The Exchanges

Q product engagement? And what I mean by that is, if you want simplicity, it wouldn't necessarily be depth of product engagement. Hey, make me a website that's like BBC News, but make it just for VCs and for funding rounds. Boof. That's not very deep engagement, but it could be a happy user. How do you think about that product engagement need versus actually just what's best for the user?

A So I think about it on multiple vectors. There's intensity of engagement. So how deep do I go? How much time do I spend? How complicated of the task that I'm trying to accomplish? That's one vector intensity. And you're right. Intensity is very powerful for social platforms because the more intense you are on them, the more The better user you are for them. For simple productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-metric because intensity means like I'm getting stuck, like I'm doing too much where this actually is supposed to be easy. So intensity is often the anti-metric. However, there's also frequency. So how often do I come back and do it? Frequency is a big one. You always want to be in a habitual zone for our minds. Habitual zone for our minds is somewhere on daily or weekly basis. Anytime you move into being monthly, You're in the forgettable zone. I don't remember what I did last month. Like the world is moving too quickly. I don't even remember if I looked at the web, like some software last month, or even if I tried it last month. So trying to be in that daily or weekly habitual zone is super important. And then on top of it, you look at just what actions are meaningful. The worst thing is when you create frequency of engagement based on logins. That's a vanity metric. Everybody can log in. That doesn't mean they get value. So setting up that frequency engagement on …

AI assessment note: “For simple productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-metric”

Q product engagement? And what I mean by that is, if you want simplicity, it wouldn't necessarily be depth of product engagement. Hey, make me a website that's like BBC News, but make it just for VCs and for funding rounds. Boof. That's not very deep engagement, but it could be a happy user. How do you think about that product engagement need versus actually just what's best for the user?

A So I think about it on multiple vectors. There's intensity of engagement. So how deep do I go? How much time do I spend? How complicated of the task that I'm trying to accomplish? That's one vector intensity. And you're right. Intensity is very powerful for social platforms because the more intense you are on them, the more The better user you are for them. For simple productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-metric because intensity means like I'm getting stuck, like I'm doing too much where this actually is supposed to be easy. So intensity is often the anti-metric. However, there's also frequency. So how often do I come back and do it? Frequency is a big one. You always want to be in a habitual zone for our minds. Habitual zone for our minds is somewhere on daily or weekly basis. Anytime you move into being monthly, You're in the forgettable zone. I don't remember what I did last month. Like the world is moving too quickly. I don't even remember if I looked at the web, like some software last month, or even if I tried it last month. So trying to be in that daily or weekly habitual zone is super important. And then on top of it, you look at just what actions are meaningful. The worst thing is when you create frequency of engagement based on logins. That's a vanity metric. Everybody can log in. That doesn't mean they get value. So setting up that frequency engagement on …

AI assessment note: “For simple productivity tools, intensity is almost an anti-metric”

Q It's a big spend. What do you do when you have a player who is just spending a lot of money and you are on the other side of that?

A Well, you can obsess about it. You can get upset by it. You can try to match it, or you can say our growth strategy is completely different. Our growth strategy is through organic word of mouth and delighting people and showing them that we're actually better. As opposed to trying to pay for their attention. So we, do we look at it? Yes, absolutely. I, I watched Superbowl ads. I took notes. I was, we discussed it the day after, like, did we think that we should have been in Superbowl? We decided we shouldn't have been. After we saw the ads, we're like, we were happy with our decision not to be. Will we support some other big sporting events? Maybe. Uh, that's not, Out of the question, are we doing ourselves paid marketing for example now? Yes, absolutely. We're overtaking New York, uh, in subway systems. We have a bunch of ads running in London. We're taking more billboards in San Francisco. So we're doing some of the paid marketing spend as well.

AI assessment note: “our growth strategy is completely different. Our growth strategy is through organic word of mouth”

Q How do you think about setting effective KPIs to determine the success of a campaign like this?

A So we obviously have really big KPIs on how many people we expect to bring in, how many new signups we expect to get, how many people we expect to resurrect, how many existing users that are already active are going to come in. We're going to see how many apps are created or deepened in editing that day. We're going to see how many of them go published. So our North Star metric is daily active apps. So we expect that to shoot up. And the main goal is how far is it going to just come down to Previous growth levels, or is it going to be a step function change and then we're going to grow from there? So our goal is to really understand the new exposure and deepening engagement with our existing users on engagement level. Monetization obviously will just be a result outcome of that, but that is not primary KPI that we're optimizing against.

AI assessment note: “our North Star metric is daily active apps.”

Q I saw, I saw, I saw a post of yours and this power of social and your personal brand. I saw your, um, offer on Women's Day where, yeah, and making it free. With respect, does that work? Do you get a lot of take up on that? Does it lead to conversion or is it kind of good brand?

A Well, ask me after Women's Day. We'll see how much it actually leads to conversion. Lovable has had a couple of free weekends before where we would offer Product completely for free. The first free weekend was quite good from acquisition perspective. It was in early 2025 when the brand was only a couple of months old. The second free weekend was summer last year. So about seven months in after we just about almost hit a hundred million in AR. So like a little bit like on that lower medium stage of where the product has been. And that one has been incredible for re-engagement and resurrection of existing users, deepening their use cases. So it was more of a retention play than acquisition play, interestingly enough. But this time for Women's Day, I don't know about you, maybe algorithm is like boxing me out, but all I see is people talking about lovable free day. So the social impact of just people being so excited about it, rightfully so, credit is going to be completely free for a day. To me, that is something that you cannot pay for. That is like a marketing campaign, like a bigger than, that would cost us Millions of dollars to execute on. And our users are doing all of the marketing for us and grabbing everybody around them to bring into Lovable. So we'll see how it performs because this is the first time that we gave notice so early. Usually we did it like a day before, so…

AI assessment note: “We'll see how much it actually leads to conversion. Lovable has had a couple”

Q How do you have a launch every day? Everyone would love to have a launch every day. Is it just like the product velocity and being very vocal about every single little thing?

A So we're not vocal about every single little thing. Our marketing does not get involved in every single day launches. Uh, why those are just real, maybe I should just call them releases. Our engineering releases multiple things every single day that improve customer experience, not just bugs. I don't, I'm not even talking about bugs, and actual changes in products that are based on frustrations, that are based on lack of capacity, that are based on lack of capability. And then we encourage them to go post it on social, and then we have a channel that's called beesworming at Lovable, where they post their posts, and we all go beesworming on that post to try to get it more amplification. So we try to make a marketer out of every single engineer, or we pick out things that we're excited about and post about it on social too. So it's like an employer-led marketing For these releases and then marketing comes in and puts all of its firepower behind tier one or some partner launches that are really meant to tell the story to the customer. But staying top of mind is important.

AI assessment note: “Our engineering releases multiple things every single day that improve customer experience”

Q That is so kind of you, but I do always love to start with some context, and so I want to start with, like, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to lead some of the most powerful growth walks of today, and what was that entry to growth for you like?

A Well, let me just say is that I've never imagined to be where I am right now. I've never dreamed of being head of growth, Or doing growth advising that I am doing right now. So all of it was just a stroke of luck and opportunities uncovering very randomly throughout my career. I started my career as an analyst, so I didn't start in tech. I actually started working for a marketing team of a very large grocery chain, but very quickly I started feeling suffocated in that environment just because it wasn't moving quick enough for me. I found my first tech job on Craigslist listing. For those of you listening in US is just like listing for random jobs. I wasn't head-cunted. I wasn't approached. I applied for SurveyMonkey position off Craigslist, and they didn't want to hire me. I pursued them for eight months, trying to get them to make a decision on me, after which I finally convinced them to take a chance on me and give me a job. That translated over seven and a half years in me at SurveyMonkey, where I did start as a data analyst. I progressed through a data org, getting to a director level. Then I went really briefly to product marketing, which I realized really terrible at. After I hired somebody that was so much better than me, and after that, I went into growth just because the company was starting growth team, and they gave me an opportunity to figure it out, and that was th…

AI assessment note: “I applied for SurveyMonkey position off Craigslist... after that, I went into growth”

Q actually aged about 15, but it's only been technically two and a half. So you look younger and I've, I look 15 years older. I, I want to just start with a really hard and unfair question, which is we as investors feel it, the sands and the technological winds are moving faster than ever. What are the single biggest ways that growth is changing in a world of AI?

A I have a couple of ways that I think it's changing. Thing number one is that as software creation is becoming democratized and functionality is becoming available to anyone to build, whether you buy it from somebody, whether you build it yourself and honestly doesn't matter anymore. If you want to actually sell software and grow your business, growth is a trust problem now. Who do I trust to actually purchase it from? Who do I trust to use it from? Do I believe in the team that is building behind it? Because otherwise I'm just going to go create my own. If I don't believe that they're going to continue worrying about my needs and they're going to continue evolving it. So to me, there's just so much behind, not just tactics, growth tactics, growth hacking, channel optimizations. It's literally winning trust of your consumer to have them vouch for you, to have them believe in you, to stand behind you as you're building your business. And then the second thing, Which kind of goes along with the trust thing is that it's no longer about the software functionality that you're trying to grow. You're really trying to create, um, what I call minimum lovable product out of every single little thing that you touch because software is now almost being judged by the emotion that it can invoke with a human as opposed to just core basic functionality that it can do. I actually almost compare …

AI assessment note: “If you want to actually sell software and grow your business, growth is a trust problem now.”

Q How important is Anton's brand to Lovable's user acquisition? You know, I think Anton's amazing. Every new hire, he does the picture with them, or maybe senior hire, but he does the picture with them. I think it's brilliant, and he's so mastered the founder brand. How important is his founder brand to net new user acquisition?

A I think that lovable is where it is right now because of the founder led socials that Anton has really leaned into and has done at the beginning. How important is his brand right now to existing success? Less important because we've diversified away from it and we have other channels in which we're growing. Our users are very active. Our community is very strong. We have a lot of user generated content, um, We have other people on the team, including me that are pushing a brand along as well. But at the beginning, was here the reason that lovable spiked, I think at first and got to the traction that allowed it to scale where it is right now. I think so. Uh, but I, I have no way to prove it, but like looking at the data and looking at the early traction, that was it.

AI assessment note: “lovable is where it is right now because of the founder led socials”

Q listening, what, what do I actually take from that? I should go in tomorrow and say, Hey guys, you do amazing work. Why don't you actively share the work that you're doing and how you do it and build your own personal brand to which many founders will go, why would I encourage people to promote themselves when they'll then get hired and taken in a very competitive labor market?

A Well, I think that, okay, I have a couple of things against that statement. Number one, if you think that your employees are so easily, easily sway to go somewhere else, just if they get reached out by the right company, what are you doing? Like there is some really bad cultural issues in your company where, whether it's motivation based, whether it's just like ambitions based with who you hiring, because you're hiring just warm body to be in there that whenever it's given an extra dollar somewhere else, it's Or a better logo somewhere else is just going to run. So I would look at your recruiting practices. If that's actually your worry that people are going to be stolen, if they're going to be known. Second of all, if you can use your company to help people build a better social presence that they can use to do marketing for your company, then who cares if they build a personal brand in the meantime, they become your biggest marketing agent, the most powerful marketing agent. And encouraging that, I think you have to look at it as a marketing channel that you almost, uh, invest into. And by the way, you get two for the price of one. You get, for example, an engineer and the marketer at the same time. Who wouldn't want that? As opposed to seeing, oh, well, if they rotate this way, then I'm going to lose it on one way or the other. We're a very multifunctional people. We can do …

AI assessment note: “they become your biggest marketing agent, the most powerful marketing agent.”

Q What are your biggest lessons on conversion to paid? In this new world of PLG AI prosumer tools.

A And my biggest lessons are a couple of fold. Lesson number one, do not. And I mean, do not lock people in subscription as the only way to monetize you. I know that we all love our annual recurring revenue and our multiples are decided by annual recurring revenue. But if your product is anything like a bursty usage where it's not super consistent when creativity strikes or project strikes, I need to go and I do a lot of work in it. And then I might have some periods of more of a downtime or much lighter usage, allowing flexibility in your monetization model for ad hoc purchases can mean the world of incrementality for your overall monetization capture potential. We just introduced top ups at lovable and it's been absolutely wild because in every other job I've ever held in my entire life, I've always thought about something like an ad hoc Not purchased on top of the subscription. I've always shut down or I was too nervous to even move it forward because of the scares of affecting, um, that treasured ARR. Uh, that's not true. It's like a complete fallacy. You should do both and it adds on incrementally and your ARR only continues growing and your retention improves. So that is one big learning for me, especially with AI where people are still explore exploring and the usage is not super consistent for most of the products. And then I would say that the second one is that your mon…

AI assessment note: “do not lock people in subscription as the only way to monetize”

Q When we think about video, what would you do with video? How would you think about what would work, what doesn't work, what you see that's cool, what's not cool? How would you approach video in a world of unlimited, no constraints?

A So I think AI generated video is the future. I was just playing, uh, with video platform where just I uploaded my, uh, just still photo and it just created a full thing of me moving my hands, doing the full ad with like back and forth transitions with, with an app screen. I think that there's still going to be a place for manual video creation. And those are always going to be like artisan videos where it's just like handcrafted hand, Hand created. It's like a craft that it's like, think about like taking a picture versus painting the picture, uh, with the, with watercolors. It's like, there's still going to be some differences there, but I think for advertising needs, AI is where videos and even any creatives are going to be at AI models on video creation and just visual creation are improving in such a rapid way and they can create these striking images And they can animate you in the way that you would never be able to record properly in one shot. Uh, that I think it's the future. I'm like playing around even with creating animation for myself when I'm reading my own blog, as opposed to like me recording it. So let me just put in my screenshot, give it the blocks transcript and let it do it for me. So it looks like I'm reading it out loud and like annotating it, but it's not me. It's just AI doing all of the work. So I think the future of advertising is going to be almost pu…

AI assessment note: “So I think AI generated video is the future.”

Q I saw, I saw, I saw a post of yours and this power of social and your personal brand. I saw your, um, offer on Women's Day where, yeah, and making it free. With respect, does that work? Do you get a lot of take up on that? Does it lead to conversion or is it kind of good brand?

A Well, ask me after Women's Day. We'll see how much it actually leads to conversion. Lovable has had a couple of free weekends before where we would offer Product completely for free. The first free weekend was quite good from acquisition perspective. It was in early 2025 when the brand was only a couple of months old. The second free weekend was summer last year. So about seven months in after we just about almost hit a hundred million in AR. So like a little bit like on that lower medium stage of where the product has been. And that one has been incredible for re-engagement and resurrection of existing users, deepening their use cases. So it was more of a retention play than acquisition play, interestingly enough. But this time for Women's Day, I don't know about you, maybe algorithm is like boxing me out, but all I see is people talking about lovable free day. So the social impact of just people being so excited about it, rightfully so, credit is going to be completely free for a day. To me, that is something that you cannot pay for. That is like a marketing campaign, like a bigger than, that would cost us Millions of dollars to execute on. And our users are doing all of the marketing for us and grabbing everybody around them to bring into Lovable. So we'll see how it performs because this is the first time that we gave notice so early. Usually we did it like a day before, so…

AI assessment note: “Ask me after Women's Day. We'll see how much it actually leads to conversion.”

Q People almost forget what you said, but the impact of you being there is what's important. And again, relevancy is everything. Uh, bee swarming. I love that. And 11 Labs do it as well, which is interesting. Does it really make a difference? When you have a hundred percent like something within a minute, it makes a big difference to algos.

A Yes. It makes a big difference. It's actually not so much about like, it's more about comments. So yeah, you like, um, maybe you repost, but it's the comment that makes the biggest difference, uh, where the algorithms pick up, uh, right now. And it's not all happening in the first minute. People get to it when they get to it. So it's spread out throughout the first couple of hours, but I go to that channel at the end of each day and I just go down the line. Okay. Let me go support all of the things that people have said and, uh, that, um, I can get them more visibility through My platform as well. So we support all each other and it works quite nicely. We had employees that have grown their followings, uh, quite a bit since they started because of that, because we just all bees warm on them.

AI assessment note: “Yes. It makes a big difference. It's actually not so much about like”

Q Do you think Lovable removes the need for Figma and the design process?

A I think That there's always going to be tools for vertical use cases for specific specialties for now. However, can you design beautiful prototypes in lovable without Figma? Yes. And AI is only going to get better at design. So I still, still very much see a time and place for Figma for specific, uh, workflows. And there's no question about that. But my question, My, my bigger just worries for Figma is what will happen a year from now when the AI is going to be so good, it will be able to do all of the little changes down to like, even outside of software design, like to CAD files, to three D designs. What if we'll be able to do all of that? Why would you need design software at that point where it can shortcut all of those stages for you?

AI assessment note: “can you design beautiful prototypes in lovable without Figma? Yes.”

Q How important is Anton's brand to Lovable's user acquisition? You know, I think Anton's amazing. Every new hire, he does the picture with them, or maybe senior hire, but he does the picture with them. I think it's brilliant, and he's so mastered the founder brand. How important is his founder brand to net new user acquisition?

A I think that lovable is where it is right now because of the founder led socials that Anton has really leaned into and has done at the beginning. How important is his brand right now to existing success? Less important because we've diversified away from it and we have other channels in which we're growing. Our users are very active. Our community is very strong. We have a lot of user generated content, um, We have other people on the team, including me that are pushing a brand along as well. But at the beginning, was here the reason that lovable spiked, I think at first and got to the traction that allowed it to scale where it is right now. I think so. Uh, but I, I have no way to prove it, but like looking at the data and looking at the early traction, that was it.

AI assessment note: “Less important because we've diversified away from it and we have other channels”

Q Listen, I'd love to do a quick fire round, and I'm going to start with a super easy one following that conversation. If you're advising your kids coming out of university today, what to do? What advice do you give them?

A I would tell them to, first of all, be AI first in everything, make AI do so much work for them that otherwise they would have expected to learn somewhere else or be able to do something else, and start a side hustle right now. Right now, it's like the world is primed for everybody to have meaningful side hustle that they can monetize, and the window of opportunity is pretty short, and if you have a founder profile on you, you're going to be more likely to be hired by a company if you want to get hired by a But listen, there's so much money in creator economy, so much money in just being a solopreneur right now. I truly believe there's going to be a company of a billion dollar company running solo by some, by somebody. I would challenge my kids to be that solopreneur with a billion dollar company.

AI assessment note: “I would tell them to, first of all, be AI first in everything”

Q listening, what, what do I actually take from that? I should go in tomorrow and say, Hey guys, you do amazing work. Why don't you actively share the work that you're doing and how you do it and build your own personal brand to which many founders will go, why would I encourage people to promote themselves when they'll then get hired and taken in a very competitive labor market?

A Well, I think that, okay, I have a couple of things against that statement. Number one, if you think that your employees are so easily, easily sway to go somewhere else, just if they get reached out by the right company, what are you doing? Like there is some really bad cultural issues in your company where, whether it's motivation based, whether it's just like ambitions based with who you hiring, because you're hiring just warm body to be in there that whenever it's given an extra dollar somewhere else, it's Or a better logo somewhere else is just going to run. So I would look at your recruiting practices. If that's actually your worry that people are going to be stolen, if they're going to be known. Second of all, if you can use your company to help people build a better social presence that they can use to do marketing for your company, then who cares if they build a personal brand in the meantime, they become your biggest marketing agent, the most powerful marketing agent. And encouraging that, I think you have to look at it as a marketing channel that you almost, uh, invest into. And by the way, you get two for the price of one. You get, for example, an engineer and the marketer at the same time. Who wouldn't want that? As opposed to seeing, oh, well, if they rotate this way, then I'm going to lose it on one way or the other. We're a very multifunctional people. We can do …

AI assessment note: “they can use to do marketing for your company, then who cares if they build”

Q when you need to seed them artificially, so to speak. What are the biggest mistakes you think that people make when trying to build a community? I mean, Jesus, Elaine, I'm maybe I'm old and grumpy, which is very possible. Uh, but like, I'm so bored of community being banded around as a word. And I think what are the biggest mistakes you see in people Trying to embrace community.

A I think that they, well, the biggest one is that they treat us as just their support outlet. Oh, our support team cannot get through the queue. Let's create a community for it to be a community support so people can help each other. And it just becomes a dumping ground of negative sentiment because when people cannot get in touch with you through support channels, they go to community to vent about their issues. So it's becomes a very negative It's not filled with inspiration. It's not filled with positivity and accomplishment. It's literally filled with problems. And then in order to solve for that, companies start going after tooling and they start creating these community platforms and forums, basically trying to almost replicate what Microsoft has created or like another like core, so to speak. And, um, it just becomes cold, not connecting support forums that are Then indexed, by the way, by SEO for all of the negativity that is being shared within it. And it, it just becomes, it's not a community. It's like a.

AI assessment note: “the biggest one is that they treat us as just their support outlet.”

Q Why did you decide on that as the channel to invest in paid in New York, London, San Francisco on billboards in particular? I'm fascinated.

A Because we're going after latent majority now, not just the early pioneers that are looking For solution. We want to educate the rest of the market that, uh, the sport is possible and the capabilities, uh, that. Technology now has that they should be taking advantage of because there's a really short window of opportunity where people can really get ahead if they really lean into it, because otherwise they're going to be left behind. And I think a lot of businesses will be disrupted if they're left behind. A lot of people will be disrupted if they're left behind. So we do feel like we need to start educating larger masses. Which is why we went into billboards, subway advertising, uh, type of situations. But again, this is also very short in the timeline period from Lovable's perspective. I would never recommend the company to do it this quickly, but Lovable is not a normal company because we're already well past over three hundred million in ARR, even though we're only like a year and couple of months old. So like, we just need to move into that space a little bit faster. But all I'm saying is, is that's not our primary strategy of how we're going to drive growth. This is just branding awareness. We want to play in the field. We want to drive awareness across masses out there because we believe our product is very relevant for them, and we, our ICP is very broad. Ideal customer…

AI assessment note: “Because we're going after latent majority now... our ICP is very broad”

Q People almost forget what you said, but the impact of you being there is what's important. And again, relevancy is everything. Uh, bee swarming. I love that. And 11 Labs do it as well, which is interesting. Does it really make a difference? When you have a hundred percent like something within a minute, it makes a big difference to algos.

A Yes. It makes a big difference. It's actually not so much about like, it's more about comments. So yeah, you like, um, maybe you repost, but it's the comment that makes the biggest difference, uh, where the algorithms pick up, uh, right now. And it's not all happening in the first minute. People get to it when they get to it. So it's spread out throughout the first couple of hours, but I go to that channel at the end of each day and I just go down the line. Okay. Let me go support all of the things that people have said and, uh, that, um, I can get them more visibility through My platform as well. So we support all each other and it works quite nicely. We had employees that have grown their followings, uh, quite a bit since they started because of that, because we just all bees warm on them.

AI assessment note: “Yes. It makes a big difference. It's actually not so much about like”

Q Do you think Lovable removes the need for Figma and the design process?

A I think That there's always going to be tools for vertical use cases for specific specialties for now. However, can you design beautiful prototypes in lovable without Figma? Yes. And AI is only going to get better at design. So I still, still very much see a time and place for Figma for specific, uh, workflows. And there's no question about that. But my question, My, my bigger just worries for Figma is what will happen a year from now when the AI is going to be so good, it will be able to do all of the little changes down to like, even outside of software design, like to CAD files, to three D designs. What if we'll be able to do all of that? Why would you need design software at that point where it can shortcut all of those stages for you?

AI assessment note: “I still, still very much see a time and place for Figma for specific, uh, workflows.”

Q Why do most families go wrong on the onboarding process for various themes? And I'm sure you've got some thoughts on this one.

A I'll tell you number one mistake. Not having data team ready for growth team. So hiring growth teaming before you have data analysts or data literacy in your company before you're data informed or hiring growth and not attaching any data analysts into their for you. Because if you do that, what is growth person or growth hire supposed to do? Use their intuition? Then that's not really a growth mindset. They're just gonna pick an area and most likely have a strikeout versus Creating something that is more sustainable. So data, even though it's a different department, a lot of times they did this fall into growth on because that's the most department that uses data the most, but not equipping them with data team and data analysts is the biggest problem that you can create. And then there's number two, expecting wins right away. You hire your growth, your growth person, your growth team, and then the three months you expect the forecast lift where you put assumptions that they didn't drive forecast lifts. It's the worst thing that you can do to growth team in terms of really messing up their onboarding, in terms of them creating that predictable, sustainable system.

AI assessment note: “I'll tell you number one mistake. Not having data team ready for growth team.”

Q That is so kind of you, but I do always love to start with some context, and so I want to start with, like, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to lead some of the most powerful growth walks of today, and what was that entry to growth for you like?

A Well, let me just say is that I've never imagined to be where I am right now. I've never dreamed of being head of growth, Or doing growth advising that I am doing right now. So all of it was just a stroke of luck and opportunities uncovering very randomly throughout my career. I started my career as an analyst, so I didn't start in tech. I actually started working for a marketing team of a very large grocery chain, but very quickly I started feeling suffocated in that environment just because it wasn't moving quick enough for me. I found my first tech job on Craigslist listing. For those of you listening in US is just like listing for random jobs. I wasn't head-cunted. I wasn't approached. I applied for SurveyMonkey position off Craigslist, and they didn't want to hire me. I pursued them for eight months, trying to get them to make a decision on me, after which I finally convinced them to take a chance on me and give me a job. That translated over seven and a half years in me at SurveyMonkey, where I did start as a data analyst. I progressed through a data org, getting to a director level. Then I went really briefly to product marketing, which I realized really terrible at. After I hired somebody that was so much better than me, and after that, I went into growth just because the company was starting growth team, and they gave me an opportunity to figure it out, and that was th…

AI assessment note: “company was starting growth team, and they gave me an opportunity to figure it out”

Q In a PLG AI world, what is a good Organic to paid ratio in your mind. I'm not asking for yours, I'm just saying, what's a good for founders listening?

A All right. Well, you're starting to immediately go into attribution. How is it that you attribute? Where's the traffic coming from? Is it paid? Is it organic? Which is impossible to do if you're doing any sort of last click or digital footprint only. But I would say that for any founder in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth is a death trap. Because until you actually figure it out, your true stable product market fit, and until you are able to drive it in Some sort of organic way, whether it's your organic socials, whether it's organic search, whether whatever it is, investing into paid, I think is a really horrible idea because you haven't even optimized or really learned all of your funnels. You haven't even grabbed people that are already looking for your solution in organic ways and figure out how they progress through your products. So to pour money on your top of the funnel, when you, the experience is not even optimized for those who are Looking for you is just like lighting cash on fire. So I would say that less than 10% should be paid in the more scaled mature company can be 30, 40%, but anywhere over 50%, I would be very uncomfortable on the reliance on paid because I'm now competing with everybody else on third party platforms for the attention as opposed to relying on my organic pool and my product itself to drive growth for the company.

AI assessment note: “less than 10% should be paid in the more scaled mature company can be 30, 40%”

Q Can we seed it? Can we, like, pay for UGC? You see UGC marketplaces, you see, like, head of UGC. Is there a way where we can artificially UGC community?

A So you can see it, but I actually think that what you need to find is your early super users and your early super adopters. Those people that are really excited about your products and you should pull them in to be your community managers. You should pull them in to be your community ambassadors. You should deploy them to be your biggest advocates and for them to start bringing other people around them because of their excitement for the product. But you do need to identify them very early and build community around Them. That is the right way to do it because then they will bring the positivity into it as opposed to it being just a support outlet.

AI assessment note: “So you can see it, but I actually think that what you need to find”

Q Listen, I'd love to do a quick fire round, and I'm going to start with a super easy one following that conversation. If you're advising your kids coming out of university today, what to do? What advice do you give them?

A I would tell them to, first of all, be AI first in everything, make AI do so much work for them that otherwise they would have expected to learn somewhere else or be able to do something else, and start a side hustle right now. Right now, it's like the world is primed for everybody to have meaningful side hustle that they can monetize, and the window of opportunity is pretty short, and if you have a founder profile on you, you're going to be more likely to be hired by a company if you want to get hired by a But listen, there's so much money in creator economy, so much money in just being a solopreneur right now. I truly believe there's going to be a company of a billion dollar company running solo by some, by somebody. I would challenge my kids to be that solopreneur with a billion dollar company.

AI assessment note: “I would tell them to, first of all, be AI first in everything”

Q In a PLG AI world, what is a good Organic to paid ratio in your mind. I'm not asking for yours, I'm just saying, what's a good for founders listening?

A All right. Well, you're starting to immediately go into attribution. How is it that you attribute? Where's the traffic coming from? Is it paid? Is it organic? Which is impossible to do if you're doing any sort of last click or digital footprint only. But I would say that for any founder in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth is a death trap. Because until you actually figure it out, your true stable product market fit, and until you are able to drive it in Some sort of organic way, whether it's your organic socials, whether it's organic search, whether whatever it is, investing into paid, I think is a really horrible idea because you haven't even optimized or really learned all of your funnels. You haven't even grabbed people that are already looking for your solution in organic ways and figure out how they progress through your products. So to pour money on your top of the funnel, when you, the experience is not even optimized for those who are Looking for you is just like lighting cash on fire. So I would say that less than 10% should be paid in the more scaled mature company can be 30, 40%, but anywhere over 50%, I would be very uncomfortable on the reliance on paid because I'm now competing with everybody else on third party platforms for the attention as opposed to relying on my organic pool and my product itself to drive growth for the company.

AI assessment note: “less than 10% should be paid in the more scaled mature company can be 30, 40%”

Q Creator economy, sponsoring newsletters, creators, people try and do this, and they spray money, I think, pretty badly. How would you think about doing it well? What you would avoid? Would you go horizontal? Would you go vertical? How do you think about that?

A So every creator has their audience. You need to find creators that align with your ideal customer profile audience the most. I think that you cannot look at creator economy as one and done. Like I'm doing one ad placement and I need to see performance out of it. It's somewhere between performance, but it's most definitely brand awareness touch point because their audience is not going there to like discover new products, so to speak. And I think that consistency Here matters. Like you have to be in it for a long haul. I think the coverage matters. So you cannot just be, let's say one newsletter. You have to go across multiples and you have to just look at it as a, Hey, I'm going to do billboards or I'm going to do creators. Um, I can do influencers, uh, on social, or I can do newsletter creators. I can do podcasters. Some of those slots are super cheap too, because people like they're not educated of how much to charge. You can go and like get You get thousands of impressions for base to, like, base to nothing. Um, I don't know why more people don't do that, and I think that most of the time they think, oh, what is my going to be my click-through rate through my ad? But it's not an SEM, it's not an AdWords ad, it's not a paid marketing advertisement on top of Google search results, and I think people underestimate association of their brand with that creator and their ability …

AI assessment note: “You need to find creators that align with your ideal customer profile audience the most.”

Q Okay, so I'm a startup founder, and I'm like, wow, you know, Sarah led growth at, ah, fuck, I don't know, Notion, and I'm not picking on them, just like choosing a random company. Amazing, amazing company, led growth at Notion. Gosh, she must be amazing. Does it matter if she's amazing because it's a different world, or actually is it about mental plasticity towards growth?

A I think it's about agency. It's about people's autonomy. It's about people's drive and wanting us to explore of how this world is changing with AI. I do still think that Sarah's matter. Like I consider myself a Sarah. I've been there for 20 years. Like I've, I've so deeply written in patterns and frameworks and like how things used to be done because that's been my entire professional career. And I do have a lot of patterns that will help company to Not trip up over obvious things. I do bring that value to the business, but I also need to be paired with people that are not burdened with those decades of knowledge. I can just go. That can open my horizons. That can teach me the new ways of how to do it. Because every single thing that I do, I still rely, like, how did I do it before? Let me do it now. And I'm constantly pressed by everybody at Lovable. They're like, no, this is the way to do it. And at first my mind breaks and like, no, I've never done this before. This is not how you do it. And I have to constantly try their way. But I think both of us together, it's almost like old guard of Sarah's and new guard of like truly employees that don't have that context, that don't have that baggage is what creates a perfect harmony that pushes the company forward. Because you can prevent stupid mistakes from happening with Sarah's, but then you can push into AI nativeness. With the…

AI assessment note: “I do still think that Sarah's matter. Like I consider myself a Sarah.”