SaaStr 858: Feature Differentiation Is Dead. Here's What Actually Wins Now with Lovable's Elena Verna

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Thanks, Elena, for being here. I'm stoked to talk to you guys today. I thought we would also do a little bit of maybe some Y vibe coding like we were yesterday just to continue the theme of the day.
I've got a few points I want to hit, but the first thing I wanted to ask you is, things that we'll actually say is, thanks for being here on a big release day.

**Elena Verna** (0:16)
Yes, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:19)
For those who don't know, can you walk folks through in the room a little about what you guys released today on the AOE thing?

**Elena Verna** (0:25)
Yes.
I work for Lovable. Lovable is a native speech way to build any software application that you can possibly imagine. Today is our big launch day for allowing every single app to be native for SEO and AI discoverability. For those of you who are more technical, from server-side rendering SSR to pre-rendering, you can be discoverable and we also integrated with SEMrush. You can chat in Lovable about which keywords you're ranking on, where do you need to build out more content, and with a click of a button do it all. You're not just building an app, you're actually building an app that will be discovered by customers if you so wish.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:04)
It's a big deal. For those who are maybe newer to VibeCoding, usually you deploy an app and everything's indexed all the same way because it's all VibeCoded. This is a big game changer because now you can actually get more specific with it.

**Elena Verna** (1:15)
Yes, you can build your site maps, you can fix titles on your pages, you can build more landing pages to rank on keywords. Sometimes we live in the tech bubble and we say, oh, all of the discoverability is now happening through AI. Well, yes, but still there is a world out there where people are still using search and Google and you can't just forget that we're here a little bit more in the bubble compared to the rest of the world. So if you're building for that rest of the world, search is still very important to get right.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:48)
Yeah, that's true too. And then since you guys are on, obviously you use your own tools, you VibeCode a lot of stuff. Like how do you feel like this release kind of impacts folks? Like we're on some of the things we still use, we use all the VibeCoding tools, but then we also still use WordPress and Squarespace. And now I'm like, I don't know if we need these anymore.

**Elena Verna** (2:06)
Yeah, it depends on what is it that you're trying to accomplish. At Lovable, we're specifically focused on non-technical builder, meaning that if you want to go start your business or build internal tools for your company, build a website, do prototypes, build a B2B app, build an e-commerce app. And if you don't have engineering background, we are the place where we make it all seamless and make it very easy. So yes, there's a lot of tools out there. This just really proves that it's a booming category and there's space for quite a lot of competition. Honestly, it benefits all of you because more options that they're out there, the harder it makes us work to be on the bleeding edge of all of the innovation and capabilities. So I think it's a good thing. It pushes the category to go faster.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:51)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You're listening to the Official SaaStr AI Podcast, brought to you by.
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**Elena Verna** (3:32)
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**SPEAKER_1** (3:37)
S-A-A-S-T-R-F-R-E-E. You have such a rich and interesting background at being at these big SaaS giants, like Miro, you were saying, Dropbox, Amplitude, SurveyMonkey, these are big names and we were just talking about how you used to manage folks. Now you're back to being not only at Lovable, which is a live coding company, but back to being an IC.

**Elena Verna** (3:58)
I am. So I've been at Lovable for a year. Today is actually my one-year anniversary. I'm very excited. I've made it. I've made it. That was my goal. Can I make it a year at a company like this?