Elena Verna's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Sanity is available as a connector in Lovable. Building something content-heavy? A marketing site, landing pages, editorial workflows? Add the Sanity connector and your Lovable agent creates schemas, content, LD-JSON for structured data, hundreds of pages. All from prompts, without leaving Lovable. When you're ready to hand off the project, deploy a Sanity Studio so your client (or content team) can manage everything themselves. No code required on their end. Already on Sanity? Lovable reads your existing schema and builds the frontend around it. Add it now: https://lnkd.in/gmfa_NYs

Everyone is stuck debating whether AI will take their job. The answer is almost certainly yes (I know, I know - it’s terrifying). That part isn’t interesting anymore. The more important question is this: What if this is also the biggest opportunity of your career? There’s a short window to get radically ahead by going AI-native. But you need to act now. Not in five years. In the next few months. After that, it will just becomes table stakes and the edge disappears. Because AI isn’t taking your job. Being complacent about what's happening around you will. But what I keep seeing instead: people critiquing AI. Pointing out flaws. Mocking outputs. Arguing about em dashes. That mindset is already obsolete. AI should be your default starting point, not your backup plan. Writing. Thinking. Designing. Coding. Planning. If you’re manually doing work AI can do faster and better, that’s not craftsmanship. It’s wasted time when no time could be wasted. Here’s the part people don’t like hearing: the demand for AI-native employees is exploding right now. Companies are starting to care less about fancy titles and padded resumes and more about who can actually ship. People with good taste, real business sense, and insane drive. If you’re stuck in a role you don’t love, waiting for permission, budget, or prioritization, this moment isn’t something to fear. It’s your opening. Stop watching. Stop critiquing. Stop waiting to feel ready. Start building. Want to know how to get started? read on my blog: https://lnkd.in/ga8KcqCV And huge thank you to my this week's blog sponsor, Salespeak.ai! Check them out to make sure your product is discoverable by ai. #ai #growth

we both carried.... right? #ai

Fast Company just named Lovable one of the most innovative companies in applied AI for 2026!!! Yasss! This feels especially meaningful because it points to a much bigger industry shift underway. We are moving from a world where software was built by a small technical minority (1%) to one where everyone is a builder. That shift is massive because the next generation of great products will not just come from people who know how to code. *They’ll come from people who know what should exist*. Full list of winners: https://lnkd.in/e6Gy6zYW So proud to be on this team. Most challenging and rewarding job of my life. (Shameless plug - we are hiring!! Come work with me!) #Innovation #BuilderEra

As an industry, we need to stop forcing subscriptions as the only way customers can use our products. ARR became the god metric, and we all learned how to optimize for it. I spent most of my career doing exactly that: pushing subscriptions, nudging upgrades, and making cancel just annoying enough to call it retention. Saying that out loud now is… not flattering. And yes, I mostly blame investors. Obviously. They drool over the “recurring” part of revenue and reward it with higher multiples, even when it’s sucking oxygen out of the room. Even when it doesn’t make sense (Cough, kind of like going upmarket to enterprise when your product clearly shouldn’t, but companies do it anyway because that’s what “serious” looks like, cough). To be clear, subscriptions do make sense for some products. Spotify. Netflix. Things you use daily and consistently. No argument there. But there are plenty of products where subscriptions alone make no sense. Low-frequency, bursty, or exploratory usage. Yet even bringing up ad hoc purchases in those products is often enough to get you laughed out of the room. I've been in those rooms (on both sides). Forcing a subscription there isn’t strategy. It’s fear, driven by how investors react to anything that doesn’t look like clean, comfortable ARR. At Lovable, we felt that fear too. We kept subscriptions as the primary way to access the product, even while users told us it didn’t fit how they actually used it. So we finally tested top ups on top of subscriptions. The assumption was predictable: this would hurt, cannibalize, kill our ARR. BUT! That’s not what happened. -> ARR stayed on course -> Retention improved -> Total revenue increased by 20%+, incremental and real. Let that sink in. -> Upgrades did drop by ~50%, yes, but retention more than made up for it. The takeaway for me - treating ad hoc purchases as taboo in subscription businesses is an expensive decision. Are you making this mistake? I wrote up exactly how this played out at Lovable here: https://lnkd.in/gpg6jx4A Big thanks to Stripe for being the blog sponsor. They made this top-ups thing possible (Lovable runs on Stripe) :) #growth #monetization

I honestly don’t even have the words. Todays event at Stockholm’s Lovable HQ was absolutely incredible. When women come together, things change. Ideas move faster, courage spreads, and the world gets a little closer to what it could be. That’s all I’ll say. Happy international women’s day everyone! Please give it up for Whitney Menarcheck (first pic), and Emily B. (last pic of 3 of us) - the muscle behind it all. Special appearance by my daughter that built an app today too, and SheBuilds alumni! I’m so excited for the future. It’s going to be too good. P.s. Hope you’re taking advantage of the last few hours of Lovable while it’s free. Go build something. #womenintech #wearejustgettingstarted

Wowza. 200K people now follow me on LinkedIn. It is pretty amazing to have a direct way to reach that many people. For the record, none of this started as a personal brand. And it’s still not the reason I do it. Objectively speaking, it's a vanity milestone and kind of a stupid thing to care about. I started posting because I was annoyed that most growth knowledge lived in one of three places: -> inside companies that never shared it -> behind courses that cost a small mortgage -> in conference talks where someone explains CAC like it’s a groundbreaking discovery So I started posting the stuff I was doing. What worked. What failed. What didn't make sense. What companies keep repeating like it’s a ritual while pretending it’s their unique strategy. And the general ridiculousness of our corporate world (seriously… is this a simulation?). Early on, it ended up creating pipeline for my solopreneur consulting work. Companies that felt the same pain would reach out and I’d help them. These days it’s more about sharing ideas, testing thoughts in public, and having a direct line to thousands of operators going through the exact same challenges. And throughout all of this I’ve ignored every LinkedIn “rule.” No magical posting cadence. No “don’t put links in posts.” No engagement hacks. I also don’t spend hours writing posts. If something pops into my head and feels authentic, it's a go. If it doesn’t, I move on with my day. The only thing I do try to do consistently is engage in the comments. Honestly, that’s the best part of this whole thing. Anyway, thanks for following! #milestone

Lovable is FREE today. Yes, actually free!!! But only for the next 24 hours. Why? Because the best way to celebrate International Women’s Day isn’t another panel, another hashtag, or another box of chocolates. It’s access. Access to new technology. Access to building. Access to skills that actually change your trajectory. Ladies - flowers wilt. Skills compound. Get in there! Gents - the future should be built by everyone, and we need you in it. It’s free for everyone today, so lean in and build. So today, stop being just a user of software. Become a builder. Open Lovable. Break things. Build something weird. Build something useful. Build something that makes you proud. See what’s possible. Share this post to let others know! The next 24 hours are going by FAST… are you building yet!!? #freelovableday #womenintech #ai

We’ve launched a startup program at Lovable! Qualifying startups get 10K in Lovable credits if their VC, incubator, or accelerator partners with us. Startups, if your roadmap currently starts with “once we hire X,” this is for you. Ship fast, test with real users, and get to real traction today - all on Lovable! Go bug your VC, accelerator, and incubator to join our startup program ASAP. VC's, accelerators, and incubators - run, don't walk to apply: https://lnkd.in/g76xfrfk #startup #growth

There’s something truly magical that happens when a bunch of people show up with the same energy - curious, supportive, slightly chaotic, and ready to build. That’s what I saw last Sunday at our SheBuilds event at Lovable’s HQ in Stockholm. And I’m still in awe about it. Community is a funny thing. You can’t force it, you can’t manufacture it in a spreadsheet, and there’s definitely no funnel optimization framework for it. But when it clicks, you feel it immediately. Honestly, this is what growth in the age of AI is starting to look like. Less obsessing over micro-optimizing funnels, more creating spaces where people can build, learn, and inspire each other. And selfishly… this version of growth is way more fun. Feeling really fortunate that I get to help create moments like this. Watching people realize “wait, I can actually build this” never gets old. Helping more women get there is incredibly rewarding. Can’t wait to see what’s next. Photo credit Susanna LDKY Photography #growth

I’ve spent 15+ years in growth/marketing, and the bottleneck is still painfully obvious: great marketing ideas dying in someone else's backlog (esp in the age where velocity is *everything*) Landing page? Backlog. Microsite? Two sprints away. Dashboard? “Soon.” But that’s changing!! On April 1 (no, it's not a joke), we are doing a live session on how marketers are using Lovable to build what they need themselves - fast. No code. No handoffs. No waiting around for someone else to unblock your idea. → Register here | April 1, 10am PT / 1pm ET https://lnkd.in/eNkp5vJn If you’ve ever watched a good idea die in backlog hell (I know you have), come join. #marketing

Today we launched Vibe Coders in Residence program at Lovable!!! VCIR is a group of independent builders (and absolutely incredible vibe-coders) collaborating alongside us to push what’s possible as we build Lovable on... Lovable. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Vibe coding has officially entered the job market. Now, we’re all already vibe coding nonstop, but we wanted to go further. The way software gets built is changing and working with more Vibe Coders let us live in that future. I even find myself vibe coding most of the time now, something I never would have imagined. Erich Kottke, Shane Spencer, Jon Higginbotham, Bobby Siegfried - I'm so excited to build along side you. Learn from you. And see what is possible! Growth=vibe coding now. LFG! #vibecoding

(Adaptation of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”) If you give a PM a feature request, the PM will put it in the backlog. Once it’s in the backlog, sales will promise it to three customers. So the PM will schedule three meetings to discuss it with the stakeholders. Then somebody will ask whether we’re solving the right problem. After that, the PM will say it needs alignment (strategic, of course) But no one will be able to explain the strategy, but everyone will agree this absolutely needs to align to it. So the PM will ask for data to build a business case. There won’t be any, so the PM will use: 1. a survey with 11 responses 2. two sales anecdotes 3. one unhinged customer quote 4. screenshot from a competitor Once the business case is done, it will need many cross-functional meetings to get approved. Once meeting quota has been hit, the PM will rescope it (to align to strategy), and engineering will say two weeks. Two months later, it will still be “on track.” Then it will get parked because of more urgent quarterly priorities. Once it comes up enough times, it will become a priority again. By then, it will somehow be a platform decision with mandatory refactoring. When V1 finally ships a year later, design won’t recognize it, sales will be annoyed it’s not what they sold, and marketing will find out it shipped from a customer. Usage and adoption won't be monitored, because tracking was never implemented. And then, leadership will ask: “is it AI?” #productmanagement

Just booked my flight for Stripe Sessions April 29–30, in SF! See you there?? Lovable runs on Stripe, and one of the biggest growth accelerators for us has been treating monetization like a system that should constantly evolve. Not a museum piece. Not a pricing page nobody wants to touch. And definitely not something you revisit every 18 months just to raise prices and hope that counts as strategy. We’ve kept evolving our model in the past 10 months across geo-localized pricing, KTLO plans, rollovers, top-ups, new plan launches, sunsetting old ones, annual plans, changing monetization metrics, and more still ahead. That mindset has been a meaningful part of Lovable hitting $400M ARR. Join my Day 1 session on how to make your monetization model a real growth engine -> stripesessions.com #growth #monetization

BREAKING: Elena Verna, Growth at Lovable joins the etn. boys on Tuesday live at 1:45PM GMT to break down the SheBuilds Initiative. On International Women's Day Lovable is making the platform completely free world wide for 24 hours as part of it's global build day "SheBuilds".

Most monetization models still boil down to: Step 1: put up a wall, Step 2: call it monetization, Step 3: act surprised when users churn. So here are 5 monetization tactics I love that do the opposite: 1. Keep the lights on plan - a lower-tier option offered in the cancellation flow for users who are no longer active builders but still need basic access or have things running on the platform 2. In-app payment failure messaging - recover failed payments where attention actually exists, inside the product, not buried in an email nobody reads. If 50% of your churn is payment-related, this deserves way more love 3. Daily free credits - soften the hard stop by giving users just enough to keep going, keep the habit alive, and give them a reason to come back tomorrow 4. Rollovers - reward commitment instead of penalizing slower usage. Users hate feeling like they paid for something and lost it just because they didn’t use it fast enough 5. Top-ups - let users buy a little extra when they need it, without forcing them into a bigger plan jump or a whole new subscription commitment More details, screenshots, and numbers are in my blog post: https://lnkd.in/ekiX6dnZ Turns out retention gets better when your pricing model stops behaving like a villain. Sponsored by Churnkey, which gives you out-of-the-box tools for the retention levers you probably should’ve had... yesterday. #growth

Many companies are so addicted to revenue they’re growing themselves broke. That's right, I said it. Revenue addiction kills companies. It looks something like this: Every initiative must show revenue, or else. If it doesn’t make $$$ in a week? Kill it. No new in-quarter revenue? Not a priority. Can’t attribute it in a dashboard? Doesn’t count. Great for customers but not the pipeline? Don't you dare to bring it up. That mindset was already toxic. But during the AI transition it’s becoming fatal. Because the companies that win this era will invest years ahead of the revenue curve. Revenue-addicted companies don’t have the patience for that. BUT! We are in the middle of a technological shift, and short-term outcomes combined with over-optimizing the existing business will end up being death sentences for many. The scary part? A shocking number of companies are operating this way. And how do you fix it, you might ask? You probably can’t. Fixing it requires massive shifts in leadership mindset/roster and investor pressure. And most companies never make those changes (there, I said it). New post on revenue addiction and why it kills companies: https://lnkd.in/e8R_eY2d And check out my sponsor - Demand & Expand - an awesome event for B2B marketing & growth teams happening in San Francisco on May 19 & 20. Special offer in my newsletter! #growth

Lovable will be free to use for everyone on International Women's Day this Sunday in partnership with Anthropic. Over 120 in-person events are being hosted across the globe by the Lovable SheBuilds community, and we're live-streaming from the Lovable office. See more details: https://lnkd.in/dwGzhHHn

Hawaiʻi is doing something worth paying attention to: actually preparing students for the AI world they're about to enter. Which should be the norm, yet it's not. This warms my heart because these students are getting ahead by learning how to understand and apply AI tools and become builders - a must-have skill for the future. In contrast, many schools are failing their students by blocking AI use altogether, which will do those kids no favors. Because the question for every school system isn't whether students will encounter AI; they already are. It's whether we give them the skills, confidence, and creativity to shape it. Hawaiʻi is answering that question with a yes. Kudos to the Design Intelligence Lab (DIL), which is a collaborative youth talent development initiative designed to inspire Hawaiʻi's next generation of innovators. By integrating Design Thinking and AI, the program equips students with foundational Computer Science knowledge to understand how AI tools work and apply them to solve real-world Indo-Pacific challenges. Watch Hawai'i News Now interview with the winning team from Aliamanu Middle School and see for yourself: https://lnkd.in/e5JR-VrH The apps for this competition were built with the Lovable x imagi K12 platform that is safe and curriculum aligned -> lovable.dev/classroom #edu

Everyone: SaaS is dead. Saaspocalypse! Also everyone: Hiring a Head of Growth and Marketing. Massive opportunity ahead. Must scale fast. #tech

One of the most interesting things about AI right now is not that startups are leaning in. It’s that healthcare is. I spent last Monday at the HCA Healthcare x Lovable hackathon, and it left me so inspired about the future of healthcare. When an organization operating at HCA Healthcare’s scale starts seriously exploring how AI can help teams move from idea to prototype faster, that’s not experimentation for experimentation’s sake. That’s a sign the shift is real. Designers, engineers, and cross-functional teams were there to pressure-test ideas, build, iterate, and think through what could actually improve experiences for patients and frontline staff - and how AI can help get those experiences into users’ hands *faster*. That’s the most impactful version of AI adoption to me: AI thoughtfully used to support clinicians and care teams in environments where quality, responsibility, and human outcomes matter the most. Thank you to @Dr. Schlosser, @Julia, and Sungae Park’s broader design leadership team —Zach, David, @Kyle, and @Nikhil - for your collab. Can't wait to do more together! #Nashville #Healthcare #AI

One of the biggest mistakes in growth is confusing “people use it” with “people love it.” So at Lovable, we built a composite qualitative metric to measure actual product love. The Lovable Score is a combination of: Net Promoter Score | NPS -> How likely are you to recommend? Sean Ellis PMF -> How would you feel if you could no longer use us? CSAT -> How satisfied are you? CES -> How easy was it to use? Any one of these on its own is usually too flawed, too narrow, or too easy to misread. But together, they start to tell a much more useful story. Our Lovable score has the following formula and weights: 35% NPS + 25% PMF + 20% CSAT + 20% CES Your mix might be different. But I’d really push every team to define what “love” actually means for their product, then measure it. Wrote more about how we built it here: https://lnkd.in/emQr6TFS And big shout out to Passionfroot, my awesome blog sponsor this week, who you should work with to scale your creator-led growth! #growth #lovable

Huge news! To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re making Lovable completely FREE on March 8th!!! No opt-ins, no gatekeeping. No fluff talk. Just BUILDING and SHIPPING. Because unlocking new skills beats flowers & chocolates every.single.time. That's right - It’s free for *everyone* building with us as part of SheBuilds, in partnership with Anthropic! Ladies, it’s time to build. Not someday. Not when you’re “ready.” The time is NOW. And men? JOIN IN. We need you! We shall create the future together. So go solo, or grab a fellow woman, a friend, a sibling, a parent, your kid, your partner, or a teammate. Build something together. Aaand we are offering optional in-person community-led events around the world, with experienced builders on hand to help you ship, not overthink. 32 events across 17 countries, and counting: -> Check: shebuilds.lovable.app Where will I be? In our Stockholm HQ, building (with my daughter). If you want to join me in Stockholm, drop a comment and we'll get back to you if there is room! But wait, there is more! Every participant also gets $100 in Claude API tokens and $250 in Stripe fee credits. Warning: Lovable may be habit-forming. Results include shipping faster, feeling unreasonably powerful, and questioning why you ever waited for permission. It's time to build. #womenintech

🎧 Episode #209 of the SaaSiest Podcast is now live! In this episode, we’re joined by Elena Verna, growth expert and currently leading growth at Lovable, one of the fastest-growing companies in tech. Elena shares why the old growth playbooks are breaking down, what growth means in an AI-native world, and why companies can no longer rely on features alone as their competitive advantage. We talk about how growth has shifted from pure funnel optimization to trust, speed, and human connection. Elena breaks down the difference between growth loops and funnels, why Lovable products need to feel alive and constantly evolving, and what companies in crowded categories must do if they want to stay relevant when software is easier than ever to copy or rebuild. Here are some of the key questions we address: ✅ What does growth actually mean in an AI-native company like Lovable? ✅ Why are traditional growth playbooks becoming less effective in today’s market? ✅ Why can features no longer be your only competitive advantage? ✅ How should companies think about retention, expansion, and resurrecting users in this new environment? ✅ What can B2B SaaS companies in crowded categories do to become more lovable and trusted? ✅ Why does speed to market matter more than perfection right now? ✅ How do you build teams that can operate in a world where AI changes customer expectations every month? ✅ What does Elena look for when hiring people into a fast-moving AI company? 🎧 Tune in to hear Elena’s take on modern growth, why trust and humanity matter more than ever, and how companies can rethink distribution, retention, and defensibility in a world where software is no longer hard to build. https://lnkd.in/dtMh5Fj4

March 8th is around the corner… and you know what that means. For one day, Lovable goes freeeee! Join us for a livestream straight from our Stockholm HQ where we’re celebrating International Women's day the best way we could possibly imagine: giving everyone the power to build and up-skill. -> Join livestream here: https://lnkd.in/gXs7yiUS With: - Yours truly - Anton Osika - Lovable's beloved CEO - Helen Lee Kupp - Founder of "Women defining AI" - Margot van Laar - A Technical leader from Anthropic So if you’ve ever thought “someone should build this”… this is your sign. March 8. No paywalls. No “upgrade to continue.” Livestream to inspire you. Let’s build something ridiculous. #TimeToShip

Four hardest truths about growth jobs right now: 1. Most growth hires are brought in to manage decline, not create growth 2. Most growth roles are terrible 'opportunities' wrapped in great titles (CGO, anyone?) 3. Past success in a growth role does not guarantee success in an AI-native future.(A lot of growth careers were built on channel and UI optimizations. That era is dying.) 4. Many of the best sr. growth operators exited full-time roles to become solopreneurs/advisors. More money, less hours, more freedom. #growth

Some ideas are too loud to ignore. The ones that stay with you, the ones in the back of your mind, the ones that follow you around. Make them real, with Lovable. Explore the site built in the video: earworms.lovable.app

Being in tech right now is realizing I spent 15+ years getting good at things AI now knocks out in three minutes. Yet I somehow still feel guilty using AI, like I’ve violated some ancient academic honor code. Send help. #millenialstruggles