Lovable Head of Growth on The New AI-Native Growth Playbook | Elena Verna | E279

In any space in AI, product market fit is an elusive concept. Your place is not guaranteed even if you're making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. So anybody can enter the plane

revenue. So anybody can enter the plane level field and start competing with you. So it becomes like a ongoing battle

you. So it becomes like a ongoing battle to recapture product market fit. So

we're well over 100 million in revenue, but I don't feel like we have it in the bag. I actually don't even feel like we

bag. I actually don't even feel like we have product market fit yet. Now we've

had product market fit loss. month. We

had product market fit 3 months ago, but the definition of product market fit in the vibe coding category is changing every single week. In AI product, you

only have a chat box that is this big.

And all of your activation experience is happening by your conversation with an agent. I think that retention in our

agent. I think that retention in our world of AI is going to make or break companies.

Hey, this is Carlos, CEO at Product School and your host on the product podcast. Today's guest is Elena Vera,

podcast. Today's guest is Elena Vera, head of growth at Lovable, the most popular AI prototyping tool that lets anyone build websites or mobile apps from scratch using natural language

prompts, no code required. In under 8 months, Lovable became the fastest company in history to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Before

Lovable, Elena helped scale some of the world's most iconic companies, including Dropbox Amplitude MongoDB Miro and Survey Monkey. In this episode, we dig

Survey Monkey. In this episode, we dig into how product managers can vibe code and use AI agents to turn ideas into production ready applications, the new growth principles defining AI native

companies, best practices for answer engine optimization, the next evolution of SEO, and why brand is the new moat, even more powerful than growth or monetization. This is one of my favorite

monetization. This is one of my favorite episodes of all time, packed with insights from one of the sharpest minds in product growth. Let's dive in.

Elena, you are one of the persons that has been the has done the most appearances at Prod School by popular demand. So, thank you for being back

demand. So, thank you for being back again.

>> Thank you for having me. I can't believe I'm doing the rounds. But yes, let's finish the full circle.

>> So, you've done Product Con London.

>> Yes.

>> Prod AI.

>> Correct.

>> And to do Prod San Francisco and hopefully we can get you for Prod New York.

>> We should talk. Yeah.

>> We should give you like a trophy or something.

>> Yes. I need my certificate that I can post.

>> Um, so they're lovable head of growth.

>> That's right.

>> Which is very fitting because probably one of the fastest growing companies I think at least the first company that uh or the fastest company to ever hit $und00 million in AR. I think they did it within eight months.

>> Yep. That's right. It's pretty wild.

>> So I mean you've done growth at pretty legendary companies. Uh Murro,

legendary companies. Uh Murro, Amplitude Superhum Dropbox uh Gloable. I'm sure I'm missing some here.

Gloable. I'm sure I'm missing some here.

What is different this time? This is

actually the first company where I'm trying to catch up to the growth that is naturally happening in the market because most of my roles in previous companies except for Miro has been uh

reacelerating or stabilizing growth uh away from declining because it's actually very easy to do growth in a company that is already organically and naturally growing and is operating in

what I call fastmoving waters where the category is just taking you because category expanding it's a hot one. uh

there's so much hype around it too. So

you can almost do no wrong. All you have to do here is just to remove barriers for growth. All of my previous

for growth. All of my previous experiences actually have been quite different where the company is either not growing as fast as they want to or they are slowing down. And how do you

stabilize that? that growth work

stabilize that? that growth work actually I would say is even harder because every single fault that you do shows up clear as day but it's not working or there's lack of ROI on this

or we had a hypothesis and does not work. So at lovable it's actually a very

work. So at lovable it's actually a very different role for me. It's it reminds me of Miro days for sure because in Miro I was also in that company during the hyperrowth stage and that curve of like

the the hockey stick that was going up but um it's a very different job. I

wouldn't say that it feels the same as any other head of growth role that I've held.

>> And when you use the term category, >> how do you define the current category for loable?

>> Yeah, I'll define it fairly simple. Vibe

coding. So where what vibe coding becomes as a category, I think is still unclear because the capabilities of what AI can do in vibe coding are changing every single week and they're honestly

just changing from improvements in LLM models alone. So there's like our

models alone. So there's like our product gets better because of LLMs are getting better. It's not even

getting better. It's not even necessarily what we're doing and then on top of it we're innovating too of what is it that we can build on top of these LLMs but I say vibe coding is the

category uh that is becoming and it's starting to swallow some of the older existing categories like website building, no coding, like no code tools

um some of the internal toolings um that uh companies have developed before. It's

starting to converge because vibe coding is actually a better solution uh for all of that. But what it means and what it

of that. But what it means and what it actually is going to be defined even a year from now, who knows?

>> There are so many vibe coding companies.

They keep popping up like mushrooms and they all seem to be winning in the sense that there is another one popping up on our radar. Yeah,

our radar. Yeah, >> they're all raising capital. They're all

generating revenue. So kind of reminds me of early days in product when there was literally no product tech and analytics or for amplitude or maybe mirror also trying to figure out what's the right category.

>> They were creating they were trying to go deep into one specific use case but then at some point they had to expand.

So how do you see the opportunity to you know expand from bite coding into a more of a endto-end platform?

>> Yeah. So competition is very bizarre right now. I I I only believe that in

right now. I I I only believe that in any given category, at least if if we to hold history and look at the history as something that will predict the future, there's always only one, two, three

winners. There's never such thing as

winners. There's never such thing as there's like 10 companies that are wildly successful in the same category.

So, I think it's fascinating because there's already a very clearly emerging couple of winners here. And it's

interesting to see that why is there so many, like you said, mushrooms popping up at the same time? because yeah the pie is pretty large but to catch up to the first to do the first mover

advantage that other companies have had including lovable it would be pretty difficult. So I'm be curious to see if

difficult. So I'm be curious to see if the VC money so to speak is going to help them um or is this going to be a zero sum game because there's already very clear runner-ups uh and it's just

the decision of who's going to be the winner uh so to speak in the category.

But I think um what was your second part of the question? Well, it it was the part about the expansion into an end toend platform.

>> Yeah. So, the interesting piece with um at least lovable is that when you look at the more traditional tech company, the reason that you needed so much focus

and so much vertical uh focus is because product building was so much more complicated because you had to have all of these interfaces, all of these marketing materials, all of those

educational materials. With AI company,

educational materials. With AI company, it's kind of interesting because agent solves for so much of it. You have a prompt box. Like as a product, you

prompt box. Like as a product, you almost the only interface you have with the customer is a prompt box. So all of those vertical use cases and everything else are solved more with your training

of an agent, not necessarily have to build the entire interface for the product either. So there's less need to

product either. So there's less need to have vertical focus. you can almost more go more horizontally right from the beginning because you don't need to

develop so many UIs uh or worry so much about UX or even do education because agent is just conversing with you and it's doing education on your behalf. So

I think that there is still going to be a need for more vertical niches and focuses and I think that overall software is going to go into a complete

micro SAS development where the the the barrier to building software is going down. It's becoming cheaper and cheaper

down. It's becoming cheaper and cheaper with vibe coding. Like I can go in and I like I can create any app that I ever wanted. I don't need to go buy it and I

wanted. I don't need to go buy it and I can just use it for myself. So there's

going to be a really big spread of super tight vertically aligned niche products and then there's going to be these platforms that serve what these niche

use cases are actually uh doing. But I

don't think that verticalization matters as much especially in the vibe coding category. But I might be proven

coding category. But I might be proven wrong >> cuz yeah when I I think about the term platform in the context of product amplitude became a platform they branch out of analytics right mirror became a

platform branched out of visual collaboration. Um but in AI loavable

collaboration. Um but in AI loavable could be an example of a platform if they branch out of by coding. But then

you have like the mega platforms the open AIS right they recently announced how they are also building their own automation a automation platform and suddenly swallowing an entire platform

category in the zapers no n so how do you think of that as a competition?

Yeah, I think we going to need to see where does open AI is going to going to want to go and compete in because we can look at stories of Google. Google tried

to go into so many verticals and they've launched so many products yet they're still very much thriving ecosystems of all of those products and Google ended up shutting them down. Remember Google

circles like them wanting to go into social that did not happen. Facebook

still uh Facebook still very much won. I

also think that uh so I think it's an open question for OpenAI as a whole. are

they going to be a platform or are they going to be solutions because I think there can be powering all of these solutions or they can go and actually be all of the solutions but it's the

existential question that Google had to answer that Apple had to answer that Microsoft had to answer and I think open AI is naturally going to go into some of those vertical uh specializations but

it's the question of how much distinct training do these agents that supply those vertical categories need to have and does open AAI have resourcing to go

and do those specialized training. So

it's more of like the amount of resources that you have for agent that are developed and how much expertise you can have to train it and you cannot crowdsource it. That's the thing like it

crowdsource it. That's the thing like it needs to have the specialty instructions so to speak loaded into it and this is where the vertical specialization starts to come in. But I guess what I'm talking

about is like to to really specifically for example pick website building only doesn't fully make sense because the delta between website building versus a

app with the front end and back end is just too close now with the solutions that it doesn't make sense to specialize that much. Even outside tech, I've seen

that much. Even outside tech, I've seen that with other marketplaces like Amazon where they will still allow an ecosystem of partners while build their own wide level solutions if they see a specific

demand. So you definitely have to play

demand. So you definitely have to play in the game and integrate with them. But

then the question is, is this a partner or can they eventually swallow you?

>> Well, so far OpenAI and all of the other LLMs are partners and friends, but you like you said, you never know what the future is going to bring. And I think there's also going to be a lot of

acquisition plays um in the future, too.

So, a lot of those uh LLMs, they're going to sit and wait to see who's going to succeed or be the second runner up, so to speak, and instead of doing it in house, they'll probably acquire and just

specialize on that. So, we'll see. I

think the next two to three years are going to be fascinating >> on the next two to three months, too.

>> Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

>> I want to play a game with you.

>> Okay. is based on um one of your previous posts where you talk about the play the growth playbook or the old growth playbook is done and you came up with nine principles for the new growth

>> 11.

>> Okay. Well, there might be two more that you need to bring up here because I only have nine.

>> Okay.

>> Um are you game?

>> Yes. Let's do it.

>> This is you. You said PMF is a treadmill.

>> Yeah.

>> What's What do you mean? When you think about traditional company growth and life cycle of traditional company, what we've been taught to think about it is you have uh you reach product market

fit. Like that's the first big threshold

fit. Like that's the first big threshold that you have. You reach product market fit usually by getting users that are retaining with you at some light scale.

You don't need to be owning anything but um you have an inflow of customers. You

can retain them and some monetization starts to take place. So you actually can do a value exchange and this is when um you may be at about a million in uh recurring revenue or somewhere along

those lines and you able to show retention. Well, interestingly enough,

retention. Well, interestingly enough, the way that I feel at Lovable, so we're well over 100 million in revenue, but I don't feel like we have it in the bag. I

actually don't even feel like we have product market fit yet. Now, we've had product market fit last month. We had

product market fit 3 months ago, but the definition of product market fit in the vibe coding category is changing every single week because again LLMs are getting better. There's more

getting better. There's more opportunities of what actually is possible and customer expectations are changing like there's no tomorrow. The

bar is raising so quickly. This is

actually I think the fastest habitual change in our customers that we've ever seen because usually it took years to change habits of customers and all a sudden with AI it's like matter of weeks

or months where we adopt new capabilities as something that we now expect out of um any interaction with AI in terms of the precision hallucinations

the what actually is possible. So I just think that in the AI if you in any space in AI product market fit is an elusive concept because when category is still

evolving so quickly your place is not guaranteed even if you're making hundreds of millions of dollars and in revenue and especially with so much competition because the cost of building

has really come down. So anybody can enter the uh the the plane level field and start competing with you. So it

becomes u like a ongoing battle to recapture product market fit. There's no

such thing as you hit it then you scale it then you go to your second horizon of innovation then you scale that. You're

just constantly trying to hit it a little scale hit but did you hit it again? Okay you hit it again now a

again? Okay you hit it again now a little scale but it's happening at such a fast pace that I've never seen before.

What I imagine is very hard is learning while you are winning because like if you are losing traction at least you know something is not right but when you are growing like how do you maintain that beginner's mindset?

>> Well you also have no really chance to learn much because everything is changing so quickly. You don't have cycles to actually get fullfledged feedback. So you have to act so much on

feedback. So you have to act so much on intuition and you have to have that right vision because if the technology is already

there and yet you're not using it, you already lost the game because somebody else is going to capitalize on it and all a sudden you lost your product market fit because that became all a

sudden new expectation and that happens in a matter of weeks not years that it used to take. So so much of it is based on these people and like we have these incredible engineering leaders that like

have this vision of what they want to take lovable and we obviously we talk about it and we try to gap capture as much of the customer feedback and loops as we can but it's almost not existent

because it doesn't yet exist. So you

have to pick a target and go after it and just hope hope that you pick the right direction and the right destination. And we're all doing it

destination. And we're all doing it right now at the moment. And so far for Lovable, it's been the bets have paid off. Not all of them, but big some of

off. Not all of them, but big some of the bigger swings that we've put together has paid off. And they've been fairly intuitive internally. But u it's like it's never ending. I've just I've

never seen a company that has to almost uh prove itself that it belongs uh in the space every month or two months. I

think that is incredible like to try to maintain that beginner's mindset in an environment where like you are growing.

So technically on the surface it feels like you don't have to but definitely you you do and I think that connects with the concept of being your own customer but like I mean it and I know that you sign up for your own product

>> on a daily and I keep an eye like so how do you really ensure that you are not getting behind as a as the customer of your own product. As I said, I've mentioned it many times before too, like

I I live my own uh customer journey. I

vibe code every single week. Uh my own apps, I vibe code for my children. I vip

code for myself. And I sometimes I'm getting paid to v code. It's like it's really amazing like the realization that like I've made it. I feel like I've made it finally. Uh but it's collective

it finally. Uh but it's collective talking about where we think the destination is and that's like almost becomes your proprietary strategy of where do you think it's going to end up and what are the steps to get there and

what is the big enough swings that we need to take uh to get there. But it's

almost like being in that startup mode all the time because you have to make a hypothesis and then you have to sprint towards it because there's a race going on and learn along the way really

quickly just knowing that the moment that you reach destination the goalpost has changed immediately uh probably before you even launched. So um that velocity becomes one of the critical

things that you can maintain and it's a it's a do or die of the shipping velocity that you can have in a company now. It's something that uh shipping

now. It's something that uh shipping velocity of the lovable is uh something that I've never seen at any other company but it almost becomes a means of survival. It's like one of our modes of

survival. It's like one of our modes of the velocity of development.

>> What is that velocity?

>> So uh we look at it I mean we ship things every single day. So we don't have like two week sprints um across the company because sometimes like there's even like monolithic one once a month

release or like every six months you do something. No, we push to production on

something. No, we push to production on every minute on the minutes and we have like this uh internal shipped channel because that's really the only way to keep up what's going in the product. I'm

like in that ship channel all the time.

What did we release today? Because

everybody is just running at all of the fast speeds. It's not pre-planned.

fast speeds. It's not pre-planned.

there's no really big uh commitment that is happening. It's like people finding

is happening. It's like people finding opportunities and they going after it.

But we also tier our releases. So we

kind of understand how to talk to the market and how to tell them. We have

tier one, tier two, tier three, which is very standard. Tier one releases is

very standard. Tier one releases is those big moments. Um and we try to have them every 3 months that we just had cloud launch for example. It's just an uh completely seamless backend to every app that you build. That was a tier one

release. Then uh that's every three

release. Then uh that's every three months. Then you have tier 2 releases

months. Then you have tier 2 releases that are like voice mode. Uh that's a tier 2 release. It's a cool feature. Uh

but it's not going to make or break our product. It's not new functionality that

product. It's not new functionality that needs to release every week um in our world. And then tier three releases of

world. And then tier three releases of uh whether it's fixes, optimizations um or tweaks uh to make better experience every single day.

>> That sounds like the dream for a growth person.

>> Yes, I love it. I absolutely love it.

The second principle, I know we're getting into the I'm detouring you for because there's so much I want to cover, but like there's one more here. You said

growth isn't re isn't really responsible for activation anymore. The core

interaction is often stripped down.

Yeah, that one is um I had a epiphany when I was talking to Kieran actually uh from HubSpot because I've even I've spent so much time writing about how much growth is supposed to be

responsible for activation that defining that setup moment, aha moment, uh your first habit formation that that is like number one lowhanging fruit, however you want to call it that growth team should

be working on that just amplifies the entire ecosystem. You'll monetize better

entire ecosystem. You'll monetize better if you activate better. You retain

better if you activate better. You'll

acquire better if you activate better.

But when I came to lovable, I even after like two months of reflecting, I'm like, I haven't touched activation. What like

what is going on? And I haven't been pulled into it. Like I haven't felt that that was a priority. So I had to step back and think like what is happening here? Why? like I've been preaching to

here? Why? like I've been preaching to the market that activation is something that growth team should be responsible yet I like I stepped into this role and I'm like not even doing what I'm talking about but then it came like I I

understood that um in AI products and this is very specific to AI products I wouldn't give this advice to a traditional tech company at this point but in AI product you only have a chat

box that is this big and all of your activation experience is happening by your conversation with an agent whatever that agent is doing whether it's planning tasks for you, whether it's

writing marketing campaigns for you, whether it's uh building websites for you. But when experience is condensed

you. But when experience is condensed into this just one box, what are you going to what are you going to work on to optimize it, it actually becomes a core product's responsibility to

activate people appropriately and it's all through that agentic conversation through AI conversation that is happening. So I work a lot on standing

happening. So I work a lot on standing up productled loops and still on monetization of like when does it intersect all of the experiences retention is something that I stress and

obsess about but activation core product is responsible for it and I have an we have an amazing core product uh leader that that's all he thinks about and honestly it works so much better when

it's not offloaded to growth team to work on activation because that just makes core products so much stronger and so much more embedded into like an entire customer journey. But at the end

of it all, just like to to to wrap it up, there's just not many surfaces to optimize. There's no steps to condense

optimize. There's no steps to condense or increase. It's literally just prompt

or increase. It's literally just prompt box. So there's not much growth work

box. So there's not much growth work that really can happen there.

>> So how do you partner with the product team? What's the actual org design?

team? What's the actual org design?

>> Yeah. So I sit uh parallel to our core product as well as uh to our marketing.

So I'm responsible for productled growth of uh portion of lovable uh so that self-s serve experience that self-s serve um uh revenue. So uh core product

ships features my growth team sometimes ships features now too because if we see that this is something that will improve retention or product acquisition we go and we just create it. So the lines are

definitely a lot more blurred compared to any other role that I've had. But

still I obsess about those productled loops. I obsess about retention,

loops. I obsess about retention, communication with the customer, education, inspiration and that ecosystem building versus core product is obsessed about how successful can the

first build be. How many of them can get to the point where it's a usable app?

How many of them can get to the point where it's um usable product and it starts to get customers. So they are only building features in that versus I'm still trying to smooth out all of

the user journeys around it to make sure that a product sells itself, it acquires on its own and it's highly habitual in nature.

>> So for someone who's so datadriven and I'm bringing a third point here, what is your take on the role of brand?

>> Yeah. So brand is an interesting topic.

I think like if you ask anybody who knows Lovable, they would say that Lovable has a very strong brand. Well,

the fact of the matter is we don't have brand marketing at all. In fact, our marketing is a lot more focused on product marketing, on social, on

influencer, not brand. We haven't had any brand campaigns. We haven't spent on any brand channels. Um, we do have our first billboard going up, so we're very

excited. But all I'm saying is that uh

excited. But all I'm saying is that uh brand has become all of a sudden a product exercise and brand used to be defined of like you hire brand marketing

or you have a brand department and the tone of voice and uh the vision and like the the look and feel of the brand and all of the like the brand spend and uh that is not that doesn't have

attribution but like what percentage of our revenue should we be spending on brand I think it's changing because there's such a huge crowd crowd that is in the market right now of all of these

products that you need to stand out not through the marketing message. You need

to stand out through your product experience and every single touch point with your product has to communicate your brand. Now, Lovable has a little

your brand. Now, Lovable has a little bit of a cheat sheet here because our name is Lovable because we want to create lovable products for the world.

So, when people come in, we want them to build something that is lovable. Like

that is our kind of vision and mission.

However, we also have internally saying of is this experience lovable? And if

the moment that you say something is unlovable, it's all hands- on deck on fixing it. So, we look at it through the

fixing it. So, we look at it through the lens of does it invoke a lovable feeling with within you. And every single product interaction and release goes

through that cycle of evaluation. And I

love it because it's actually experiencing brand through product, I think, is such a superpower. And it's a moat. It's ability for you to to stand

moat. It's ability for you to to stand out. It's ability for you to activate

out. It's ability for you to activate that word of mouth loop. Uh but not a lot of product teams think about brand as their responsibility and I think that

that is something that is going to drastically change in the next year.

>> And when you use the term mode next to brand that's extremely powerful but I think the main the key is when you make product own that brand.

>> Yes. Exactly. So marketing will still support it and marketing will still amplify it. But if it's not owned by

amplify it. But if it's not owned by product in software, I think um the amount of money that you'll have to spend to tell your brand story is going

to be impossible to justify in the future.

Like your product has to take accountability over brand. But listen,

like we we ship products like we like we I don't know like we fix a sink. Like

we're like, "Okay, checkbox done, shipped." Like very little product teams

shipped." Like very little product teams take pride into. What does that interaction actually make a user feel?

How does it come across? Does it connect all of the pieces together? Does it fit within the feeling and emotion that we want to invoke when people interact with product? I think product managers like

product? I think product managers like when we were going through PLG revolution is like, "Oh my gosh, we have to now be responsible for monetization.

What the hell?" Well, now we're going for brand evolution, too. Oh my gosh.

Product managers are going to have to be responsible for brand. Buckle up.

>> When are you going to get the com domain?

>> Oh, we're trying. We're trying. It's not

for the lack of trying. How about that?

>> Next one is uh the the old growth marketing playbook doesn't hold. SEO

plus paid plus content is no longer enough.

>> Yeah. So, what do I mean by that? Um

I've done lots of marketing roles um in the past where I've been responsible for marketing teams and uh the playbook has always been the same. I was like 80% of it you just come in and you plop it into

the into the company. You um put out your marketing site. Uh you start investing into um SEO and non like the non-branded content. Uh you start doing

non-branded content. Uh you start doing some SEM uh after you start getting some of this uh working. You put your blog out. You do some social media posts. um

out. You do some social media posts. um

about your releases um maybe you activate some partnerships and events and so on. Problem is is like that's no longer how companies grow and uh especially an AI native company I feel

like out of what I know in marketing I can only apply at most 30%. Compared to

80% that I felt like I could copy paste almost and pattern match to uh previously. The biggest differences that

previously. The biggest differences that I see is that uh number one uh word of mouth is the way to cut through the noise. But again, it comes back to that

noise. But again, it comes back to that brand being your product and people wanting to share about you because you wowed them. And the only way to wow them

wowed them. And the only way to wow them is the product. So word of mouth is so important, especially for companies that are just starting up. like in that startup mode, it's one of the strongest channels that you need to figure out how

to activate while you figure out what else that you can pull in into your ecosystem uh to help you grow as well.

The second piece that I see is the founder social. Oh my gosh, how

founder social. Oh my gosh, how important it is for CEOs, for co-founders, for leadership teams, for employees to be vocal about how they're

building what they're doing and be public about it. Our customers want to connect with people that are building behind the products because it gives that product more humanity. It gives you

like more connection as to what is actually happening as opposed to being this obfiscated cold thing that you just like use for utilitarian value. And um

our CEO Anton is very active on social.

Oh my gosh, it's like it's a gift that just keeps on giving. And uh we have other people that are very active as well. And it's harder for traditional

well. And it's harder for traditional tech companies that have legal teams. They're like, can't do anything, can't say anything about us because there's all of these different um legal risks

that you can uh get yourself into. But

if you can trust your employees that they have the company's best uh interest at heart, it is an organic channel that is far stronger than SEO. It's far

stronger than any paid marketing that you can lit up. The third piece that I see that is quite different is that um creator economy is absolutely booming.

Uh where before if you thought about influencer marketing it was very much a B2C practice like oh you have direct to consumer products like yeah you need to do Tik Tok and Instagram. Now you need

to do Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube like YouTube is so huge right now for B2B products too because influencers is and creators is where eyeballs are at.

So, what we're seeing is that they're not going to search and like paid marketing or display advertising or uh even paid social. None of that works.

What works is influencer marketing and really empowering the creators to talk about your brand, to talk about your product, to experience it in front of their audience. And uh that's where the

their audience. And uh that's where the eyeballs are at right now and every single company should be there and it's YouTube. Huge YouTube. I would have

YouTube. Huge YouTube. I would have never invested into YouTube the way that I would invest now 5 years ago. YouTube

has done very well for itself in terms of capturing a lot of attention. And

then even Tik Tok and Instagram um are absolutely huge. LinkedIn uh X are

absolutely huge. LinkedIn uh X are really good for more employee posting, but some paid marketing and influencers that there's definitely is um is available as well. But the creator economy is just absolutely huge.

Something that I would have never uh thought about before. and all of the rest of the stuff like paid marketing uh like SEM yeah great we'll do it because

there's some opportunity to do it with good payback period but is not going to be the channel of why you succeed and grow and then of course we have to talk about AI search of like how is it that

you show up uh with Chad GPT and so on and like try to figure out how to crack that because that is something that is very uh nebulous still at the moment of

how to succeed in that uh channel and >> you gave a talk at Prod AI around how the a lot of the distribution channels are are collapsing.

>> Yeah.

>> With AI and and how some of these trends you just mentioned are emerging. So what

what is a good way to try to get that first mover advantage?

>> So the channels that I just talked about there's no first mover advantage there anymore. You just that is where the game

anymore. You just that is where the game is. That's where your customers are. So

is. That's where your customers are. So

you just have to play there. on the

first mover advantage um you have to look at the new releases that these large platforms are making. So let's

look at OpenAI. Just yesterday they had a huge release where they opened up their app store where all a sudden they have um open uh SDK open and then they

actually will pull in products and perform tasks as customers chatting in um in let's say chat GPT that is new

that is the first time that you can actually show up as a product in chatting with experience with AI that may be our new big channel. Who knows?

If you want a first mover advantage, you should be jumping on those opportunities super fast.

>> I remember for me when Facebook launch events or live streaming, we were one of the very first ones to to do that.

LinkedIn launched events, we did the same thing and the platforms were heavily incentivized to drive adoption for those new features and that's how we got a lot of momentum and then of course

it you know like became more mainstream.

>> Exactly. But there's because there's so much consumer shift in how they discover things away from just traditional search and into

conversational AI uh experience. There's

also social clampdown that is happening.

I mean try to link out of social on your posts. Your algorithms are going to

posts. Your algorithms are going to absolutely not. You can't like you can't

absolutely not. You can't like you can't do it because they're trying to maintain eyeballs on their uh in their uh platform too. So all of these

platform too. So all of these traditional channels of search and social are collapsing. Social is still accept uh accessible through influencers

for sure and creators but not through let's say paid or like you on your company account posting. That's why you have to there there's something that is going to happen in the space. I don't

know what it is. For a while, for example, it was um if you want to succeed in AI search, you should have done Reddit because so much of the AI search was coming from Reddit. Well,

they shut it down like last week. So now

all a sudden it dropped to nearly zero.

So now Reddit is nothing. So it's like it's changing so quickly. I can't even tell what that next big thing is going to be. I'm looking at the OpenAI's app

to be. I'm looking at the OpenAI's app marketplace right now as like a potential, but um you just have to keep your eyes open all the time.

>> Well, let's keep going.

>> Yeah.

>> Um you said marketing can't keep up with shipping velocity. Yeah, that one's

shipping velocity. Yeah, that one's tough because uh all of our marketing processes and marketing structures were created on top of the development teams

that shipped at most once a month, probably even less, maybe once every 3 months. There was big releases that

months. There was big releases that involved marketing. And now with AI

involved marketing. And now with AI native employees and the velocity of shipping that is happening when you're releasing something every single day, how can marketing possibly keep up when

they need and especially there's no lead time. My team they like I sometimes we

time. My team they like I sometimes we like they pick up a task and like an hour later it's like oh it's done it's out. I'm like okay great let me catch up

out. I'm like okay great let me catch up with you like to like to to announce it to our customers. So like you you can't have any lead time because there is no lead time anymore. And marketing is so

like we need couple of weeks, we need couple of that doesn't exist anymore. In

couple of months, you might lose your product market fit. What do you mean a lead time for a release in couple of months? And then second of all, the

months? And then second of all, the velocity is happening so quickly. We

don't have the processes. So a lot of times what I'm starting to see is that marketing teams that are really structured in that, oh, this is how releases happen. They end up holding

releases happen. They end up holding development team back because they're like, oh, you can't release, we're not ready. It's like if you hear that

ready. It's like if you hear that phrase, you can't release, marketing is not ready. like have a deep

not ready. like have a deep heart-to-heart with your marketing team because like you it's it's not an option to be able to even voice that um anymore. So marketing right now I think

anymore. So marketing right now I think is in big scramble of trying to figure out how to support this velocity and uh we don't really have frameworks for that. So we will see how marketing is

that. So we will see how marketing is going to evolve and change.

>> I always tell my team that especially you're not Apple. You can do worldwide releases every single day. Like nobody

goes to to bed thinking about you.

>> Yeah. So um that's a really good point that it's also happening like a companies that are you know a different growth stage. Um at the same time I just

growth stage. Um at the same time I just want to clarify you don't consider yourself a marketer right you're putting yourself a growth category.

>> I don't think anybody can have a privilege of not considering themselves a marketer anymore. I even look at our engineers. They're marketers now too

engineers. They're marketers now too because a lot of times they have to handle their own releases and their own their own GTM strategy so to speak for those releases. We we we can't afford to

those releases. We we we can't afford to only have marketing be responsible for marketing nowadays. Every single one of

marketing nowadays. Every single one of us has to take on marketing hat on.

>> Well, let's talk about that. The role of the GTM engineer and how it's it's growing now. Like how are you thinking

growing now. Like how are you thinking about that?

>> So GTM engineer I see in two ways materialize. I'm actually like not clear

materialize. I'm actually like not clear where that's going to completely uh converge. I see GTM engineer replacing a

converge. I see GTM engineer replacing a lot of sales roles. So GTM engineer is like a combination of um BDR and SDR and

AE and EM AM and success person all wrapped up in like this one person which basically means that it's a more of a generalist when it comes to sales that is able to handle all of the functions

from prospecting to actually having conversations to closing to renewals to expansion and to um to any success issues of uh additional adoption that needs to be driven. But I also see GTM

engineering that are also replacing revops. Uh so they're actually piping

revops. Uh so they're actually piping all of these things together for GTM to be able to run faster at the same time.

And both roles right now are being conflated in the market because I kind of see them both exist and mean two different things. It's like very similar

different things. It's like very similar to what growth used to be. Who knows

what growth is like. So right now we're like in that same space I think with uh GTM engineering. But regardless, it's uh

GTM engineering. But regardless, it's uh coming back to the same concept of a person wearing multiple hats because the times of specialization when you have

such a rapid iteration and velocity happening, you just can't afford specialties and there's no need for optimizations in specialties. You need

more generalists. I'm getting to the end. Reena, you said growth and actually

end. Reena, you said growth and actually you touched on this before, but you said growth shapes features. Now, I'm curious about that and how that conflicts potentially with other teams that are in

charge of shipping.

>> I've actually been my entire career like no growth does not ship features. Uh we

work on distribution. So we work on acquisition activation monetization retention questions but core fe ships features we distribute those features.

What um I found interesting is that um when we can able to do a lot of these optimizations so quickly because of our shipping velocity because of how much trust we have into every single

developer on the team where they can make a lot of the decisions. There's no

up and down um approvals or specking being done. It's just like here's the

being done. It's just like here's the problem go solve it and they just go and solve it. That we actually have room to

solve it. That we actually have room to take on some of the feature work. Now we

don't take anything platform work or infrastructure work because um we don't want to get in there and like mess it up but because we have like teams that are dedicated to it but some of the other

features like why not uh we have cycles uh we believe that this is going to improve retention let's go so to me it's just a more of an outcome of our increased velocity uh that at least this

growth team that I'm working with right now is definitely the fastest that I've ever worked with in terms of their ability to execute on a number of people

that we have uh but shipping features is we still have conversations with core to be fair. We're not just like roguely

be fair. We're not just like roguely doing it. So we're like hey we think

doing it. So we're like hey we think we're going to do this cool with you or do you like did you already have this on the road map? Uh and if we really believe that it's going to help with growth we just go and do it.

>> So are there engineers that are fully dedicated to growth?

>> Correct. Yes. So we have a dedicated growth engineering team um at lovable that sits uh they still report everybody to our CTO and our co-founder uh Fabian

um but they are 100% dedicated for only growth efforts that um I'm working with them on.

>> Is there any bonus principle we haven't touched on yet? bonus principle. Um I

think the two of them that I will just say is that great product is still the best way to grow uh at the end of the day because uh right now especially as

I'm going to repeat sound like a broken record but with this uh cost of software development going down it's no longer just enough to ship an experience. You

have to ship an amazing experience in order for it to matter. and continuously

shipping amazing experiences accelerates all of your growth efforts. So, it just becomes like a much more uh better soil to grow on top of as opposed to it being

completely dried out or like unwatered and then like you're trying to stick a seed into it. So, I think core overall can participate in growth efforts a lot more if they're mindful with what

they're actually putting out there to customers and that matters more now than ever, I think. And then the second one that I will just say as a as a bonus is

that I think that retention in our world of AI is gonna make or break companies.

So every single growth team like I would say before like activation activation yeah no retention. This is something that you should be stressing about every single day because we're right now

definitely living in the hyped AI era and the only companies that will succeed are the ones that are going to see above benchmark retention rates uh both from

their user engagement as well as their paid uh retention as well. So uh that's something that you just have to obsess about. Growth teams that are responsible

about. Growth teams that are responsible for acquisition are going to die. those

companies are going to die if you're not having somebody who is stressing about it all the time.

>> That's incredible to hear that from you because you changed your mind on it, right? Like used to advocate very

right? Like used to advocate very heavily for activation. Also on your previous point what you said about best products win. That's the classic Google

products win. That's the classic Google mantra that got trashed for a long time where like people started saying no no good distribution wins even if the product is not the best. You can't build

a company without good distribution, but you can bake distribution into your product experience. And that is the

product experience. And that is the difference. It's not just about having

difference. It's not just about having the most beautiful products. That's

never been the case. Most beautiful

products that don't have distribution hooked into that experience still end up not known by anybody. So distribution is still the king, the queen, whatever you

want to call it, but it has to sit on the bar for product I think has gone up.

And I think the best products with distribution is the one that's going to win. So there's still that distribution

win. So there's still that distribution caveat and that's honestly the hardest thing right now to figure out cuz it's too easy to build products right now.

>> Thank you for being on the show and breaking down the new growth playbook here.

>> Yes, thank you for having me. I

appreciate it.

Hallelujah.