The Rise of Lovable
Based on my impressions and some private conversations
Lovable is the fastest growing company ever.
Based on the public and private info I have, here’s how it happened:
It started as an open-source project called gpt-engineer by founder and CEO, Anton Osika: https://github.com/AntonOsika/gpt-engineer .
50K stars, 7K forks, people loved it. But not technical people. Mainly non-technicals.
Anton found the technology fascinating and managed to produce a somewhat working AI agent. ‘Somewhat’ because it was not working every time. He was CTO of a VC-backed company at the time, so this experiment couldn’t be his full time thing.
Anton recruited Fabian as co-founder and CTO, sharing the exciting idea of starting this company together. As far as I remember, on a early morning walk in Stockholm.
The proof of concept was there but the models were not good enough back then.
June 2024, Anthropic dropped Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This was the model, which pushed EVERY AI company forward. This was the breakthrough we were all waiting for. It was really good at coding and could self-heal.
gpt-engineer became 100x more powerful overnight because of this.
Anton was talking to Staffan (Founder of Creandum, one of the leading VCs in Europe, but more importantly- based in Sweden). The funding was largely secured in a very aligned way.
Having worked at multiple startups + a YC alumnus, Anton knew well how to build a VC-backed company:
Big vision → Trillion-dollar company, solving an extremely big use case (building the last piece of software)
Innovative product, which relies on technology getting better, so not there yet (awaiting Claude 3.5 Sonnet or similar but ready the meantime)
Amazing team, working from the same location (in person!)
With all the components there they needed one more thing- to launch the company.
Branding
Lovable’s branding is key to their success.
I can imagine that they came up with the name Lovable and then looked for a domain. Lovable.com is apparently taken. But they’ve gone with Lovable.dev - after all, Lovable allows all people to develop software, so .dev is just right.
They hired a branding agency called Primary, who worked on the branding for just 1 week. That’s how Primary does stuff.
‘Create anything your heart desires’ is hardly the best message. Nor is ‘Your superhuman full stack engineer’ (so lame). Also the AI star in the image is horrible.
But the colors, gradients, feel.
They were all there.
And this was the start.
The Lovable team had been thinking about the slogans quite a lot.
Building the last piece of software
That’s very exicting. Both founders have it in their bio line. Super visionary!
But they have a BUNCH of those.
Build something Lovable
That’s quite cool, too. Definitely influenced by Paul Graham and YC’s ‘Make something people want’.
They don’t stop there. They speak in super catchy phrases.
Are you kidding me?
This branding and personal branding is definitely strategic. Cocky, infuriating. Also inspiring.
When you deliver on so many levels, you are allowed to do that.
The launch(es)
Here’s a Miro map with the Lovable journey, created by Restartt.
I love how every 3rd one is: ‘launches’ for the first time.
There are like 7 different launches And they’ve been working on it for 2+ years, but the story is: Just 7 months needed to hit glory.
The proper timeline:
12 Jun 2023 launched GPT Engineer
14 Feb 2024 launched lovable.dev domain
28 Aug 2024 GPT Engineer launches out of beta
7 Oct 2024 Lovable raises $7.5M with ‘no product’
10 Oct 2024 Lovable reaches 1200 paying users ‘before launching’
19 Nov 2024 Anton Osika says GPT Engineer is now Lovable
21 Nov 2024 Lovable officially launches
Lovable launched at least 5 times. If you ask me- 15 times.
And that’s how it should be.
Hype after hype after hype.
At the end of the day, AI products are changing so fast, that if you have tried a product 3 months ago… you haven’t really tried it.
I talk about this here: AI Agents Are Here: The Adoption Methodology.
Also Anton on this:
The team
Lovable’s team is absolutely cracked.
They hire only the best of the best.
Preference? Founders.
To quote Anton:
This is why we systematically hire people who can build something from nothing. Very often previous founders, who have run their own company and know what it feels like to make hard calls with incomplete information. To feel the weight of it and keep going. That instinct is hard to teach.
Often these are ex-YC founders.
People who care about equite, responsibility, ownership, impact.
Enzo Avigo (co-founder of June.so, exited to Amplitude) was in talks with Lovable as well. After spending a week together, Lovable wanted to only hire Ferruccio, his co-founder (CTO). And Enzo is fucking top notch, too. Getting both Enzo and Ferru on my team sounds awesome and would take them any day of the week. Not at Lovable.
No compromise with team.
And that’s how it should be.
They have 18y old geniuses. They have 40+ old veterans. Their Growth team is led non other than Elena Verna.
People from all ages are drawn into this. It’s a generation-defining company.
Lovable is the benchmark for all AI startups.
Conclusion
I’m sure I’ve missed context that only insiders would know, and I don’t want to mythologize anyone’s work.
But even from the outside, this looks less like a miracle and more like a series of high-quality decisions made fast and then repeated.
Lovable’s story is worth studying in detail.