Elena Verna

Guest: Elena Verna - Head of Growth at Lovable. Elena is a seasoned growth expert, having led growth at companies like Miro, Dropbox, and SurveyMonkey. Under her leadership, Lovable reached $200M ARR in under a year. Key Takeaways: Focus on Innovation Over Optimization: In fast-moving markets like AI, prioritize launching new features and creating new growth loops over optimizing existing processes. Build in Public: Utilize founder-led and employee socials to maintain market noise and engage users. This strategy helps in user resurrection and re-engagement. Give Away Your Product: Especially in AI, offering free access can drive growth by reducing barriers to entry and encouraging word-of-mouth. Community and Word of Mouth: Foster a strong community to amplify product visibility and create a word-of-mouth loop by delivering a product that "blows users' socks off." Constantly Reassess Product-Market Fit: In rapidly evolving markets, product-market fit must be reevaluated frequently, potentially every three months, to stay competitive. Topics Covered: AI growth strategies, product-market fit evolution, building in public, community engagement, product innovation vs. optimization, role of marketing in AI, hiring in AI startups.

Guest: Elena Verna - Growth Advisor and Consultant. Elena is a renowned expert in B2B growth, having led growth at companies like Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox, and SurveyMonkey, and advised numerous others. Key Takeaways: Delay Hiring a Head of Growth: Wait until you have clear product-market fit and substantial data before hiring a head of growth, especially if you're a product-led company. Growth Teams Can't Reverse Decline: If your business growth is declining, a head of growth won't solve this. First, address core product and marketing issues. Rebranding Doesn't Drive Growth: Rebranding or redesigning your homepage rarely results in growth and often requires significant post-launch optimization. Don't Copy Competitors Blindly: Use competitors for inspiration but avoid directly copying their strategies as it often leads to mediocre results. Focus on Owned Channels: Prioritize building your own or earned channels like virality and user-generated content over relying solely on SEO and SEM. Topics Covered: Hiring growth teams, rebranding pitfalls, competitor analysis, growth strategies, owned vs. paid channels, growth frameworks, career optionality, advisory roles, experimentation in growth.

Guest: Elena Verna - Growth Advisor and Instructor at Reforge. Elena has extensive experience in growth and product-led strategies, having worked with companies like Miro, Amplitude, and SurveyMonkey, and is a leading voice in the product-led growth (PLG) community. Key Takeaways: Product-led sales (PLS) bridges the gap between product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth by converting product usage into sales opportunities, especially for enterprise-level solutions. A successful PLS motion requires a shift in internal collaboration, with product teams taking accountability for creating a sales pipeline through product-qualified accounts (PQA). Start small by using existing tools and manual processes to identify PQAs before scaling with automation and specialized tools. Common pitfalls include treating PLS like traditional sales, failing to involve marketing, and not holding product teams accountable for monetization. Key metrics for PLS include the number of users, usage volume, and velocity of usage changes, with a focus on creating network effects within companies. Topics Covered: Product-led sales vs. product-led growth, identifying product-qualified accounts, internal collaboration between product and sales, data and tooling for PLS, common pitfalls in PLS implementation.