Head of Growth at Lovable | Why Growth Playbooks Are Crumbling

SUMMARY

Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable, explores the crumbling of traditional SEO distribution amid AI answer engines, advocating for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies, product loops, and adaptive growth tactics to ensure visibility and sustainability.

STATEMENTS

Growth teams focus on distribution, which encompasses acquiring, activating, monetizing, and retaining customers in a predictable, sustainable, and defensible manner.
Successful companies prioritize distribution over just a great product, as many excellent products fail without effective go-to-market strategies.
Fastest-growing companies leverage loops rather than funnels, creating compounding flywheels where user actions generate reinvestable outputs for acquisition and retention.
Dropbox's viral loop of giving storage to get storage drove initial growth with minimal marketing, and now 60% of acquisitions come from product-led sharing.
Lovable's word-of-mouth loop stems from magical first experiences that prompt users to share, fueling early growth in a 10-month-old startup.
Product-led growth (PLG) emerged from four market shifts: users becoming buyers in B2B, short channel lifecycles, increased data availability, and blurring roles across teams.
AI, particularly tools like ChatGPT, is disrupting SEO-dependent companies by shifting user habits toward conversational search, reducing organic traffic by 80-90% for firms like G2.
Social algorithms and platform policies are clamped down on external links, making social media less effective for driving traffic to company sites.
AI-powered no-code platforms like Lovable enable users to build custom tools, commoditizing simple functionalities such as forms, signatures, and dashboards.
Companies must elevate from commoditized features by focusing on complex, high-utilization functionalities or risk disruption from users creating their own replacements.
Distribution shifts demand treating the product as a marketing channel, investing in freemium models, velocity of shipping, data moats, brand channeling, ecosystems, social presence, and creator partnerships.
Brand is now a product responsibility, infused through user experiences to foster emotional connections amid software democratization.

IDEAS

Traditional funnels are outdated; growth loops create self-sustaining cycles where user inputs produce outputs that attract more users without heavy marketing.
Even mediocre products can dominate markets if distribution is strong, while brilliant ones fail without it, highlighting distribution's primacy.
Product-led growth in B2B borrowed from consumer models, where users have long been buyers, offering a shortcut by emulating proven tactics.
AI's rise is killing SEO moats as users prefer direct answers from chatbots over link lists, forcing a pivot to Answer Engine Optimization.
No-code AI tools are empowering users to replace bloated SaaS subscriptions with custom builds, commoditizing entry-level features overnight.
Velocity of shipping, accelerated by AI-native teams, can become a competitive moat, with daily updates outpacing larger rivals' annual cycles.
Data from integrated ecosystems, like Slack's internal value, can be weaponized to block competitors and strengthen retention.
Brand transcends marketing to become a product feature, where "lovable" experiences build loyalty in a sea of utilitarian options.
Founder and employee social media posts generate massive organic reach, humanizing companies and driving growth without ad budgets.
OpenAI's new app store might herald the next distribution era, akin to Google Play, by providing AI-native visibility channels.

INSIGHTS

Distribution isn't an afterthought but must be embedded in product design from inception, as loops amplify growth exponentially beyond linear funnels.
AI democratizes creation, raising the bar for defensibility; companies clinging to simple tools face user-led disruption unless they innovate toward complexity.
Blurring roles empower cross-functional agility, turning every employee into a growth contributor, but demands trust and AI tools to avoid bottlenecks.
Shifting from SEO to AEO requires optimizing for conversational AI, where visibility hinges on structured data and partnerships with model providers.
Freemium models evolve under AI's cost pressures, reframing free access as a marketing investment to capture attention in a fragmented landscape.
Human connection via brand and social presence counters algorithmic commoditization, fostering loyalty through emotional resonance rather than functional utility.

QUOTES

"You can have an amazing product and if you don't bake in distribution into it or you don't really think about distribution you will die of slow death."
"The fastest growing companies all have one thing in common too. They don't grow via funnels. They grow via loops."
"AI is actually doing a lot of changes in product management, but it is killing our distribution channels."
"If your company is still monetizing on commoditized functionality, get yourself out of that zone."
"Brand all of a sudden is now a product exercise, not a marketing team function."

HABITS

Daily evaluation of customer experiences to ensure they are "lovable," prompting immediate fixes for unengaging interactions.
Investing in AI-native employees who use AI tools across roles, enabling engineers to handle marketing and launches autonomously.
Encouraging all team members, from founders to staff, to post on social media for organic growth and humanization.
Prioritizing word-of-mouth by obsessing over the first two minutes of user activation to exceed expectations.
Maintaining high shipping velocity through tiered updates—major launches quarterly, weekly tweaks, and hourly fixes—to stay competitive.

FACTS

Dropbox's product loop now powers 60% of acquisitions through user sharing, replacing traditional marketing and sales efforts.
SEO traffic for companies like G2 dropped 80-90% post-ChatGPT launch, as users shifted to conversational AI for answers.
Lovable, at 10 months old with 60-70 employees, ships meaningful updates daily or hourly, contrasting larger firms' annual cycles.
Marketing campaigns now last about a week before becoming irrelevant due to crowded channels and short attention spans.
Salesforce blocked competitors like Glean from Slack data access to protect its ecosystem moat in enterprise search.

REFERENCES

Dropbox's viral storage referral loop.
SurveyMonkey, Miro, Amplitude as past growth leadership roles.
ChatGPT and OpenAI's app store integration opportunity.
G2's SEO traffic decline example.
Substack blog on businesses impacted by AI shifts.
Product School's AI training programs.

HOW TO APPLY

Assess your acquisition, activation, monetization, and retention strategies by answering these four questions daily to ensure alignment and predictability.
Identify potential loops in your product by mapping user actions that generate reinvestable outputs, such as sharing features that convert recipients into users.
Test core functionalities on no-code AI platforms like Lovable to gauge replicability; if simple, pivot to complex, high-utilization features immediately.
Infuse brand into product experiences by evaluating every interaction for emotional resonance, using internal checks like "Is this lovable?" to guide fixes.
Build ecosystem partnerships early, such as OpenAI integrations, by monitoring announcements and pursuing first-mover access to tap existing distributions.
Empower teams with AI tools for end-to-end project ownership, reducing dependencies and enabling daily shipping through cross-functional autonomy.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace distribution loops and AI adaptations like AEO to counter crumbling SEO moats and sustain growth in an evolving tech landscape.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Shift from funnels to loops by designing product features that turn users into marketers, prioritizing viral sharing and word-of-mouth.
Optimize for Answer Engine Optimization by structuring data for AI visibility and partnering with model providers like OpenAI.
Accelerate shipping velocity with AI-native teams to create a moat, aiming for daily updates over infrequent launches.
Channel brand through product interactions to build emotional connections, treating every experience as a branding opportunity.
Leverage employee and founder social media for organic reach, humanizing your company to drive free impressions and engagement.
Pursue integrations and creator economy partnerships aggressively, especially in emerging platforms, to access untapped distribution channels.

MEMO

In a packed auditorium at ProductCon, Elena Verna, the Head of Growth at the AI-driven startup Lovable, delivered a sobering wake-up call for product leaders. With over a decade scaling giants like Dropbox and Miro, Verna argued that the old guard of SEO and funnels is crumbling under AI's relentless advance. "You can have an amazing product," she said, "but without distribution baked in, you'll die a slow death." Her talk dissected how conversational AI like ChatGPT has slashed organic search traffic for reliant companies—G2 saw an 80-90% drop—pushing users toward direct answers rather than link-hunting. Verna urged a pivot to Answer Engine Optimization, where structured data and AI partnerships secure visibility in this new frontier.

Verna painted distribution not as a marketing silo but a core product imperative, answering four eternal questions: How do we acquire, activate, monetize, and retain? She championed loops over funnels—self-reinforcing cycles like Dropbox's storage referral that once propelled it to a billion-dollar valuation with zero ad spend. At Lovable, just 10 months old, word-of-mouth loops thrive on "magical" first experiences, turning delighted users into evangelists. Yet, she warned, AI's no-code revolution commoditizes basics like forms and dashboards, empowering customers to build their own tools. "If it's easy to replicate your main functionality," Verna advised, "freak out"—lest you compete against your own users.

The four market shifts birthing product-led growth—users as buyers, fleeting channel lifecycles, data transparency, and role blurring—feel quaint now, Verna noted, as AI upends them further. Social algorithms throttle links to boost dwell time, while AI costs erode freemium margins from 90% to 30%. Her solution: Treat product as marketing, viewing free tiers as ad budgets. Lovable invests half its expenses in premium access to hook users, bypassing Google. Velocity emerges as a moat; with 60-70 staff, they ship hourly tweaks, quarterly blockbusters, fueled by "AI-native" employees wearing multiple hats.

Data, brand, ecosystems, and human connections form the new arsenal. Salesforce's Slack data lockdown exemplifies offensive data plays, starving rivals like Glean. Brand, once marketing's domain, now pulses through product—"unlovable" experiences get instant fixes at Lovable, forging loyalty amid software abundance. Verna spotlighted founder socials: Lovable's CEO Anton ballooned from zero to millions of impressions in months via LinkedIn and X posts. Creator economies extend to B2B, with YouTube influencers as potent channels. Emerging like OpenAI's app store? "Pay attention," she said—it could be the next Google for AI distribution.

As applause faded, Verna's message lingered: Great products alone won't save you. In AI's shadow, distribution reigns, demanding product teams own growth loops, AEO strategies, and human-centric moats. For leaders at Fortune 500s or scrappy startups, it's a clarion call to adapt or perish, blending innovation with relentless user focus to thrive in tomorrow's ecosystem.