Elena Verna is one of Silicon Valley’s most sought-after growth advisors and operators. She previously led growth at companies like Amplitude, Miro, Dropbox, and SurveyMonkey and is currently doing full-time advising for high-growth tech companies. In our conversation, Elena and I discuss: • 10 growth tactics that never work • Her 3 favorite growth frameworks • How to increase your career optionality — Brought to you by: • Sinch—Build messaging, email, and calling into your product: https://sinch.com/lenny • Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny • OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/10-growth-tactics-that-never-work-elena-verna Where to find Elena Verna: • Newsletter: https://www.elenaverna.com/ • X: https://x.com/elenaverna • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome back, Elena! (06:02) Common mistakes growth teams make (08:31) #1: Hiring for growth roles too soon (15:09) #2: Hiring a head of growth to fix your problems (19:20) #3: Doing a rebrand to drive growth (25:11) #4: Obsessing over your competition (34:00) #5: Believing that your problems are unique (42:32) #6: Prioritizing other growth channels above earned channels (50:55) #7: Failing to evolve your growth model (01:01:06) #8: Not hiring advisors (01:05:55) #9: Over experimenting (01:10:44) #10: Color optimizations, third-party signups, one email wonders, and removing friction (01:15:00) Elena’s favorite growth frameworks (01:18:50) Contrarian corner: full-time jobs (01:26:05) Lightning round and final thoughts Referenced: • Elena Verna on how B2B growth is changing, product-led growth, product-led sales, why you should go freemium not trial, what features to make free, and much more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/elena-verna-on-why-every-company • The ultimate guide to product-led sales | Elena Verna: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-product-led • Six rules of hiring for growth: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/hiring-growth • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Miro: https://www.figma.com/ • Notion: https://www.figma.com/ • Carol Wong on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-wong-14133927/ • Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ • The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs: https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/ • Miroverse: https://miro.com/miroverse/ • GitHub: https://github.com/ • My 9 Favorite Growth Frameworks: https://www.elenaverna.com/p/my-9-favorite-growth-frameworks • Growth Loops are the New Funnels: https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops • Racecar Growth Framework: https://www.reforge.com/blog/racecar-growth-framework • The Adjacent User: https://andrewchen.com/the-adjacent-user-theory/ • Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact | Bangaly Kaba (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Instacart): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/frameworks-for-growing-your-career-bangaly-kaba • Why I’m Unquitting Full-Time Roles: https://www.elenaverna.com/p/why-im-unquitting-full-time-roles • Noah Smith’s newsletter: https://www.noahpinion.blog/ • Beef on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81447461 • Veep on Max: https://www.max.com/shows/veep/37cb4217-c710-4166-8e9f-352a61f2cd3a • The Last of Us on Max: https://www.max.com/shows/last-of-us/93ba22b1-833e-47ba-ae94-8ee7b9eefa9a • Heated boots: https://www.amazon.com/heated-boots/s?k=heated+boots • Airpods Max: https://www.apple.com/airpods-max/ • Memes by Elena: https://www.elenaverna.com/p/ten-funniest-growth-memes Recommended books: • Project Hail Mary: https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/0593135229/ • The Martian: https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Andy-Weir/dp/0553418025 • We Are Legion (Bobiverse #1): https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse/dp/1680680587 • Fire Upon the Deep: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones-Thought/dp/0812515285 Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Elena Verna is the head of growth at Lovable, the leading AI-powered app builder that hit $200 million in annual recurring revenue in under a year with just 100 employees. In this record fourth appearance on the podcast, Elena shares how the traditional growth playbook has been completely rewritten for AI companies. She explains why Lovable focuses on innovation over optimization, how they’ve shifted from activation to building new features, and why giving away their product for free has become their most powerful growth strategy. *We discuss:* 1. Why 60% to 70% of traditional growth tactics no longer apply in AI 2. Why you have to re-find product-market fit every 3 months 3. The specific growth tactics driving Lovable’s unprecedented growth 4. Why giving away product is a growth strategy that beats paid ads 5. “Minimum lovable product” as the new standard (not minimum viable product) 6. Why activation now belongs to product teams, not growth teams 7. Whether you should join an AI startup (honest tradeoffs) *Brought to you by:* WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://workos.com/lenny Vercel—Your collaborative AI assistant to design, iterate, and scale full-stack applications for the web: https://vercel.com/lennyspodcast Persona—A global leader in digital identity verification: https://withpersona.com/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-new-ai-growth-playbook-for-2026-elena-verna *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/181207556/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Elena Verna:* • X: https://x.com/elenaverna • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna • Newsletter: https://www.elenaverna.com *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Elena Verna (05:19) The scale and growth of Lovable (08:55) Confidence in Lovable as a business (12:17) Retention at Lovable (15:02) Lovable’s unique growth levers (28:13) The role of marketing in Lovable’s success (38:09) Launching new features (40:59) Hiring and team dynamics (43:17) The value of vibe coding (49:46) The importance of community (51:47) Giving away your product for free (56:26) Tripling their company size (01:00:23) Product-market-fit challenges (01:08:50) Advice for joining AI companies (01:12:00) Work-life balance (01:15:20) What it’s like to work at Lovable (01:19:45) Women in tech (01:25:29) Final thoughts and lightning round *Referenced:* • Elena Verna on how B2B growth is changing, product-led growth, product-led sales, why you should go freemium not trial, what features to make free, and much more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/elena-verna-on-why-every-company • The ultimate guide to product-led sales | Elena Verna: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-product-led • 10 growth tactics that never work | Elena Verna (Amplitude, Miro, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/10-growth-tactics-that-never-work-elena-verna • Lovable: https://lovable.dev • Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika • Stripe: https://stripe.com • What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-differentiates-the-highest-performing • How to win in the AI era: Ship a feature every week, embrace technical debt, ruthlessly cut scope, and create magic your competitors can’t copy | Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder of Captions): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-win-in-the-ai-era-gaurav-misra • “Dumbest idea I’ve heard” to $100M ARR: Inside the rise of Gamma | Grant Lee (CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-50-people-built-a-profitable-ai-unicorn • Eric Ries on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries • Elena’s post on LinkedIn about Lovable Missions: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elenaverna_everythingispossible-lovableway-activity-7401627519646474242-hn6e • SheBuilds: https://shebuilds.lovable.app • Shopify + Lovable: https://lovable.dev/shopify • The Product-Market Fit Treadmill: Why every AI company is sprinting just to stay in place: https://www.elenaverna.com/p/the-product-market-fit-treadmill ...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-new-ai-growth-playbook-for-2026-elena-verna Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Elena Verna is a leading growth expert with over 15 years of experience in tech. She was SVP of Growth at SurveyMonkey and interim CMO at Miro, where she built high-performing teams that drove significant growth. She recently served as interim Head of Growth at Amplitude and currently advises and is a board member for early-stage startups. In today’s podcast, we discuss: • What product-led sales is • How product-led sales differs from product-led growth • Unpacking common acronyms: PQAs, PQs, PQLs, and MQLs • When and how to consider investing in PLS • Metrics for identifying qualified accounts • The team, data, and tooling required for implementing PLS • Common pitfalls to avoid when adding PLS — Brought to you by Linear—The new standard for modern software development | Braintrust—For when you needed talent, yesterday | Rows—The spreadsheet where data comes to life Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-product-led-sales-elena-verna/#transcript Where to find Elena Verna: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna • Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenaverna • Newsletter: https://elenaverna.substack.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Elena’s background and what she’s doing now (07:13) Product-led sales (PLS) vs. product-led growth (PLG) (12:47) How sales solutions can be applied to enterprise-level problems (15:06) Defining enterprise-level problems (17:51) How product-led companies start with PLS (20:30) When to add sales (22:36) Two ways to get to PLS (24:27) Why every sales-led-growth company needs to add PLG (26:50) Two ways you can own revenue (28:37) PQAs, PQs, PQLs, and MQLs (37:17) How to get started adding PLS (42:01) Metrics to identify PQAs (47:00) Why sales should be carefully applied (49:07) Systems, infrastructure, and tooling (50:59) The people and resources required for PLS (53:42) Why you should have a clear ROI for every new hire (55:05) Why product needs to be accountable for monetization with PLS (59:57) Revenue-based goals product teams should have (1:06:28) Common pitfalls startups run into when implementing PLS (1:09:15) Benchmarks and the amount of time needed for implementing enterprise solutions (1:12:04) Using onboarding to profile users (1:13:08) Will AI be the next sales movement? Referenced: • Elena’s previous episode on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/ • Miro: https://miro.com/ • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Elena’s PLS funnel diagram: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elenaverna_b2b-product-led-sales-guide-activity-7052664130763206658-yxLK/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop • Elena’s memes: https://www.elenaverna.com/memes • Mixpanel Signal reports: https://mixpanel.com/blog/mixpanel-signal-launch/ • Amplitude Compass chart: https://help.amplitude.com/hc/en-us/articles/235147347-The-Compass-chart-discover-your-users-a-ha-moments • Looker: https://www.looker.com/ • Tableau: https://www.tableau.com/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/ • Marketo: https://nation.marketo.com/ • Waitlist for PLG course on Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/programs/product-led-growth Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
Elena Verna has led growth at some of today’s most successful B2B businesses, including Miro as CMO, Surveymonkey as SVP of Growth, and now at Amplitude as interim Head of Growth. She’s also worked closely with over a dozen companies on growth and product strategy, including companies like MongoDB, Clockwise, and Netlify (where she sits on the board of directors). Elena is undoubtedly one of the smartest people on growth strategy in the world. Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/#transcript — Where to find Elena: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna • Twitter: https://twitter.com/elenaverna — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible: • Persona: https://withpersona.com/lenny • Stytch: https://stytch.com/ • PostHog: https://posthog.com/lenny — In this episode, we cover: 00:00 Elena’s career path 03:59 How did Elena go from an analyst at Safeway to Head of Product at Amplitude? 11:38 The path to advising 13:30 Elena’s most fulfilling and most challenging positions yet 17:00 What’s changing in B2B growth? 19:49 Consumerization examples 21:48 What exactly is “product-led growth,” and how can you apply it at every stage of growth? 23:15 Advice for founders starting a company 26:36 Layering sales-led and product-led 28:27 Why does PLG often get crushed when you move upmarket, and how do you avoid this? 35:00 Advice for starters going to market 36:38 Why product-led is the future of sales 38:57 Defining product-led sales vs sales-driven 41:41 Why is freemium the way to go, over trial? 51:34 Why you should hire internally for your first growth hire — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.