7 Drivers Behind Lovable’s Astronomical Growth
Lessons in Speed, Storytelling, and Delight-Driven Marketing
It’s easy to look at Lovable, the fastest AI-native company ever to hit $100M, and ask how do we do that?
Millions of users. 100,000 new sites created every day. Regular social virality.
But when success compounds that quickly, the success itself becomes part of the advantage, and buzz fuels its own growth.
That’s what makes Lovable fascinating, and frustrating, to study. (And why I’ve hesitated to write this blog.)
You can’t simply copy their tactics because their momentum and market moment is already the multiplier. But we can learn from how they built the foundation and what modern marketing techniques they use to keep the snowball rolling.
Since I advised Lovable, some details still need to stay under wraps. But here’s what I can share about what’s behind the growth — and what others can actually replicate.
Lessons from Lovable’s Growth
Lovable unlocked the potential of every person to create beautiful and fully-functioning websites and apps themselves, using only natural language.
It’s not just an AI tool; it’s the bridge between ideas and execution for the 99% of people on the planet who can’t code. Individuals use it to create personal websites and tools. Entrepreneurs use it to create applications, websites, and businesses without needing to rely on a developer. And businesses use it to create their own SaaS replacement apps, internal apps, prototype app ideas, and standalone websites. How did they drive growth?
1. Ride a Macro Wave Bigger Than You
Lovable hit at exactly the right moment, when every person and every company was trying to figure out how to use AI to improve their work. Instead of fighting for attention, they expertly surfed the wave with a great product, best-in-class social, and deep community investments. Market pull beats grinding for demand creation every time. It’s why we’re seeing many AI companies with XX growth instead of % growth SaaS companies. Voracious appetite and AI innovation budgets are driving outsized AI hyper growth.
2. Deliver Euphoria and Utility
But what Lovable did do, was create a product that “just works” and feels magical.
Users type a few sentences — and within moments, they have a beautiful, functional website or app. That instant creation, especially for people who’ve never been able to build before, drives what users describe as “creation euphoria.”
It’s delight-driven growth. A non-developer builds the app they always imagined; a product manager turns a product requirement doc into a live prototype; an entrepreneur brings an idea to life in hours instead of months. That first “wow” moment fuels a viral loop of sharing, pride, and curiosity.
A recent campaign played on the “so easy to use, even a kid can make apps”
3. Move at the Speed of AI
The AI rush is moving forward at lightspeed, competitor pressure is high, and Lovable is shipping new features constantly and quickly. They are deeply connected to every major LLM, and have tested and integrated new language models even before they launch. They rolled out agent capabilities, a seamless back-end cloud, and Shopify Integration, and continue to deliver new innovations every few weeks, not months. The engineering and growth teams work in tight sprints, are constantly scanning the AI market for what they can learn from others, and use AI dev tools themselves to speed delivery. They are working harder and moving way faster than traditional SaaS companies - but it’s also easier for them to do so being smaller, and having freedom from a historic install base and legacy products to support.
Check out this early-days post by Anton on the maniacle focus on speed in product development and in the product itself. Continues to this day. A more recent marketing case-in-point, this entire OpenAI GPT-5 launch and video was created in just 24 hours! (I’m hearing that almost every founder is asking marketing teams to turn launches around in days, not weeks.)
4. Treat Social as a Core Growth Engine
Lovable’s early visibility didn’t come from paid campaigns. It came from storytelling and social dominance. They built early momentum on X and YouTube, then expanded on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, mixing first-party storytelling, customer showcases, and influencer collaborations. Posts are a combination of real use cases (and ROI) created on Lovable, hype for community events, thoughts on AI trends, highlights of new team members, and some controversial takes. (An early mega-viral post suggested that Lovable buy Figma, when Lovable was still tiny.)
The CEO, Anton Osika, is a social force of nature, with big ideas and a dedicated, mind-melded social media partner. This person’s eye for what will go viral, his boldness, testing mentality, and care for every word have driven great momentum and visibility for Anton and for Lovable’s brand social.
Hiring Elena Verna, who brought her own 170,000 followers, propelled growth even further and gave the company great reach across her writing, speaking, and teaching.
And, Felix Haas in design, is a significant influencer in his own right, sharing design best practices for creating the most “Lovable” sites with more than 65K followers.
Lovable employees comment, like, and reshare posts quickly to spark algorithmic momentum - and for big announcements, engage groups of colleagues, friends, and family to share the love. It’s a highly intentional, coordinated social motion that compounds every announcement.
5. Build a Brand That Feels Warm and Human
In a market crowded with powerful, dark-mode, sterile AI brands, Lovable made warmth its differentiator. From the name to the rainbow palette to the tagline “Build Something Lovable,” everything about the brand is approachable and inclusive. The friendliness extends into the product experience itself. Nad Chishtie, Felix Haas and the team do amazing work across the stack.
6. Invest in Community Early
Community isn’t a channel at Lovable, it’s a central part of the growth engine — creating learning, belonging, feedback loops, and free marketing all at once.
Lovable invested heavily in community spaces like Discord and Reddit from the early days, even hiring some of its most active, engaged, and skilled community members.
They’ve also had massive success hosting and sponsoring hackathons around the world, from student events to tech-conference attendees, to high-profile sessions with will.i.am and MC Hammer. Their 6-Week “Shipped” Build-a-Thon and recent “She Builds” event for women let users go deep, learning, building, and sharing together — turning early adopters into power users and evangelists.
7. Feature Customer Stories & Success
Almost any successful marketing department is constantly featuring customer stories. Who better to sell the product than happy customers with real proof. So leading with customers is not an innovative tactic, per se, but is one of the central aspects of Lovable’s social, YouTube, hackathons, community, press, speaking and template libraries. Customers, customers, customers.
Success Snowballs
The part that’s so hard to replicate is how significantly visibility creates visibility. Lovable’s incredible growth brought in high-profile investors and even celebrities to amplify the brand. The high-profile press around “Fastest company ever to $100M” brought in requests for more interviews and to speak at all the major conferences.
That network effect is hard to recreate — but it’s powered by the same fundamentals: a remarkable product, a Lovable brand, and a word-of-mouth engine underpinned by social and community investments.
What Can Others Replicate
1) Start with a massive market - it’s easier to ride a wave than try to create demand
2) Design for delight, not just utility - The earlier in the experience, the better. Consumer products have an advantage here over more complicated B2B products.
3) AI has given business a new speed - And speed compounds
4) Treat social as a core growth engine - Make it someone’s full-time job to get it right.
5) Build a brand that feels human - In the world of dark-mode sameness, there’s room for warmth and differentiation.
6) Invest in Community Early - Driving learning, connection, and active engagement is a significant growth multiplier (and recruiting playground).
7) Feature Customer Stories & Success - Nothing builds trust or sells better.
Press, investors, and customers all follow momentum. Your job is to create the early spark that makes others want to join in.
Easier said than done!
But that’s the work.
Hypergrowth stories look effortless from the outside. But inside, they’re a mix of chaos, big bets, ruthless execution, and a team sprinting at full speed long before their “overnight” success.
Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing who took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.
Storytelling and social beats campaigns every day of the week. Love this post.
definitely need to give this one a read