foundation. Can you imagine if Apple

foundation. Can you imagine if Apple like ah [ __ ] we deleted your cloud sorry yeah bad I said earlier about like Europe and summer and you not moving fast enough.

You said before that it is better to build in Europe and I don't want this to be like an advert for Europe. Um, but why do you think it's better to build in Europe?

I think there are many uh good things about Europe. There are also good

about Europe. There are also good things, things that are better in the US for example. I mostly think about I want

for example. I mostly think about I want to prove that you can build a generational product, a generational company team from Europe and part of it

is is on hard mode. Uh, and I think what parts are on hard mode?

So hard mode is the there's a where the network isn't as great in how many individuals and companies that have worked on and have context for like all

the different stages of building an amazing multinational company.

Completely agree there are no Elena Verers in Europe.

Yeah, very few. Maybe we'll get here soon. But um I think that's hard mode. I

soon. But um I think that's hard mode. I

think them like access to capital, people that will quickly give you a lot of distribution, help you with distribution and and brand.

Do you think access to capital is a genuine problem? I think there's so much

genuine problem? I think there's so much money in Europe that actually it's a problem for, as I said, it's not a bottleneck for us. No,

it's not.

And and you're going to start to see very soon, I'm sure you're probably already seeing it, but lovable spinouts where anyone who leaves lovable will get a term sheet straight away.

100%. True. Um I think Yeah. Why why is better to build in

Yeah. Why why is better to build in Europe?

Yeah.

There so there's the best we're the best talent. Okay.

talent. Okay.

So you said the hard things there is like number one.

What was number one again? Sorry. Wasn't

there a network and individuals that have done it before?

Yeah.

That's one thing. Yeah.

Is that it?

I I think it's easier to get distribution to be on like the center world stage in San Francisco and New York. Um but we've been able to pull

York. Um but we've been able to pull that off from Stockholm which is a good proof that you can do it from here. Um,

and then in the US, why do you think you've been able to do it? I I have my theory on why I think

it? I I have my theory on why I think you've been successful.

I mean, I think it's about storytelling and and sharing everything we're doing at the company. Um, and empowering uh other people who are using lovable

telling their stories a bit of that and that's how we broke been breaking through. I think we understand that you

through. I think we understand that you should be building in public and share what you're doing. I think transparency is everything and people like to follow people and you've combined the two very

well which is you're incredibly transparent around your AR growth. It's

easy to be when it's as good as it is but you're incredibly transparent in a way that most people aren't and then it's led by you and your voice and the two combinations of like cult of personality you and Anton you being

Anton not you and the third person uh and then you and growth is what really drives the success in that way. So

that's kind of what's harder. What's

better? Like why why should everyone build their company in Europe?

I mean we we can be we are the biggest talent magnet in Stockholm right now which is amazing. You can't it's much much more difficult to be that in San Francisco or New York. So we can really

pick up all the um underutilized talent and shape their like 10x their performance by being in a 10x better culture ways of working and like with

with amazing colleagues. So being able to be that like top one is I I think the biggest one. Um there's a a culture of

biggest one. Um there's a a culture of like humility and low ego and working really really well together as a team that I think is stronger for in Europe

and like this u way of thinking in terms of efficiency and doing much much more with less. Um that's also stronger here.

with less. Um that's also stronger here.

You have inherently higher churn in the valley. when you have a bad day, Open

valley. when you have a bad day, Open AAI offer you a bigger package and it's like ah I'll leave and do open AI and that prevents the compounding of knowledge within teams which I think is so valuable.

Yep.

Totally agree with you there.

Would Lovable be less successful if it were in the valley?

I honestly don't know. I think it would be would be very successful regardless.

Did you ever think about moving?

Yes. when I was about to start the company, um I everyone everyone was of course telling me I should go to SF. Um but we just

kept building and we got found some great people in in Stockholm. So we we kept building it from from here. Um and

I'm happy how it turned out.

Dude, it's been amazing. That was a decision which you you made and it worked out very well. What did you do in the lovable journey that with the benefit of hindsight and some experience

you wish you hadn't done?

When we started we had this um this idea the vision was very clear the sequencing was not so clear in what what we should be doing. We we had this open-source

be doing. We we had this open-source community that was kind of excited about a tool I made a few months ago before we started the company uh GPT engineer. I

think we shouldn't have just like scrapped that completely and we've 100% focused on on what's uh what's the future look like in terms of building opening your browser just building your

product there which is lovable. Um

why should you have scrapped that?

You should be very very focused on doing was it not crucial for customer development customer feedback?

No I I don't think so. So there was of course a plan for how to incorporate it to and get more value together like the um open source can be very su very

useful for many businesses but um in terms in in with the perspective of maximal focus it was just a bad idea to do two things that were like a bit too

tangentially uh related. So, so that's definitely one thing f and this we talk a lot about doing one thing finding the bottleneck for the company and solving for that bottleneck is the best way to

move really really fast.

What is the bottleneck that you'll be discussing in the board tomorrow?

Um I think the bottleneck for our long-term future is how we identify the uh technical product like so engineers that will take the product to its next

phase and um innovate on many many fronts at the same time. Um that's not the long term. If you think about the product today um it's giving our AI more

capabilities that are really like make it really polished user experience and give it more of those capabilities. so

that you can build out your full company, grow your business on on top of lovable and um then I think a bottleneck

is for how we serve all this extreme amount of enterprise customers love and pull from them at the same time as we we focus probably one is for the for founders building on lovable.

Will lovable have an enterprise sales team?

Yes.

And become an enterprise company? will

not become an enterprise company but but you will have this enterprise sense team are you what is that yeah I'm not so nervous about it that is just about uh talking

and understanding your customers making sure they have the tools to get value from the products that that is what how I see that that part and there of course many enterprises like top down enterprise sales team that hustle

themselves to whine and dine CEOs I don't that's not what we're going to do what is the hardest role to hire for for Um, so I think hiring engineering

leaders is very difficult because it's so hard to predict how their past performance will translate to our organization.

Have you made mistakes on hiring?

Um, yes, I've made some mistakes.

What did you do that you wish you hadn't done on hiring? I wish I was in the details when I not delegate um too much and and I I wish I was more proactive

about um like does this person want to do want to reach the outcomes are they excited inherently motivated about the outcomes that this role is going to be where is going to be most important for that role to reach those outcomes.

I think something that's really interesting when you say about kind of leaders there is I thought of you your co-founder Ashley who was in the video for the open AI uh release.

Yeah. And what struck me with that is, respectfully, it was one of the first times I've seen him front and center, not you.

How do you think about exposure between the two of you given you are very much the face of Lovable?

I think um I'd love for Fabian to have more exposure, but I also want him to be focused on building the product. That's

what he focused on. Uh, and it's probably um much easier for people to relate to lovable if they see one person and keep seeing that one person. And to

date, that is me. I think it will continue to be me.

What do you think is the biggest secret to a successful co-founding pair scaling at the speed of lovable scaling?

I think the most important thing is just the the horsepower and adaptability of the founders. Um and then like if those

the founders. Um and then like if those are maxed out or those are high um I mean you must be able to

um work together with like if you have sufficiently low ego it's going to work but if if you really want to work extremely well together what's I'll take

an example which is Fabian and me he's like uh not very big on doing some weird new way of doing

things. He's just like simplified as

things. He's just like simplified as much as possible. Um he's quite introvert and quiet until he's like has really shaped an opinion about what's the most important

thing. And I'm on the polar polar side

thing. And I'm on the polar polar side of the spectrum and saying father we should use this new crazy thing and and that's like polarity is actually very productive for both of us.

When you think about that and then you think about you're married and very happily married. When you think about

happily married. When you think about successful marriages, what makes the marriage so successful?

I mean I me and Fabian we can talk about anything. Uh and

anything. Uh and that's extremely productive and we can talk about turning things turning every stone and challenging each other um

around anything and we have a lot of like humility. I think that's very

like humility. I think that's very valuable and very important and the same is true in my marriage.

I think humility.

Humility. Yes. a lot of humility. I see

I I talk about my faults a lot in my marriage, for example. And um

does success make marriage harder or easier?

I mean, if you have zero hours to spend time with your partner, it makes it more difficult. Um I don't see

difficult. Um I don't see I also look at 90% of relationships often struggle and a lot of arguments is based on money which is an inevitable thing that's very hard especially as cost of living goes

up and for a lot of people um that then doesn't become a problem.

True.

Yeah. I don't think for us your marriage um not so much now.

Very humble Swedes aren't you?

Yes we I haven't changed my lifestyle since lovable was successful. Do you

not? Um, maybe I think less about monetary decisions, but no, lifestyle is pretty much the same.

What does a lovable product look like at the end of 2026?

I mean, it's your perfect co-founder that you go to with your idea from the idea stage, but also all all the way up to growing your business once you have

customers and um taking care of like what Elena is doing, optimizing the product for growth, optimizing the product and optimizing your communication with your customers, be it

in through email or through different marketing channels.

So, you eat the whole stack then. Yeah,

it's one opinion way to do the entire product life cycle.

So you do everything from email marketing to SMS marketing and everything in between.

Yes. And and obviously this is what an enterprise also wants to build their products on. But uh in the interim

products on. But uh in the interim they're using it for individuals like people in teams building out ideas that the the enterprise companies should be

doing and they're doing that very very very productively. Is benchmarking for

very productively. Is benchmarking for models [ __ ] and evaluations [ __ ] I had Edwin from Serge on the show. You know Serge, it's like the

show. You know Serge, it's like the scale AI competitor, but it's actually phenomenally successful. It's never

phenomenally successful. It's never raised a dollar and it's a billion two in revenue.

It's unbelievable.

Um, and he was like the benchmark evaluation is a [ __ ] I mean, they they turn more and more [ __ ] over time.

There's the something called goodart L.

So when you start optimizing for a number, that number stops being a good measure for success. even if it was a great number for a measure of success previously. So that obvious that happens

previously. So that obvious that happens like with all benchmarks over time in some sense.

What metric within lovable means less over time.

So it it means less if we start optimizing for it, right? Uh and like as one example where it means less I guess is how many people click the thumbs up

button on messages. Um because then we can like I don't know say say fun jokes or whatever that for some reason just triggers people to be more just asking

the human click the but click the button if you want to do it and and that's then we're hacking the metric right so that's just one example dude we're going to do a quick fire around I'm going to hit you with some

incredibly unfair questions and you can give me your thoughts okay what wildly held belief about AI do you think is just very wrong I think AI is much better than humans

and most people don't agree.

Do you not think they do now?

I think most people don't agree and and the reason is that it's often times it's very very stupid. Uh but that's very stupid. But if you give it all the

stupid. But if you give it all the context um or you have like you build a purposeful system for that what they are stupid at, it's smarter than humans.

Do you think we will see a plateauing or do you think we will see a continuous exponential progression curve?

I think we'll see uh plateauing on the things that we uh we care about which is a lot of nuance and like being good at all the different things at once in in

in the same model. Um there's probably people are looking at GPT5 now and saying ah we're hitting a stage where actually improvements are much more incremental. H I think we like

incremental. H I think we like we're what we're what you've seen so far is like the sigmoid curves across many different dimensions at the same time.

Um and yeah, we're going to we're going to see a a plateauing. There's some

sigmoid curves where I I think we're still in this like exponential phase of the sigmoid curve. So um and those could be something like science and engineering and like bioengineering

where AI is just going to continue to like exponentially become extremely powerful and uh generate a lot of new medicines and new ways of treating

health.

Grock Anthropic OpenAI.

You can invest in OpenAI at 380, Anthropic at 180, and Grock at I think it's 100. Which one do you invest in and

it's 100. Which one do you invest in and which one do you short?

I'd invest in Grock and I would um short uh what was the numbers again?

380 and 180.

Okay. 100. I I would probably short anthropic because no I would I would short open a let's say why why would you buy that Grock and

short open AI?

I think it's more the slope on the Grock team. They have they're doing something

team. They have they're doing something which I respect a lot which is to hire missionaries for the data curation part and they call it AI tutoring. Um and

they um I think the morale is much much better in that team than both of the other teams. the morale is super high.

Uh, OpenAI has gone through all this mess, right? And Dropbox has good morale

mess, right? And Dropbox has good morale as well. Um, and they're growing faster

as well. Um, and they're growing faster on the enterprise side from what I'm hearing.

Do you think Open AI wins the consumer in terms like next generation Google and Anthropic wins the developer and the enterprise?

No, I think it's going to be unknown.

There's going to be something else happening that we don't know what it is.

Do you think there will be a leading model that has not been created yet?

Yes. from China.

Are you do you worry about China?

I think Chinese companies are not as good as are really understanding your users. So not very worried. I do think

users. So not very worried. I do think there's like a 50-50 chance they will have the best model. We'll be using a Chinese model at some point and that makes me a bit concerned because I Chinese models at Lovable if we would.

Yeah.

And I would have to look into the details and see like what what's bad about that. Do we give them data we

about that. Do we give them data we don't want to give them? But I I mean we just want to do what's best for our customers. If that's going for a Chinese

customers. If that's going for a Chinese model and there's no negatives. Yes.

It's I I completely agree. I think also just like the multitude of models coming out of China is just terrifying when you look at every week there's like four new ones and they're all as good as the last

one. And the speed of distillation is

one. And the speed of distillation is just [ __ ] insane. Are the models of the future open or closed? Like which

model wins? I think the best ones will always be closed. Um, but if you want maximum flexibility and some kind of open ecosystem around it, it might be that open ones are the ones that most

people choose.

You can have dinner with anyone dead or alive. Who do you have dinner with and

alive. Who do you have dinner with and what do you ask them?

I think I would have dinner with Newton because he was like religious and super smart and just like talk about how he was in his age and why he's religious.

He's super like he invented so many different things and he's a he's a bit of a role model and he's dead so I can't meet him unless I say him no sorry I can't help with that one.

There's no intro there that would work.

Um that's amazing. What AI company do not enough people pay attention to? Like

I said surge for me is one which is like scale AI but fundamentally a much better business. Barely anyone knows it and

business. Barely anyone knows it and it's ridiculous. Which company does no

it's ridiculous. Which company does no one pay attention to that everyone should pay attention to?

I think the browser companies are interesting. So there's Strawberry,

interesting. So there's Strawberry, here's.com, there's DIA and Perplexity.

Now I'm I'm very excited to see what happens to other companies.

What do you think happens to Perplexity?

What happens to them? Yeah.

So they want to create the phone, I think. And I think that's a good bet.

think. And I think that's a good bet.

You think it's a good bet?

Would you invest in them at 18 billion?

18 billion. Um,

it depends on what options I have.

That's amazing. Your laugh there just kind of said it all.

That's very funny. Who's been the single most instrumental person for lovable not in the company?

It was atlena.

He ran sales and like CEO at Muro and he was on Dropbox at at N segment and I get a lot of input and help from him.

What's been the biggest?

I think um just talking about uh like he's just my coach and I I talk about like how I think about things and then he asked me questions and and tells me uh Anton you

have to step up in this uh like a bit of structure in this the area.

I love him. I had him on 20 sales and he was fantastic. What have you changed

was fantastic. What have you changed your mind on most penultimate one? So I

I I thought that bluntly you'd see the commoditization of model performance and models and actually value acrruel would be very difficult and there'd be a race to the bottom. I think that's clearly very wrong and very stupid of me to have

ever thought that and they'll be very valuable model providers. What did you believe that you're like that was wrong?

in the in the context of lovable um I thought we should be building an agent um before like the models were ready for it and because the models were starting

to get optimized for an agentic system and what I realized is that no no no no you need to have a product that as many people as possible are using today so that you can optimize not necessarily

the AI but necess optimize the entire user experience for those users and get that's that's your data flywheel that you want to use. Do you worry about job displacement at scale in a 10-year time

period?

So, I worry about us humans globally not even understanding what we want to achieve on this planet. And if um there's a lot of rapid change with like

white collar workers being out of a job and like humans, we get super worried and concerned and scared we're going to all hell is going to break loose. So,

that that's what I'm worried about. But

if we're a bit more thoughtful in terms of like okay if there would be insane amount of job displacement this is kind of what we think we should do and this is what we want to achieve um this is

how we make sure people like have can make some madeup job in the interim um then then we would 100% solve that.

Eight out of the top 10 paying jobs today did not exist 15 years ago. I

always think that's an interesting stat and we always overestimate job displacement with new technologies.

Yeah. interesting one.

I I think we're going to have like maybe a shift away from some very glamorous jobs which people will be get depressed by like similarly to how being like an artist was like so [ __ ] cool but

clearly you can't make any money as an artist. I think we're going to see that

artist. I think we're going to see that again now for a lot of knowledge work and that's going to be funny.

My kids brain surgeons brain surgeons.

No AI is going to come from brain surgeons for years. Come on.

Maybe. Have you seen the robots though?

The surgeon robots. They're pretty good.

I'm going to be honest. you're not

having people be like, I'm going to choose the robot version of that.

Not for for a while. Um,

it's a good job.

Is there anything else that concerns you with AI when you look forward?

I think again as humans we're very very good at competing and in some in many cases that's amazing like that's how you get all the best companies. That's how you get great

companies. That's how you get great technology. Uh but in some cases like

technology. Uh but in some cases like we're we're competing and then we go to war with each other or like we um like start preparing for wars and I think if

we can be better at u thinking big picture across across superpowers uh that would prevent the scenario where you have like a AI that can kill all

people in the others like in the other nation in an instant. um and like that being triggered without us actually wanting that to happen. So um yeah, I'm

I'm concerned that us being so competitive um in a world where things happen much faster is going to lead to some unexpected results that no one really wants.

Which competitor do you most respect?

I think Open AAI is pretty good at building products. I think there's other

building products. I think there's other foundation model labs that will do even better at building products and those are the ones we should uh think about for the future. But mainly mainly focus on just what do our users want? How do

we make a better product?

But you must look across your your Figmas, your bolts, your replets, your who do you respect?

I respect Figma. Yeah,

Figma.

Yeah.

Why?

They Yeah. Because they're good at uh listening to their users and building a good product. And if they can translate that to uh the full product life cycle, um I think they're a very

formidable competitor.

Everything goes to plan. Okay, we hit all of our numbers and everything works.

If that is the case, where then is lovable in 20, 30, 5 years time?

We're the in the mostly used interface for humans to AI and that's a very huge market.

Dude, it's so much better doing it in person. I've so enjoyed this. Thank you

person. I've so enjoyed this. Thank you

so much for agreeing to do it in person and I've loved it, man. It

was fun.