When Elena Verna joined Lovable, an AI-native startup, she wasn’t pursuing another growth role.
“Actually, I wanted to retire before doing Loveable,” she admits. After leading growth at Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, Miro, and Amplitude, she’s seen the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again. “I couldn’t have done a better gig where I felt like we were doing Growth 101: onboarding flows, lifecycle emails, A/B testing. It all felt the same.”
But the speed at which AI-native tools were changing the way teams were built brought her back to work. “I wanted to automate and free myself from work,” she says. “All of these baseline optimizations need to be codified into the product itself so growth leaders can really focus on creativity and innovation again.”
That’s how Elena works. AI can be used to automate the basics and allow humans to be more creative.
AI is not 100%. Only those of “average intelligence” can achieve 40 or 50 percent. Real improvement still comes from layering on top of human judgment. ”
Elena Verna, Head of Growth, Lovable
Automate 101
For Elena, the true value of AI is simple. It’s about doing the busy work and letting people focus on the good stuff.
“We all spend too much time optimizing the same baseline,” she says. “AI should free us from that. What can we automate that we don’t add value to as humans?”
She argues that fundamental “Growth 101” tasks like A/B testing, lifecycle emails, and onboarding flows should be built directly into the product. “No company needs to hire a growth leader just to get the basics right,” she says. “Growth should be about creativity and innovation, not repeating the same thing.”
Solve the empty state problem
We all know that a blank page can be paralyzing. For Elena, this is exactly where AI shines.
“Humans suffer from an empty state problem,” she says. “An empty Google Doc would give you a brain freeze. That’s no longer the case. You can rely on AI to provide you with the first 40%, and then apply real expertise to finish the final 60%.”
At Lovable, that mindset is reflected in our daily workflow. Product specifications, prototypes, and go-to-market plans begin with an AI draft that drives iteration. “I’m not looking for a final product,” she says. “We want an initial response. It’s faster to fix and improve than to start from scratch.”
Hire AI native talent
If you want to change the way you build your team, start with who you hire.
“I highly recommend hiring AI-native employees,” says Elena. “They’re probably small businesses or new grads who didn’t know pre-AI workflows. They come in and inject incredible energy into the team (as long as the rest of the team is willing to listen).”
While some fear that AI will make entry-level roles obsolete, she argues the opposite: “New graduates are graduating with AI skills and curiosity. They’re showing us new ways of doing things.”
New graduates will leave with AI skills and curiosity. They show us new ways of doing things. ”
Elena Verna, Head of Growth, Lovable
loosen the guardrail
For large or established teams, Elena recommends temporarily loosening procurement and compliance guardrails to create space for bottom-up experimentation.
“If you have very strict permissions on what can be used within your team, you will prevent innovation from happening from within,” she says. “Sure, you’re going to feel some pain with budgeting and compliance, but they’re necessary growing pains. You can tighten up later. Give your employees the next six months to explore.”
This experimental mindset also applies to the tools themselves. “If your AI performs poorly on a task today, don’t assume it won’t get better. Things change every week. Keep trying.”
share what you learned
Elena’s next call to action: Don’t keep it to yourself.
“We don’t have to solve everything alone,” she says. “If we do that, it will only cost our industry more time. Share your successes as well as your failures. Ask others for help. That’s where the human connection is really connected.”
She argues that knowledge sharing between companies creates network effects that move entire industries faster.
place an anchor on something that doesn’t change
Even in an AI-driven world, some fundamentals of product management remain the same. “You can’t automate conversations with customers,” says Elena. “You still have to pick up the phone, read what the other person is saying, and go talk to them.”
The second constant is vision. “If everyone uses AI to build products, we’ll all be focused on building the exact same thing. AI shouldn’t set the destination. It should define what makes your product great.”
Finally, she reminds product managers to stay sharp when it comes to differentiation and distribution.
“With tools like Lovable, anyone can build a product. You need to understand what’s commoditized and what’s really differentiating you – what you need to market, monetize, and protect.”
If everyone uses AI to build products, we’ll all be focused on building the exact same thing. AI should not set destinations. After all, you need to define what makes your product great. ”
Elena Verna, Head of Growth, Lovable
maintain human superiority
Rather than thinking that AI will replace product managers, Elena believes that AI will reshape jobs.
“I just don’t want to do anything that can be automated with AI,” she says. “That’s not the exciting thing I wake up to every day. If AI can take that basic thing off my plate, then let’s do it.”
Elena’s framework is featured in Atlassian’s new e-book, AI Fluency: The new product superpower, along with perspectives from Kene Anoliefo, Laura Burkhauser, Ravi Mehta, and Aakash Gupta.
