Lovable Products Create Recruiting Brands

Elena Verna's approach to growth at Lovable reveals how AI companies require fundamentally different growth strategies than traditional software companies. She's had to discard most of her previous growth playbook, finding that only 30-40% of her past experience transfers to this new environment.

At the core of Lovable's extraordinary growth—reaching $200M ARR with just 100 people in under a year—is the principle that in fast-moving AI markets, innovation trumps optimization. While traditional growth teams might spend 95% of their time optimizing existing funnels and 5% innovating, Lovable inverts this ratio completely. The company focuses on creating entirely new growth loops rather than incrementally improving existing ones.

This shift happens because AI capabilities evolve so rapidly that product-market fit must be recaptured every three months. Both the product capabilities and market expectations change simultaneously, creating a constant need to reinvent rather than merely refine. As Elena puts it, "To be ahead of competitors is not optimization of the problem, it's reinvention of the solution."

Lovable's growth strategy centers on several unconventional approaches. They've replaced the concept of "minimum viable product" with "minimum lovable product," focusing intensely on creating delightful experiences that generate word-of-mouth. They deliberately give away their product generously—viewing LLM costs as marketing expenses rather than margin drains—because they recognize that removing barriers to entry accelerates their viral loops. When users ask for free credits for hackathons or events, Lovable's response is "take it, how much do you need?"

The company maintains constant "noise in the market" through building in public, with both founders and employees regularly sharing updates on social media. This creates a sense that the product is constantly evolving, which serves as both a resurrection and re-engagement strategy. Rather than relying on traditional SEO, their organic strategy focuses on social sharing and community building.

For product teams, this means the growth function extends deeper into core product development than in traditional companies. Growth teams at Lovable build new features and integrations directly, rather than just optimizing surfaces. They're even involved in agent workflows and codifying agent instructions to improve activation.

The implications for leaders and ICs are significant. Teams need high autonomy and agency to maintain shipping velocity. Engineers must embrace being "product engineers" who announce their own work rather than funneling everything through marketing. Everyone needs to be comfortable with chaos and able to create clarity without waiting for direction. And perhaps most importantly, the entire organization must be willing to constantly reinvent itself rather than optimize what already works.

This approach requires a specific type of talent—people who see their work as a hobby and passion, not just a paycheck, and who have "fire in their belly." It's not about credentials but about finding those who view working at the company as their "global maximum" opportunity. For these individuals, the rapid pace and constant reinvention become energizing rather than exhausting.