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Elena Verna: Head of Growth, Lovable
Episode description
Published 31st July, 2025.
Elena Verna is a renowned growth advisor to tech startups, and currently heads Growth at Lovable, one of the fastest growing tech startups globally -- where she helped the AI-native company reach $80M ARR in under seven months with a lean team. Previously, she held senior roles at world leading technology companies such as SurveyMonkey, Miro, Amplitude, and Dropbox, and has advised companies like MongoDB, Superhuman, and Veed.
It’s time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy.
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Hosted by Vidit Agarwal, Founder of Curiosity Center and The High Flyers Podcast.
It’s now time to explore your curiosity.
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In this episode, Elena breaks down the key moments and lessons from her life and career including:
▪️ Childhood in post-Soviet Russia and deep influences of her grandparents
▪️ Moving to the US at age 14, failing every class except math, and learning English through SpongeBob
▪️ Landing her first job at Safeway through her mom, then chasing a role at SurveyMonkey through Craigslist
▪️ How she went from junior analyst to SVP of Growth over seven years and what made her stand out
▪️ Why she challenges managers, questions briefs, and refuses to stay in her job description
▪️ Interim vs Full-time roles and her growth learnings from helping scale Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox etc
▪️ Why she joined Lovable full-time, two months in, and how she’s scaling self-serve revenue using AI
▪️ What makes growth in AI-native companies totally different and why past playbooks now fail
▪️ How she hires for fire-in-the-belly energy, not fancy resumes or ex-FAANG labels
and lots more!
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