Lovable Growth Secrets (and Costs): $200M ARR Playbook
How Lovable Became the Fastest-Growing Startup
Hello friends! Happy Thanksgiving!
Today Lovable, the fastest-growing startup not only in Europe but in the world.
After being released just a year ago, this hyped Stockholm startup has hit more than $200M in annual revenue! Obviously, getting there wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; people were putting in tons of hard work behind the scenes.
And today,
We take a look at the product.
Discover how they push their marketing to achieve those results,
And what steps lie behind their fast rise that you can apply to your own business and projects.
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What Lovable Comes With
Lovable is an AI-powered platform that allows anyone to create fully functional web applications without writing code. The whole point is to shrink the gap between an idea and a working product.
Let’s rewind to when this startup actually dropped. These days, everyone, including us and the Lovable itself, loves putting the label “AI vibe coding startup” on it. And essentially, it is true, because it simplifies app development with an intuitive and visual interface.
But the startup came out way before vibe coding was introduced by Andrej Karpathy in Feb 2025.
This concept of Lovable came from two founders, Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin. Osika co-founded Depict AI, a YC-backed company that raised 20 million dollars, while Hedin worked as a developer at SpaceX (basically came out of the cradle of a successful business😅) and launched several companies, so he brought the experience needed to build something that scales fast.
Long story short, in November 2024, they launched Lovable (relaunched, actually).
So it could seem like they just nailed the timing and predicted trends, however, as I already mentioned, Lovable wasn’t built from scratch.
Before it, there was GPT Engineer — their first project based on the same idea of an open-source agent that helps with building code. They were testing the waters from the start.
It was dropped on GitHub as the open-source CLI project gpt-engineer in summer 2023, while the commercial web version launched at the end of 2023. In the end, it didn’t work out, and GPT Engineer was then transformed into Lovable.
My point is that Lovable’s story actually started way before its official drop, not a year ago. I’m not taking credit away from Osika and Hedin, because they did an impressive job of getting into a trend (or even kicking it off) by keeping up with the market. But, anyway, by the time Lovable finally launched, they already knew their product-market fit and had a whole audience ready to go.
About the Tool
Today, everyone’s falling for ‘no code’ (we do as well), but Lovable used it to the max.
Key stuff Lovable can do:
You can edit and add to the AI-generated code to roll out new features.
Cloud features included. So you can manage databases, CRUD, user auth, roles, and permissions.
Lovable has built-in publishing tools, plus you can hook it up with Netlify and similar services. You dont need to think about production and deploy!
Integrations with Supabase (a tool for building backend for apps), GitHub, Three.js (a library for creating 3D graphics and animations), p5.js (a library for drawing and animations), D3.js (graphs, maps, infographics), Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, Highcharts, you name it. Plus API access to connect other tools.
Among other models
While prepping, I kept running into mentions of Bolt, Cursor, v0, and Anything alongside Lovable, but honestly, their workflows, goals, and target users are totally different. Check out the table.
For example, Bolt feels more developed. It can also crank out full-stack apps from prompts, too, but it leans way more dev-first. Anything (the app) is not far, and is built for real production shipping. It runs in a similar lane and churns out one codebase for Web, iOS, Android, full code export, real infra, and GitHub sync.
As you probably know, Cursor isn’t a no-code builder (surprise, surprise). But I suppose everyone brings it up because you can use it after the prototype, when you’re actually developing, refactoring, scaling, and working in a live codebase. Or just because there are many more opportunities inside.
Cursor is one of our team’s favorites, and the post about it is one of the most loved by our subscribers. Don’t miss it!
Finally, v0 lets you drop in a Figma file, and it will spit out a UI clickable mockup. Great if you want instant components and an integrated preview.
I’d say it’s probably the closest thing to Lovable in terms of speed and simplicity, but Lovable stands out because it actually kicks out a working mini-version of the product. It’s all about fast prototyping, low barriers to entry, and letting users create something tangible with minimal technical skills.
They were among the first to make personal AI software (almost an agent).
But what makes Lovable really stand out is the fastest GTM with $100M ARR
Secrets (and Costs) Behind the Growth
Here we are to figure out how they pulled it off. The thing is that if you’re building a business with AI right now, the quality of your product isn’t even the main thing. What really matters is smart marketing and perfect timing.
Even with all the buzz, as we said, the startup didn’t just pop up like some fairytale unicorn.
They eventually realized that GPT Engineer was way too technical for regular users, needed some tweaks to make it approachable, and on top of that, the monetization was weak.
However, it was open-source, and I will get around to this later.
Overall, only after the first case turned out not successful, they switched up their storytelling, and Lovable appeared. They rode the wave of the trend, where the app doesn’t tell you exactly what to do or require skills. It gave insane freedom.
I bet you have a question: what marketing and other features helped them reach such heights? Below, you may find some insights for your business, as well as its flaws, as promised in the intro.
Their Playbook To $200M ARR
Lovable blew up fast because they nailed three things: made it simple to use, got people naturally sharing what they built, and built something that worked for everyone, from solo devs to entire teams.
Capital Efficiency That Breaks All Rules
Lovable achieved $100M ARR with less than $20M in total funding spent—a 5:1 capital efficiency ratio compared to the industry standard of 0.5:1. Most SaaS companies burn $30-50M to reach $100M ARR.
Revenue per employee: $1.7-$1.9M ARR per employee (vs. industry benchmark of $275K)
Team size at $75M ARR: Just 45 employees
No sales team until $100M ARR—pure product-led growth
Breaking Down the Revenue Model:
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