Giving AI Products Away As Marketing Strategy

The AI Growth Playbook for Fast-Moving Markets

Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable, shares how the traditional growth playbook has fundamentally changed for AI companies. With Lovable reaching $200M ARR in under a year with just 100 employees, her insights reveal how growth strategies must adapt to fast-moving AI markets.

The 95/5 Innovation Rule

• Traditional growth roles focus ~95% on optimization and 5% on innovation
• In AI companies, this ratio flips completely: 95% innovation, 5% optimization
• "We just need to invest in such bigger bets and innovate and create new growth loops here"
• The pace of change requires constant reinvention rather than incremental improvement
• "To be ahead of competitors is not optimization of the problem, it's reinvention of the solution"

Core Growth Levers for AI Products

1. Build Minimum Lovable Products (MLPs)

• "It shouldn't be minimum viable product anymore. Viability is left back in the 2010s. Now it's minimum lovable product."
• Focus on creating experiences that "blow people's socks off" rather than just utility
• Prioritize emotional connection and delight in every interaction
• "The only way to create a word-of-mouth loop is just to blow their socks off"
• Add "love marks" into the product - unique interactions and elements that make users feel the product is speaking to them

2. Ship Constantly and Build in Public

• Maintain "noise in the market" through continuous shipping
• Use founder and employee social sharing as a key growth channel
• "We still do the big launches... but what's really important to us is to maintain noise in the market"
• This serves as both resurrection and re-engagement strategy
• "People are literally logging into their social to see 'what has Lovable shipped now?'"
• Empower engineers to be "product engineers" who announce their own shipped features

3. Give Your Product Away Strategically

• Track LLM costs on freemium and giveaways as marketing costs, not as margin reduction
• "If somebody stands up and says, 'I'm going to have a hackathon at my work on Lovable, can you give us some free credits?' Why would we prevent a person who wants to do all of the marketing and activating for us?"
• Particularly effective for AI products where the "wow factor" drives word-of-mouth
• Removes barriers to entry in a competitive market
• Functions as more efficient marketing than competing for eyeballs on paid platforms

4. Build Strong Communities

• Communities amplify word-of-mouth, social posting, and retention
• Create spaces for users to share what they've built and help each other
• "Community has been a huge part of Lovable's success"
• Even if you can't build your own community, plug into existing ones

The Shifting Marketing Landscape

• Organic strategy has shifted from SEO to social media
• "If you asked me what's organic marketing five years ago, I would have said that's SEO... If you ask me now, it's all about social"
• Influencer marketing outperforms paid social by 10x for AI products
• Video demonstrations are crucial for showing capabilities
• "Nobody knows what vibe coding is, but you watch ten seconds of it and you go 'oh that's new, let me give it a try'"

The Product-Market Fit Treadmill

• Product-market fit is no longer a one-time achievement but requires constant recapture
• "Every three months I feel like we have to recapture our product market fit"
• Two driving factors:
  1. LLM capabilities change rapidly with each new model release
  2. Consumer expectations evolve at unprecedented speed
• Companies must build ahead of capability improvements to be ready when new models release
• "We're $200 million company and we're not solely focused on marketing and sales because we still have to recapture our product market fit"
• Growth comes in short blitzes rather than long-term scaling efforts

New Talent Paradigms

• AI-native new graduates have significant advantages in this market
• "New grads, especially AI-native new grads" can bring fresh perspectives
• Failed startup founders with high agency and autonomy are in high demand
• Look for people with "fire in their belly" who see this as their global maximum opportunity
• Prioritize high agency and autonomy in hiring - people who can figure things out without specialized support

The Vibe Coder Role

• A new job function emerging in AI companies
• Non-technical roles focused on using AI tools to rapidly build prototypes and products
• "I see vibe coding as a skill being added to a lot of job descriptions for designers, product managers, marketers"
• Accelerates velocity by enabling rapid prototyping and testing
• Allows teams to validate ideas before committing engineering resources