Giving Product Away Fuels Growth

In AI-driven companies, growth requires giving away your product generously rather than optimizing for immediate revenue. This counterintuitive approach has been central to Lovable's extraordinary growth trajectory to $200M ARR in just over a year.

Elena Verna has discovered that in fast-moving AI markets, traditional growth playbooks apply to only 30-40% of what drives success. While she previously spent 95% of her time optimizing existing user journeys, at Lovable she spends 95% innovating on growth and only 5% on optimization. The focus has shifted from incremental improvements to reinventing solutions that can stay ahead of rapidly evolving competition.

One of Lovable's most powerful growth strategies is deliberately giving their product away extensively. As Elena explains, "This is part of our growth secret sauce. You have to remove the barrier of entry." When users want to run hackathons or introduce Lovable to their companies, they're given free credits liberally. This approach creates powerful word-of-mouth loops as people experience the product's capabilities firsthand.

What makes this strategy viable is that Lovable treats these giveaways as marketing costs rather than margin-reducing expenses. By shifting spending from traditional paid marketing to product-led growth through free usage, they create more efficient customer acquisition. As Elena notes, "If somebody wants to do all of the marketing and activating for us, why would we prevent them from using us? We're like, take it, how much do you need?"

This approach requires a fundamental mindset shift - viewing revenue as an outcome of getting more people through the door rather than optimizing for revenue per user. For teams implementing this strategy, it means:

1. Tracking product giveaways as marketing costs, not margin reduction
2. Focusing metrics on usage growth rather than immediate monetization
3. Identifying and empowering potential advocates with free access
4. Designing experiences that create "wow moments" worth sharing

The strategy works particularly well for products that deliver mind-blowing experiences in competitive markets. As Elena puts it, "The only way to create a word-of-mouth loop is just to blow their socks off."

Building in Public as Growth Acceleration

Another key growth lever is maintaining constant "noise in the market" through building in public. This means frequently shipping new features and having everyone - from the CEO to engineers - talk about them on social media.

This approach serves multiple purposes: it creates resurrection opportunities for lapsed users, drives re-engagement, and demonstrates the product's rapid evolution. The velocity of shipping becomes a core value, with engineers taking on marketing responsibilities by announcing their own work rather than funneling everything through marketing.

The Shift to Minimum Lovable Products

Elena has redefined the traditional MVP concept to MLP - Minimum Lovable Product. In a world where building is becoming easier, the differentiator is creating experiences people love, not just functional solutions. This requires investing in emotional connections through product interactions, what Elena calls "love marks" - unique interactions and elements that make users feel the product is speaking to them personally.

For product teams, this means prioritizing delight alongside functionality from the beginning, making designers critical early hires, and ensuring every interaction communicates your brand values.

Recapturing Product-Market Fit Every Three Months

Perhaps most significantly, Elena has observed that product-market fit is no longer a milestone to achieve but a continuous process requiring reinvention every three months. Both the product capabilities (through LLM advancements) and market expectations are evolving at unprecedented speeds.

This creates a "product market fit treadmill" where companies must simultaneously scale while reinventing themselves. For leadership teams, this means building organizations capable of both finding and scaling product-market fit simultaneously - a fundamentally different challenge than the traditional startup journey.

The implications are profound: even at $200M ARR with 10% month-over-month growth, no AI company's future is bulletproof. Success requires constant innovation, deep customer connection, and the ability to rapidly evolve as both technology capabilities and customer expectations transform.