How Lovable Grows

Hi, Pumulo here! In 1997 Jeff Bezos discovered the internet was growing at 2300% every year and that inspired him to build Amazon. I hope you’ll stumble on a random fact in here that inspires you to take action.

Every week, I analyse viral products, the people and the strategies behind them. Today, we’re diving into Lovable.dev because their blueprint is the blueprint for all AI Code Builders.

If there are other companies or brands I should breakdown, hit reply.

Table of Contents

• How Lovable Grows

  • Product

  • Growth and Key Moments

  • 👀 Competitor Pain in the Wild

  • Where Lovable Shines vs. Competitors

  • Competitive Positioning Strategy

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It’s the age of the idea guy.
If you’re someone who has millions of ideas but never knew how to execute.
You’re up.
If you can get through the initial frustration of broken code - the world is your oyster.

You know when a product feels like magic and you get chills?
That’s how I felt when I used Lovable for the first time.
That feeling for me is a concept in Product Management called the Aha Moment/Time to Magic.
How long does it take for the ideal user to feel like a product is magic?
How long before the AHA moment?

Lovable.dev is an AI-powered app-builder platform that allows users to build software products—from mockups, to websites to full-blown web apps—simply by chatting with AI. Where it really shines is its supabase integration which makes it easy to handle elements like authentification. Where most

Think of it as Chatgpt meets Canva but for building anything on the web.

Positioned at the intersection of no-code, low-code, and AI-driven development, Lovable is on a mission to make coding obsolete.

Their ambitious vision is to create a billion new software builders, reframing who can participate in tech, making it a standout in the emerging "AI as cofounder" wave.

If you haven’t used it, give it a go now.

The Early Years

Lovable was conceived in Stockholm, Sweden, when a group of veteran founders, product engineers, and physicists went for a serendipitous walk:

“Let’s go for a walk, I have an idea... By 8AM, we’d decided to start a company together. Not to make coding easier. To make it obsolete”. 

This founding myth underscores Lovable's mission: not merely automating or streamlining programming, but expanding access by removing the barrier entirely.

And when the barriers are removed, everyone becomes a builder. “

Canva did it with design. Now Lovable plans to do it with code.

The builders of the future aren’t building now, they don’t even know what a “brick” is -

Anyone can think of an idea and develop a mockup in minutes, not months.

Product

Through a simple prompt interface, you describe what you want, and the AI builds it. The system leverages technologies like React, Tailwind, Vite, and connects to APIs and tools such as Supabase (for authentication, databases), Stripe (payments), and more.

Rather than a tool for pros to prototype, Lovable has doubled down on enabling true beginners, setting themselves apart from existing code generators like Bolt or Cursor.

Cursor is an AI programming tool for developers.

Loveable is a AI programming tool for non-developers.

But this all sounds too good to be true - and the truth is that it is. Loveable’s biggest issue is that it’s quite difficult to ship a complex product if you’re not technical.

What is Lovable good for if you’re not technical?

Building the front end.

Growth and Key Moments

• Rapid traction: Within 8 months, Lovable saw non-technical founders building businesses and gaining real revenue. One founder, Caio Moretti, reportedly made $3M in revenue in 48 hours with a Lovable-built product.

• Airweave, an internal agentic search tool built on Lovable, secured a spot at Y Combinator, validating Lovable’s flexibility for powerful B2B (Business to Business) use cases.

• Early monetization: Other users have bootstrapped SaaS businesses, reaching $10k MRR with Lovable-powered apps.

Community-Driven Growth Loops

Referral Program

Activation

I want you to pay attention to that last line in the picture above.

“You get 10 credits once they’ve published their first website.”

That tells us how they are defining a complete activation.
The user journey isn’t complete once the user signs up, shares a prompt, or remixes a template, but once they publish.

The activation loop is complete once they publish for the first time - this is when the habit is built.

Publishing is their core value proposition - this is both valuable to the user (you and me) and to Lovable.

Publishing is important to Loveable for 2 reasons:
1. The more a user publishes, the more they build the habit, the stickier the retention.
2. Publishing is part of Lovable’s Content Growth Loop - more on this later.

That means that Lovable’s conviction is this: once the user publishes one product successfully, they’ll do it again.

And that’s because it’s quite difficult to publish the first product.

We’re at a point is in time where AI builders are overselling their capabilities. They promise that you can ship in one sec vs one minute and so on, but even extremely technical people spend hours tweaking AI generated code. So AI code builders can make the easy stuff, but the more complex the product, the more help you’ll need.

And Loveable knows this - while they wait for the tech to catch up, they have a partnerships page for this exact reason.

Community Templates: The Product is the Proof.

Part of Lovable’s success comes from the product being the proof.

Web apps, websites, prototypes, mockups, portfolios are inherently visual - very similar to other AI products like Midjourney (AI Images), Character AI (AI Chatbot), ElevenLabs (AI voices) HeyGen (Corporate AI video talking heads).

This is Product Led Growth at best - the reason we know about these products is because they have a viral characteristic.

The promise and allure of AI is eating the world and how easy it is to use the product - ship an app in minutes, not months - is irresistable.

When the product is the proof, new users can:
1. Instantly create products with a tight feedback loop - prompt, see the output, edit, prompt some more. This is instant.
2. See what others have created and duplicate their efforts without much risk. You can easily copy a prompt for an image creator like Midjourney or for Chatgpt
The barrier to entry is extremely low.

The community templates are likely Lovable’s best use cases in action:
Internal Tools, Website, Personal Tools, Consumer Apps, B2B Apps and App Prototypes.

The Community templates are also proof that other users are using Lovable - the remix number (e.g. 6000 remixes) is similar to the like button - it acts as social proof, helping to eliminate user hesitation. Can’t decide? Choose the template that has the highest remixes.

Think about the messaging here - community templates. This User Design doesn’t shout $1 Billion company, it says this is a community of builders, join a likeminded movement of vibecoders.

Lovable University

Since their mission is to create 1 Billion Developers, and they are following the Canva playbook (Design for non-designers/ developer tools for non-developers), educating non-developers is key.

Pricing

Lovable recently launched Launched - this is a feature very similar to Product Hunt which awards the top 5 apps. Again, this is has a multi-function purpose:
1. Showcases various use cases
2. Discovery channel - for new users to discover new apps.
4. It has a voting mechanism - which acts as social proof.
5. The weekly award creates a cadence for users and publishers (Vibe Publishers/ Vibe Coders/ Vibe devs).
6. And of course, the rewards incentivize vibe publishers with the equivalent of 1 month free.

👀 Competitor Pain in the Wild

Where Lovable Shines vs. Competitors

Analysis of forums, review aggregators, and social media summaries reveals:

• Usability for non-developers: Users praise Lovable’s approachable, chat-driven prompt UI—removing technical friction for first-time builders.

• Rapid prototyping: Lovable drastically reduces the time to first prototype or MVP—a critical advantage vs. platforms designed primarily for professional developers.

• Visual quality: Lovable-led builds win strong marks for design polish without manual intervention, even compared to well-known low-code tools.

• Onboarding speed: Community anecdotes consistently link Lovable to faster onboarding and near-instant application deployment compared to alternatives.

Competitive Positioning Strategy

To outpace competitors, Lovable should think about the following:

• Doubling down on support for non-technical users: Maintain lead as the most friendly, chat-driven platform that makes software creation as easy as design in Canva.

• Building out production-grade enterprise features: Close feature gaps (e.g., role-based access, detailed monitoring, managed security) for higher ARR and team tiers.

• Expanding seamless integrations: Broaden plug-and-play API, payment, and third-party ecosystem support to rival more technical platforms.

• Amplifying “time to value” content: Sharing how users are winning, these narratives showing 10–50x speed improvements over competitors.

That’s a wrap on Lovable, see you in the next one! If you made it this far, reply with a growth loop♾️.

Next week Sunday, we’re diving into the growth of Formula 1 as a brand.

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