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Hello, hello.
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Hello and welcome to what is going to be a really exciting session.
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I am so delighted to have an incredible leader, Elena Verna, join us,
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who is the head of growth at Lovable. Now,
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Elena has been in the industry for some time and is trailblazing how AI
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companies price and we're all super curious to learn how they're thinking about
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it and how you're leading the way. But before we get into that, Elena,
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can you share with us maybe a little bit around your story and your journey,
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how you got here? Not here to San Francisco,
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but here to this position at Lovable.
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That was a trip too. I've been at Lovable for almost a year.
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I'm hitting my one-year anniversary in two weeks.
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It feels like 10 years at Lovable every month is equivalent to a year to any
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other company that I worked at.
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But previously I was operating in companies like SurveyMonkey, Miro, Amplitude,
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Dropbox was my last gig before I joined Lovable,
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but I also advised a lot of companies. I think probably over 40 to 50 startups,
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all focused in B2B SaaS, product-led growth space.
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That is really my superpower. And course creation, my newsletter,
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all of the things.
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I pride myself on being solopreneur as well as being operator at the same time.
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Gosh, that's pretty impressive. Specific to Lovable,
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I think a lot of people here all know the stats. Just so I quote them correctly,
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$400 million ARR in 14 months.
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It's pretty phenomenal when you think about the success you guys have had.
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But the motion is slightly different than your prior background.
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You're a growth leader. A lot of domain expertise in PLG, product-led growth.
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But of course, Lovable is PLG, product-led, it's sales-led, it's B2B,
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it's B2C.
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It's everything.
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It's everything. So you go into this role and you grow this company like crazy,
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but now you have to be master of multiple different monetization strategies.
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Can you share with us how you approach that?
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Yeah. So when I joined a year ago,
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Lovable was at $40 million in annual recurring revenue where it just crossed
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$400 million not so long ago on the tear to hit next milestone.
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So it's 10x. At the same time, our company itself, 10x,
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we had almost only 20 employees a year ago when we joined, believe it or not.
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Now we're 185 employees.
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It still sounds kind of small for $400 million ARR.
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But it's really big for us. I mean,
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the change in terms of just how many people we have in the company is quite
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large.
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So we're going through the company cycles and company evolution at unprecedented
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speed. So reorgs every three to four weeks, a lot of changes to our strategy,
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so many tactics that we have to do.
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And really the only way that we're able to execute it with so few people is by
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being as AI native as possible.
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We're constantly trying to figure out what is the best way to do a certain task
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without necessarily creating cross-functional dependencies or alignment meetings
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or up-and-down decision making. So high agency, high autonomy,
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everybody has to have a founder hat on and just hiring the best people that
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it's the global maximum for them to work at Lovable and see how far we can push
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the boundary of what is truly possible in such a short period amount of time.
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Yeah. I mean, I think for non-AI native companies,
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I think everybody is curious to know how you can go and build a company
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and serve largest enterprises in the world,
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as well as obviously somebody who's starting to build a company today.
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And so my question is,
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how are those different kind of categories or archetypes using AI tools
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or are they using them differently?
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Yes. We started as almost consumer business.
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A lot of people would come in and build their personal projects,
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their portfolio sites, maybe some websites.
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We very quickly found a B2B use case. We even found it in data,
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I believe it or not. Some people would start doing prototyping,
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but we now have a lot of internal tooling and even companies being created on
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our platform, which is so incredible to see. But we've always been bottoms up.
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So we're really focused on the builder. We're still, to this day,
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heavily focused on the builder.
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And those builders bring us into their place of employment.
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So we do have enterprise contracts with Uber, with HubSpot, with Microsoft,
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with many others,
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with multithousand people deploying it across the companies and using it for a
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variety of use cases.
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But we still stay strong on self-serve and product-led growth,
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and that builder is our core competency.
We focused on nontechnical user.
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A lot of engineers use us,
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but we really want to make things easy and seamless for that nontechnical
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persona. And they pull us in, into their personal life, into their work life,
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into just using their personal tools. And it's really beautiful thing to see.
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It's really hard because a lot of companies struggle of,
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do you do enterprise or do you do prosumer and how do you combine the both?
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We are staying really focused on prosumer is our core competency.
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And then we graduate and expand people to enterprise.
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We're not focusing on enterprise as the reason of why we will absolutely succeed
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in this space.
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We want to succeed with builders and enterprise just comes along with it.
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And we're very grateful for that expansion and we love working with companies,
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but builder is really at the heart of everything that we do.
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That's kind of interesting because what we are seeing, I guess,
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is like enterprise behavior and builder behavior are kind of converging.
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They are.
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Which for any SaaS company that has built a SaaS business,
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you had to be very intentional.
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It's like you were serving the builder and to serve a traditional enterprise,
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it was very different motion. But in your case, actually,
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they seem to be coming together.
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There's still product functionality that you need to develop for enterprises in
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order for them to be able to adopt you and to deploy you across the company.
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So we're definitely working on all of the compliance, security,
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and permissioning issues in order for admins to be able to have control of what
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they're actually seeing and happening across the company with Lovable.
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But at the same time, user is a user is a user,
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whether they're using you as a prosumer,
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whether they're using you inside the company.
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So we want to just make sure that that experience is absolutely Lovable.
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So people come to us because as you know,
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there's so much competition out there and everybody and their mother is coming
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into the vibe coding space.
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So focusing on that seamless experience is our top priority.
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Brilliant. Love it. Everybody and their mother, literally.
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Talent and hiring must be an area that you spend a lot of time thinking about in
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your talent strategy. You're a small, agile company and everybody counts.
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Can you share what is your talent strategy? What type of people are you hiring,
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and what makes them great?
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Yes.
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We are very ruthless with our hiring because we want to hire people that are not
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coming to us because they want a certain title. In fact,
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we don't have titles internally. Everybody's just doing their work.
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There's some leads and heads of the departments, but that's about it.
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You won't find directors or VPs at Lovable.
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We are also very focused on having different personas and a team that really
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round what we're capable of doing. So we have two archetypes. For example,
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we call them cowboy and farmer.
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Cowboy are the people that are going and trying to capture new pastures.
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They really thrive on innovation and like pushing the boundaries.
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And farmers are people that are scaling. They really,
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really take that land and with whatever was captured and they maximize what's
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output available on it.
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We love to hire both of those personas who people that are superpowers in it.
Or
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on the other hand, we also love to hire people that are, I would say, veterans.
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I'm considered a veteran in the space, where I've been here for 15 years.
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I'm like very anchored in how corporate works.
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And then we pair people like me with new grads,
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with truly AI-native people that have no ceiling of what's possible.
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Everything is possible for them. And we have all of those four personas,
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you can imagine two by two. Every math person loves a good two by two.
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But you can fill the team with all of those four,
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and that makes the really powerful team. But we love hiring founders.
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We love hiring people that are not necessarily come from traditional pedigree of
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what you'd consider from the FANG companies and just can really get in there and
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figure out what is possible because we're in a such high innovation velocity
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space, we cannot just copy what has been done before.
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We have to reinvent what the future is going to look like.
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That sounds great.
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I'm just kind of curious as you're interviewing people and you start describing
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to them as like, "Hey,
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you're going to be a cowboy or a farmer here." Are they kind of going,
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"Hmm." Does it take them a while to get their head around
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how you're building the company?
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Absolutely.
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So we do a lot of trial work with people because they need to see how we work
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too. It's a decision for them. It's not just our decision,
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but people that have the best self-realization of who they are are the best
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people to also hire because I know that I'm a cowboy, for example,
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but I'm a veteran cowboy. I'm not an AI native.
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I need to learn how to be AI native because that's not what I grew up with or
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how I learned to do what I'm doing. So we're looking for humility.
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We're looking for that drive,
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and we're looking for understanding what my superpowers are and then anchoring
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people against the superpowers and creating jobs around them and just giving
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them a lot of trust and agency and autonomy so then go.
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Because otherwise we would not be able to sustain the $400 million business with
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under 200 employees if we had everybody in the box for whatever they defined it
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and stretched people beyond their superpowers and what they're capable of doing.
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That's great. Thanks for sharing such great insights. Let's talk about pricing.
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So can you maybe just describe to folks how you priced today?
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Yes. So I work on monetization at Lovable.
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So one thing that we're constantly evolving is how is it that we're going to
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monetize our customers? Because we're an AI company,
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we sit on top of LLM. LLM is not cheap.
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It's not the traditional SaaS with 80 to 90% cush margin.
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So we have to be very careful of how we monetize in order to create sustainable
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and predictable business. We're not here to just succeed in the next 12 months.
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We want to build a generational company.
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So we've been very heavily focused on our monetization. Now,
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this is our pricing page that you see on the screen.
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It can go into just Lovable.dev/pricing. We are not happy with it.
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So please don't copy it as something that is optimized and ready to go because
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this is very much work in progress.
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And even in a year that I've been with a company,
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and company itself is only like a year and a half old,
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we have evolved this so much.
This is a living, breathing thing.
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And we have so many plans of where we want to take this,
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where we're not able to do sometimes because of the cost structure,
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sometimes where the market is and what they're ready for.
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But the amount of iteration that this thing has gone through,
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not just from the visual UI perspective,
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but an actual model changes in the last 10 months has been really incredible
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and really amazing to see and something that I highly,
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highly recommend everybody who has any AI features or AI product here
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that pricing that we have for AI is not where it needs to be.
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It's too focused on the cost of LLM and not enough on the customer output.
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And the faster we can move it towards the output, the better it's going to be,
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but there needs to be a maturity curve that your business and the market reaches
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in order for it to happen.
And whoever gets there first will be a winner in your
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category, in your vertical, in your space.
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So make sure that you set up the right infrastructure and the right plate
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triggers and the right team to start iterating on your pricing as much as
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possible.
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Super interesting. But I think a lot of folks looking at this like, OK,
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I get it. You have a freemium model, you have an enterprise model,
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and two models in between.
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I think what's really interesting with your business and how you've approached
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freemium as really an acquisition channel because a lot of people are like, "Oh,
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freemium." You got all these people that sign up and you actually can never
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convert them or retain them, but that's not the case for you guys.
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Share with everyone how you approach freemium as like a strategic category.
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Yeah. So just an overview of our pricing, we have a Free plan. Yes, great.
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We have two self-serve plans and then we have an Enterprise plan that is
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only sold through our sales team. Our Free, Pro,
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and Business plans have unlimited users.
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We monetize on credits that they use on the workspace, not on the user.
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We did a very specific change right after I started.
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This is based on my learnings that I had in the previous companies where you
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don't get the input,
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which is a user you charge on the output that that user produces,
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which is credit consumption. And once we changed that, yes,
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it created a dip in our revenue because we had a Teams plan and we had to sunset
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it and we had to move everybody to the Pro plan.
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But then afterwards we saw an explosion in workspaces in terms of number of
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users that were in the workspaces and most importantly,
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retention because now we didn't have a single point of failure in the workspace.
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Now we had multiple people in the workspace that are working together and
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collaborating and creating many network effects on the workspace level.
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But freemium, back to your question, sorry.
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Freemium is extremely strategic and Lovable.
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One of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of companies do with respect to AI
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features or functionality is that they shove it into the highest paid plan
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because of the cost structure that AI has. And they say, "Well,
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now we have a reason to differentiate our paid plan that otherwise didn't have
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differentiation." And they gate it because our finance is sitting on our back
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and breathing and saying, "How much did this cost?
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What are you doing to my margins?" But at the same time,
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when you're doing AI pricing and when you're trying to introduce AI into
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somebody else's workflow, you're trying to change their habits.
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You're trying to reinvent what they've actually been doing before the
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alternative methods.
And you cannot do that reinvention without giving it
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away to them for free first so they can try it,
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they can hit that aha moment and then you can monetize it afterwards after they
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see the value that it can bring. So freemium for us,
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we spend most of our costs at Lovable are going into
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freemium, but we don't use it as a cost center. In fact,
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we spent over hundreds of millions of dollars in the last 12 months on freemium,
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but to us, it's not a cost center. It's our marketing budget,
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and we're very specific about that.
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So we're trying to give more and more things away for free and then monetize
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when the propensity to pay is increasing as opposed to trying to squeeze for
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conversion rate. And as a result, our conversion rate is in double digits.
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And for freemium model to have a double-digit conversion is really,
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really strong.
But then on top of it, we do even more.
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This is just freemium that you have in the product,
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but we also do so much free giveaways to hackathons.
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Anybody who wants to host a hackathon on Lovable,
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participants get Lovable for free. We do internal hackathons.
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We do partnerships. We did it with Revolut, with Mercury,
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with so many companies where we give all of their users access to Lovable.
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And conversion rates there are in 40,
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50% to paid after the offer expires.
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And we spend tens of millions of dollars in product giveaway that way.
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So you should really think about AI costs and the AI monetization,
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not as how much you can monetize it and how quickly,
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but you should think about it of how can I strategically give it away for people
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to see the better way that output can be produced with my product and then just
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believe if your product is good enough that monetization comes.
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And this way it helps you focus on the product as your main area of conversion
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and what's doing the selling,
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as opposed to developing really large GTM marketing and sales teams in order to
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do that storytelling for you.
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OK. So that's a lot for people to understand. That is pretty amazing. Yeah.
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No, it's pretty good.
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I really want to double click on that because it's like that is your marketing
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budget. This is your customer acquisition. And I think a lot of people are like,
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"Well, if I do that,
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I also have to do all of these other things." And you're like, "Don't do it.
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Try this." You'll get the results if you really, really stay focused on it.
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They will convert higher and you will get sticky customers.
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Well, you have to focus on your product. Your product has to work.
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It's not something that you put in a shiny marketing message and then on the-.
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The experience is poor.
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And then experience is poor. Product has to work. Product has to be Lovable.
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Product has to be effective, efficient, all of those things. So it really,
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it pushes your focus a lot more on product and engineering,
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which I think is great. So then you can develop a lot more core functionality,
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but it's important to not over-rely on marketing and
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sales and oversell what your product is capable of doing and then under
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deliver in the product because that really creates a really negative connotation
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that just lasts forever long.
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And all of us are living in AI performance theater right now.
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Nobody knows what AI is actually capable of doing for us.
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So make sure that what your promises and what your users discover use cases in
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the product are actually solid and actually useful for them.
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Amazing.
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But also, can I talk about top-ups or you're going to ask me questions?
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Well, you can talk about whatever you want.
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All right. But also-.
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As long as it's pricing.
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But also don't limit yourself to a traditional subscription models too.
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So one of the things that we as a space got really obsessed about is
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subscription revenue. That's also good ARR.
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That gets us really big multiple on our revenue that investors drool on,
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that your finance team says, "More ARR, more ARR." But then at the same time,
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that is not also the most optimal way to monetize your customers in
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most of the cases.
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Most of the products are not so habitual in nature that recurring revenue is the
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only way for you to actually monetize them.
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So I've always worked for subscription-based businesses and I've always had this
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thought of this is not the optimal way,
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but I've never been given an opportunity to actually test any mixed models that
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offer ad hoc purchases as well as subscriptions because companies always just
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over-optimize on ARR.
So at Lovable,
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we were getting so much feedback from our customers.
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Our customers were yelling at us that subscription is not the right way for them
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to build.
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And did they tell you what they wanted you to offer?
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Just ad hoc way of purchasing credits,
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basically saying, "I don't build every single day in a continuous way.
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I have building streaks.
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I have a muse that strikes me and I need to just go and do it.
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And if you ask me to upgrade my subscription that feels terminal,
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like now I'm on the higher level forever. Yes, I can downgrade any time. Sure,
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but I still have to upgrade and mentally commit to it," that it prevented a
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lot of people from building.
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They would just wait for the next cycle and often lose their idea.
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And most importantly, churning. Now we only had qualitative feedback on it,
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but we finally tested top-ups as part of our subscription
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offering as well,
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which I was very excited about because something I wanted to do my entire life.
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And the offer is pretty easy.
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You still subscribe and save if you pay on the subscription,
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but then you also can buy top-up credits,
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which is the one-time purchase of credits to really feed into that machine of
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what you're building.
The fascinating part about this is that not only it did
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not reduce our ARR,
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which is what often most of the companies would forecast would happen.
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First of all, most of our best users took advantage of top-ups.
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It wasn't just like second-level-class citizens that wouldn't otherwise commit
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to paid upgrades. This was our best users that started using top-ops.
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Number two, top-ups started acting like recurring revenue.
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Repurchase rate of top-ops was just as high,
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if not higher than subscription renewal rates. And most importantly,
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from our revenue perspective,
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I have this chart of the revenue growth of Lovable of month by month.
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With the blue line here is our top-up revenue versus the subscription revenue.
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And you can see, yes,
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there's some cannibalization of subscription revenue for sure.
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But you can look at the overall revenue collected.
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It is just going up and up and up whenever you give flexibility to user to
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transact the way that they want to transact with you.
And I think in AI world,
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this is very important.
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Don't corner them into a model that is purely optimized for retention and that
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recurring revenue.
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You really need to give customers the flexibility to buy how they want to buy.
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The exchange of value that it is.
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An exchange of value. Exactly. And for that,
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you need to have a good system also that you can enable this on.
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We proudly run on Stripe.
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We've been very great partners with Stripe and this test was couple of two
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weeks for one developer to set up. It was about six weeks,
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eight weeks of testing, and off we released it into the world.
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So it's something that I know in my previous jobs would have taken maybe years.
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Years, absolutely years. OK.
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So I think every company here would love to have a chart like this and to be
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able to iterate on their monetization model. You told me something crazy.
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It was like you've changed pricing 10 times in a year.
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And when I think about that, and listen,
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I get plenty of feedback from customers and users and many of you here in the
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room will give me feedback,
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but traditionally companies would have been petrified to go out to their user
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base and their customer base with a price change 10 times in a year.
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How did you manage to do that and not kill trust and credibility with your
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customers?
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I think if you don't change the pricing right now, or you don't, sorry,
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not change, iterate and find what's your current local maxima,
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because none of us have found global maxima yet.
377
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We're on a path to discovery there. But if you don't change,
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I think you're just going to slowly die off.
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I know it's a really harsh prognosis,
380
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but I think that it's very important to keep up with the market change right now
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and constantly iterate on your pricing and packaging. You're right.
382
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We've done so many changes to our pricing,
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which often at the company that is our age and even our size is just,
384
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it's unheard of because you wait couple of years before your product matures,
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you start scaling, before you start actually messing with your pricing,
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we had to do it on month two of our business existing because we very quickly
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realized that some of the things just did not fit.
So we launched top-ups,
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we launched annual plans, we sunset plans, we introduced new plans,
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we added rollovers, we added new features, we moved features,
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we made more things free.
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So we have established this precedent with our customers that we are evolving
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our monetization model as fast as we're evolving our product.
393
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It is not something that is static.
394
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It is something that is going to continuously change.
395
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And our customers have been very receptive.
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I don't know how many of you have used Lovable here,
397
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but we're constantly changing it and we have not had the pushback,
398
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but I think it's important to set that precedence that this is still a living,
399
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breathing thing. This is not set in stone. And as our product changes,
400
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monetization model needs to change as well,
401
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but it's important to do it early because it's so true.
402
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If you don't change it for five years and you do that first change-.
403
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Such a big deal.
404
00:22:59.210 --> 00:23:02.650
It's a big deal. Remember when Netflix raised their price for the first time?
405
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It made the news because it's been years since it's done,
406
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but they've done it many times since there's dozen times since then.
407
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And nobody makes a peep anymore because they have set that as a-.
408
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So the market now is also accepting...
409
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It's expected.
410
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These kind of agile closing and changes.
411
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So don't get into that situation where your customers are jarred by pricing
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changes or packaging changes.
413
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OK. So for a lot of people here, it's like, OK, sounds amazing,
414
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but not sure where to start.
415
00:23:28.090 --> 00:23:31.150
Can you give some guidance on like how people should think about like starting
416
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on this experimentation? What are the mechanics?
417
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What are the frameworks they should use?
418
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I think first it's important to have the right infrastructure to even enable you
419
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to experiment the way that you want to experiment.
420
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Make sure that if you need to switch providers,
421
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if you need to put in into the platform work right now, do it now.
422
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You're going to set yourself for success for later. Second of all,
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I think that you need to designate somebody who's responsible for it.
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At Lovable,
425
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I'm responsible to make monetization changes and push it through the team.
426
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I don't always own entire thing,
427
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but I pull it all together and I get the right level of approvals.
428
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Even at Lovable,
429
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we have a monetization council that involves our CEO or our head of finance,
430
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our head of marketing, our head of sales,
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to make sure that we're making decisions that are right for all of the customers
432
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and all of the aspects of the business that are taken care of.
And then you
433
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designate a team that is actually going to implement it.
434
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But most importantly is just to get started and to even understand,
435
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where is your monetization model really working right now versus where it's not.
436
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So talk to your customers. I mean, it's such a basic thing,
437
00:24:33.250 --> 00:24:35.830
but we forget to ask them about it,
438
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and we forget to put in the right even survey mechanisms when they cancel and
439
00:24:40.370 --> 00:24:42.230
leave us to understand why they're leaving us,
440
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but don't be afraid to at least start somewhere. It doesn't matter where...
441
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Not sometimes.
442
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I know you know what needs to change in your monetization model and what should
443
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be the first thing. Trust your intuition.
444
00:24:56.370 --> 00:24:58.210
OK. Good advice. Good advice. OK.
445
00:24:58.310 --> 00:25:02.650
So you have like a huge number of customers and builders on your platform.
446
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How are you helping them? Because this same conversation we're having,
447
00:25:06.730 --> 00:25:08.090
I'm sure they're also trying to figure out, well,
448
00:25:08.170 --> 00:25:12.370
what's their monetization strategy and what advice are you giving them or have
449
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you created a community of advisory around pricing and monetization with your
450
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own community?
451
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Yeah.
452
00:25:18.390 --> 00:25:23.150
So we have over 40 million projects already created on
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Lovable. 200,000 of them, new ones are being created every single day,
454
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and Lovable apps already getting 600 million visits every single month.
455
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So a lot of Lovable apps,
456
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a lot of Lovable founders and employees and a lot of traffic out there.
457
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We just released a seamless way to do monetization in Lovable that is also
458
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powered by Stripe and that is so people can really quickly set up monetization
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if it's a business that they're building on Lovable, whether it's B2C business,
460
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B2B business, ecommerce, it doesn't really matter. But then most importantly,
461
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we're also launching very soon a percentage of your money that you
462
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collect in your Lovable app will be given back to you in form of credits to make
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sure that whoever's succeeding on Lovable apps will also be rewarded with more
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credits to continue building and evolving their product as well.
We're very
465
00:26:10.170 --> 00:26:12.470
excited about that. But it's really,
466
00:26:12.690 --> 00:26:17.370
we're trying to codify as much of our own knowledge into every single Lovable
467
00:26:17.450 --> 00:26:18.283
experience.
468
00:26:18.490 --> 00:26:23.230
So our dream is that you can hire one of us in form of our AI double
469
00:26:23.630 --> 00:26:27.710
into your Lovable experience and they can suggest any and all improvements to
470
00:26:27.790 --> 00:26:30.890
you. So I'm hard at work on creating my own AI double,
471
00:26:30.950 --> 00:26:33.330
so it can be in any Lovable app if they so wish.
472
00:26:34.050 --> 00:26:34.990
You have an AI double?
473
00:26:38.350 --> 00:26:41.910
I already have one with Superme, and I'm also working on one at Lovable as well.
474
00:26:41.970 --> 00:26:42.610
Yeah.
475
00:26:42.610 --> 00:26:43.443
Great.
476
00:26:43.970 --> 00:26:47.650
So all the advice is going to be available to your community through this.
477
00:26:48.130 --> 00:26:48.690
Absolutely.
478
00:26:48.690 --> 00:26:52.430
I think it's a really incredible way to democratize knowledge and I think that
479
00:26:52.470 --> 00:26:55.630
it should not be gated behind some people that have had certain level of
480
00:26:55.670 --> 00:26:57.130
experiences. And yes,
481
00:26:57.270 --> 00:27:00.450
I already write a lot about it and I try to do a lot of public speaking,
482
00:27:00.510 --> 00:27:04.290
but I think AI has such incredible ability to distribute it further.
483
00:27:05.450 --> 00:27:07.610
Amazing. And it sounds like you guys have figured out a lot,
484
00:27:07.710 --> 00:27:10.890
but I know you still think you're at the earlier stages of your journey.
485
00:27:11.210 --> 00:27:13.390
What are the top two or three things that you're like,
486
00:27:13.390 --> 00:27:14.390
"We still haven't cracked that.
487
00:27:14.450 --> 00:27:16.990
We still have to figure out these things." What's on your mind?
488
00:27:17.810 --> 00:27:21.790
I think one of the things is where is the monetization model is going to go?
489
00:27:22.090 --> 00:27:25.530
I'm thinking about it all the time. I want it to be more on the outcome base.
490
00:27:25.650 --> 00:27:28.770
I don't want it to be so heavily anchored on the building portion the way that
491
00:27:28.790 --> 00:27:29.623
it is right now,
492
00:27:29.950 --> 00:27:34.050
but we're also in the maturity level where right now people are still exploring
493
00:27:34.090 --> 00:27:38.030
capabilities. Those capabilities are going to translate into the next stage,
494
00:27:38.090 --> 00:27:39.530
which is value generation,
495
00:27:40.010 --> 00:27:43.370
and then that value generation is going to translate into scaling.
496
00:27:43.770 --> 00:27:46.730
So we're in this transition between capability to value,
497
00:27:47.070 --> 00:27:51.590
and I want to make sure that we trigger the right way to both provide value to
498
00:27:51.650 --> 00:27:54.150
customers as well as monetize it appropriately.
499
00:27:54.510 --> 00:27:57.810
But the second biggest thing is that something that is constantly on my mind is
500
00:27:57.870 --> 00:28:01.870
that all of these AI-native companies are creating,
501
00:28:02.090 --> 00:28:07.030
putting the burden of use case discovery on their users.
And I want to make sure
502
00:28:07.070 --> 00:28:09.770
that there's not so much of what you can find in a product,
503
00:28:09.830 --> 00:28:14.190
that there's much more of here's what you're capable of doing with Lovable and
504
00:28:14.250 --> 00:28:18.090
give you a headstart as much as possible because I think that this whole dynamic
505
00:28:18.190 --> 00:28:21.190
and this AI confidence theater that is going on right now,
506
00:28:21.250 --> 00:28:24.950
because everybody is on their own figuring out what is possible,
507
00:28:25.410 --> 00:28:28.930
I want to make sure that Lovable gives you a biggest step forward into
508
00:28:29.570 --> 00:28:30.310
understanding-.
509
00:28:30.310 --> 00:28:31.143
Supporting you to-.
510
00:28:31.670 --> 00:28:36.270
What is capabilities that you can gain by using AI products. Yeah.
511
00:28:36.630 --> 00:28:40.030
OK. A lot's still to be figured out. We're nearly on time.
512
00:28:40.130 --> 00:28:41.370
So maybe last question from me.
513
00:28:42.670 --> 00:28:47.210
If you were to start the journey with Lovable today as opposed to, well,
514
00:28:47.270 --> 00:28:51.230
I know it wasn't that long ago, but still in the AI kind of landscape,
515
00:28:51.550 --> 00:28:53.710
it's quite a while ago, what would you do differently?
516
00:28:55.370 --> 00:28:58.810
I would have an idea about Lovable myself. Anyway, I'm just kidding.
517
00:28:59.590 --> 00:29:00.470
I think Lovable is-.
518
00:29:00.530 --> 00:29:01.990
We all have had that idea ourselves. Yes.
519
00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:07.000
I think everybody wishes that. I don't have a lot of those...
520
00:29:08.350 --> 00:29:11.050
Lovable has gone on an incredible journey of growth.
521
00:29:11.410 --> 00:29:14.310
I think there's going to be really great case studies about this company in the
522
00:29:14.350 --> 00:29:18.110
future because this is something that we haven't really seen in this world and
523
00:29:18.130 --> 00:29:19.490
the way that this company is moving.
524
00:29:19.930 --> 00:29:24.050
I think that the only thing that I would just do more of is to hire
525
00:29:25.430 --> 00:29:30.110
previous founders a lot more aggressively into the company because anybody,
526
00:29:30.250 --> 00:29:31.910
if you're hiring for any roles,
527
00:29:32.290 --> 00:29:35.990
please make sure to not always just prioritize pedigree and which companies
528
00:29:36.030 --> 00:29:40.390
people have been in and prioritize just grit and passion and people that are
529
00:29:40.410 --> 00:29:44.990
just wanting to figure out and most importantly in this day and age of how many
530
00:29:45.090 --> 00:29:50.090
people can make clarity out of chaos because we live in the most
531
00:29:50.150 --> 00:29:54.530
chaotic world right now inside the companies and you need to hire people that
532
00:29:54.570 --> 00:29:58.150
can help you find clarity within it.
533
00:29:58.150 --> 00:30:01.690
So ruthlessly focus on hiring as much as possible,
534
00:30:02.070 --> 00:30:02.903
those individuals.
535
00:30:03.690 --> 00:30:07.090
Amazing. Elena, you've given us some great insights and snippets,
536
00:30:07.150 --> 00:30:12.150
everything from starting the company, building models, iterating,
537
00:30:12.350 --> 00:30:17.030
innovating, and obviously making sure that everyone has a founder-first,
538
00:30:17.090 --> 00:30:18.270
builder-first mindset.
539
00:30:18.410 --> 00:30:22.600
We are so grateful for you to be partnering with us on your journey with Stripe
540
00:30:22.720 --> 00:30:24.000
as your billing platform,
541
00:30:24.580 --> 00:30:28.080
and delighted that you took the time to share some of your insights and story
542
00:30:28.140 --> 00:30:29.220
with us today. Thank you.
543
00:30:29.540 --> 00:30:30.320
Thank you for having me.