Elena Verna

Authentic personality-driven posts on X and LinkedIn outperform AI-generated copy for B2B audiences.

Elena urges founders to view LLM pass-through fees as marketing spend, not a cost centre, to remove monetisation friction and accelerate adoption.

A hyped, lovable product attracts candidates proactively, easing hiring despite relocation to Stockholm.

Organic marketing has moved from Google SEO to social posts by founders, employees and users.

With 100 staff and minimal paid spend, Lovable reached $200M ARR by tripling headcount and focusing on product-led distribution.

Bengali’s adjacent user theory states growth comes from users just outside the core—same needs but new geos or use cases.

Elena explains the core product team, not just growth, obsesses over first-run activation, relieving growth from micro-tweaks and embedding activation into the company’s DNA.

To capture perishable demand and outpace rivals, the team simultaneously stands up many initiatives, accepting that more loops can still drive more growth in such a dynamic market.

Elena says viability is outdated—teams must ship a minimum lovable product that truly delights buyers in a growing market.

Moving from Dropbox to AI-native Lovable forced daily AI use, letting Elena deliver faster and learn capabilities she’d never adopt otherwise.

Elena urges AI companies to recruit new grads fluent in AI, give them voice, and let their fresh outlook reshape established practices.

Lovable’s 48-hour women-only hackathon gave unlimited platform access and led participants to build hyper-local apps for family and community needs.

Adding a full-time no-code vibe coder accelerates template creation and side-app launches like an extra engineer.

Because experience and delight now differentiate software, a designer should be among a startup’s earliest hires to shape every brand touchpoint.

Lovable recruits people with fire in their belly, high autonomy and agency, so they can own work end-to-end with minimal supervision.

Quick Lovable prototypes reveal whether the idea still feels magical, halting weak concepts early and clarifying priorities for engineers.

For every task we first ask 'what can AI do here' and prototype in Lovable before humans refine.

Elena notes ex-founders with high agency and autonomy are suddenly the hottest talent for AI firms, reshaping company culture.

Elena shares John Kotler's view on software adoption stages.

Users buy additional credits as they build, yielding net dollar retention above 100%.