Elena Verna
18 Mar 2026Lovable's Growth Lead: This Hack Got Us 100K Users
SheBuilds: Lovable Goes Free on International Women's Day
After a quick cold-open montage of the episode's standout lines, the hosts ask Elena Verna about Lovable's SheBuilds program. She explains that on March 8, International Women's Day, the entire platform was made free to remove barriers instead of hosting another panel about women in tech. Over 100,000 new users showed up in 24 hours, with 120 events across 40 countries where people built and explored the platform together.
Elena Verna on How the Growth Role Is Changing
The hosts recap Elena's background — SVP of growth at SurveyMonkey, SVP of consumer product at Malwarebytes, interim CMO at Miro, and advisor to MongoDB, Vimeo, Dropbox and others — and ask how the growth role is changing. Elena says growth has been an optimization problem for 15 years, tweaking acquisition, activation and monetization, but that no longer works. The role has reformed around giving the product away strategically, aligning monetization with outcomes rather than yanking revenue at signup, and building a community that vouches for you.
Growth Is a Trust Problem: Delight Customers First
Elena says SheBuilds was first about giving people access, and that growth is now a trust problem because feature differentiation is falling apart — no product can differentiate on features anymore. She says the industry is back to basics: brand, value, building in public, and letting users shape the roadmap. At Lovable, growth is done by creating "lovable experiences" and delighting customers first, stitching that to monetary outcomes but not demanding short-term returns — "blow their socks off and the rest will follow."
Building in Public and Employee-Led Social
The hosts credit Lovable's Anton as a front-runner for building in public — from the failed GPT Engineer launches to Lovable — alongside other European founders like Max at Lugora and Nick at Atio. Elena explains that distribution is collapsing: paid marketing and organic search are brutally crowded and AEO is a moving target, so the only channel working is organic, creator-led social. Lovable runs "employee-led socials," encouraging everyone to show personality and share failures and successes — the opposite of companies that make employees clear every post through legal — creating a feedback loop where she can spot user feedback on LinkedIn and ship a fix live in 20 minutes.
Building Billion-Dollar Companies Out of Europe
Responding to the hosts' question about European tech spearheads educating younger founders, Elena says the narrative that you must be in Silicon Valley or New York to succeed is shifting rapidly. Lovable's Stockholm headquarters has the most passionate, high-agency, high-autonomy team she's seen in nearly 20 years working with US companies. She argues we're at a tipping point where billion-dollar businesses can be built anywhere, cites ElevenLabs and other European startups, and says tech must be global — built for everyone, by everyone.
"Revenue Addiction Kills Companies" and Wrap-Up
The hosts mention that previous guest Gokul, founding partner at Marathon, praised and quote-tweeted her Substack article "Revenue Addiction Kills Companies." Elena explains the pattern: companies start full of innovation, then investor and leadership pressure for quarterly revenue — even at private companies that don't need to hit street numbers — leads to dark patterns, price increases and squeezed access that grind innovation to a halt. In the age of AI transformation, Lovable takes a leap of faith and invests ahead of monetization, and companies that don't adjust will feel the consequences ripple through tech by the end of the year. The hosts close by thanking Elena and calling the conversation a genuine master class.
13 Mar 2026AMI Labs $1B Seed, NScale $2B C, Anthropic Sue, Lovable & Sequoia Join
Elena Verna on Lovable's She Builds, Growth Plays & Revenue Addiction
Elena Verna walks through Lovable's She Builds program, which made the platform free on International Women's Day (March 8) and drew over 100,000 new users across 120 events in 40 countries. She explains that growth has shifted from funnel optimization to giving the product away strategically, aligning monetization with outcomes, and building community — with employee-led socials and building in public (led by Anton) as the channels that still work. She argues European tech is at a tipping point where billion-dollar companies can be built anywhere, including Stockholm, and makes the case from her 'Revenue addiction kills companies' essay that quarterly-target pressure is grinding out innovation during the AI transition.
11 Mar 2026AMI Labs $1B Seed, NScale $2B C, Anthropic Sue, Lovable & Sequoia Join
Elena Verna (Lovable): She Builds & Growth as a Trust Problem
Lovable's Elena Verna walks through the She Builds program, which made the entire platform free on International Women's Day and drew over 100,000 new users across 120 events in 40 countries. She argues the growth role has been reformed — from 15 years of funnel optimization to strategic product giveaways, outcome-aligned monetization, and community — with growth now 'a trust problem' as feature differentiation collapses. She also covers Lovable's employee-led, build-in-public approach under Anton, why billion-dollar companies can now be built from Stockholm, and her essay 'Revenue Addiction Kills Companies' on how quarterly revenue pressure in private companies grinds innovation to a halt.