The growth strategies that built the last generation of tech giants are failing. In the chaotic, fast-moving world of AI, the old playbooks are becoming obsolete, leaving even seasoned leaders scrambling for a new approach. This isn’t a theoretical problem—it's a reality forcing a complete rethinking of how companies acquire, retain, and monetize users.Enter Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable, a company that achieved a historic milestone of over $200 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in under a year. Verna, a veteran who has led growth at companies like Dropbox and Miro, states that only 30-40% of her hard-won expertise transfers to this new era. The rest of the playbook? She threw it out.This post distills the most impactful and surprising lessons from Verna's recent talks into a new, counter-intuitive playbook for growth in the age of AI.
**1. Stop Obsessing Over Product Perfection. Distribution Is What Wins.**The first rule of the new playbook is a direct challenge to a sacred cow of product development. Verna argues that while a great product is helpful, a company with an "okay" product but "great distribution" will consistently win against a competitor with an "amazing product" and no distribution strategy.She points out that millions of brilliant products have died in obscurity because no one ever heard of them. Conversely, some multi-billion dollar companies have succeeded with products so terrible they feel like “one of your brain cells dies every time you have to do an action in it.” They achieved a near-monopoly through a superior distribution model. The key takeaway is that product and distribution are not the same thing, and growth teams must be laser-focused on baking distribution into the company's DNA from day one....distribution, at the end of the day, is what wins... Great product is not enough.
**2. "Funnels" is a Dirty Word. Think in Loops.**The foundational model of customer acquisition—the funnel—is not just inefficient in the AI era; according to Verna, it's a liability. She is blunt in her dismissal, calling it "the f-word." The model of pouring users into the top and watching them trickle out the bottom is linear and unsustainable. The fastest-growing companies don’t use them.Instead, they build growth loops. A loop is a compounding flywheel where a user's action generates an output that can be reinvested to create more users. The classic example is Dropbox, which grew to a billion-dollar valuation with almost no marketing spend by creating a viral loop: users "give storage to get storage," turning existing customers into the company's primary acquisition engine. Lovable has its own powerful word-of-mouth loop, driven by a magical "first generation experience" that is so impressive it compels users to share it with their network.The fastest growing companies all have one thing in common... They don't grow via funnels. They grow via loops... Not f-word funnels but loops. Loops is where it's all at.
**3. Stop Tweaking the Dials. It’s Time for Radical Reinvention.**In previous roles, Verna spent the majority of her time optimizing existing user journeys—tweaking conversion rates, smoothing out friction, and A/B testing small changes. In the AI era, she argues, this incremental approach is "not worth our time."She has completely flipped her allocation of effort. Verna now spends 95% of her time innovating on growth and only 5% on optimization. For her team, innovation isn't just a buzzword; it's shipping core product. The growth team at Lovable has launched entirely new growth loops, built a Shopify integration to open up the e-commerce use case, and enabled a voice mode for users to interact with the platform. The reason for this radical shift is simple: the market is moving too quickly and competition is too fierce. The only way to win is through the "reinvention of the solution," not the "optimization of the problem."I usually spent maybe 5% innovating on growth in my previous roles. Right now, I'm spending 95% innovating on growth and only 5% on optimization.
**4. Forget What You Know About Product-Market Fit.**Perhaps the most shocking lesson is the new nature of Product-Market Fit (PMF). The old model was to find PMF, declare victory, and then pour resources into scaling it for years. In the AI world, that stability is gone. According to Verna, PMF is something you must recapture every three months. The sheer gravity of this shift can't be overstated. As Verna puts it, "10 years ago if you asked me if a $200 million company was at risk in losing product market fit in the next three months... I would have said 'You're crazy.' And now that's the reality that we live in."This relentless PMF treadmill is the engine driving the 95/5 split between innovation and optimization; incremental tweaks are useless when the entire foundation shifts quarterly. The cycle is driven by two forces:
**5. Your Moat Is Disappearing. Your Newest Competitor Might Be Your Own User.**The rise of "vibe coding" and powerful no-code platforms means that many simple, formerly defensible software functionalities are becoming completely commoditized. Features like e-signatures, forms, landing pages, and scheduling tools can now be replicated with startling ease. This creates a new and dangerous threat: your own customers.Verna shares a fascinating example where a user rebuilt DocuSign's core e-signature functionality on Lovable, prompting a legal threat from DocuSign. This illustrates a critical vulnerability, leading Verna to issue a direct challenge to every product leader: "go to one of those vibe coding platforms and try to rebuild your product, your main functionality... If it's easy, I'd freak out." If your business monetizes a simple, high-utilization feature that a customer can easily rebuild, you are in the danger zone. Your moat is no longer defensible.
**6. Give Your Product Away. Especially the Expensive AI Parts.**In a move that feels heretical to traditional SaaS logic, Lovable’s strategy is to give away its costly AI product for free. While old-school tech companies boasted 80-90% gross margins and gated expensive features to protect them, many AI companies operate at 40% margins or less. This financial reality breaks the old playbook.Lovable treats its freemium usage and giveaway costs—such as providing free credits for hackathons—as its marketing budget. The logic is powerful. In a new and complex category, the most effective way to acquire users is to let them experience the "wow moment" for themselves. This firsthand experience is more persuasive than any advertisement and turns users into passionate evangelists. Lovable would rather fund a user's discovery of the product's magic than compete for expensive ad space....we much rather give our product away to every single one of you to give it a go as opposed to making Google richer.
**7. Brand Isn't About Billboards. It's About Code.**The final rule is a paradigm shift in responsibility. Verna asserts that "brand is now a product exercise, not a marketing team function." The old view of brand—defined by tone of voice, color palettes, and ad campaigns—is outdated. The new brand is felt through every single interaction a user has with the product.At Lovable, this is an internal mantra. The fastest way to get a bug or a poor user experience addressed is to declare it "unlovable." When that happens, it gets "hot fixed immediately." This philosophy is the embodiment of a new gold standard Verna champions: the shift from Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) . In a world where software is democratized and users have infinite choice, they will gravitate toward tools that "speak to them" and create a human connection. This makes brand, as expressed through a lovable product experience, a company's ultimate and most defensible moat.
The common thread across all seven rules is the death of static playbooks and the rise of constant, rapid evolution. Distribution wins over product perfection, loops replace funnels, and constant reinvention is the only path to survival. For leaders operating in the AI era, the ability to unlearn old habits and embrace this new reality—shifting focus from optimization to reinvention and from viable to lovable—will be the deciding factor between growth and extinction.The old playbooks are crumbling. Which of these outdated rules is still holding your growth back, and what’s the first thing you can reinvent tomorrow?