Verna: Ad-hoc purchases alongside subscriptions drive incremental ARR and retention
Elena Verna · Elena Verna: How Lovable Launches Product & Hacks Social to Go Viral · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Mar 14, 2026 · at 33:00
Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable, explains why SaaS startups should offer ad-hoc top-ups alongside subscriptions rather than fearing cannibalization of recurring revenue.
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“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 that treasured ARR. 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.”
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More from Elena Verna
Verna: Paid marketing in year one is a death trap for founders
“For any founder in the first year, investing in paid as the means of growth is a death trap.”
Verna: Startups under five years old cannot accurately calculate their LTV
“Unless you've been in the business for five years plus, You do not know your LTV. Period.”
Verna: Paid marketing is the most expensive and defenseless growth path
“Paid marketing to me is Is a cheap way out, and it's not competitively defensible. I should say cheap. It's actually the most expensive way out, and it's not competitively defensible at all, and it's not sustainable.”
Verna: Meta ads deliver very little incremental growth for startups
“Meta... Just very little incrementality. Just a bunch of pass through views that don't materialize into anything.”