Minimum Lovable Product
Viability is no longer enough — the bar is a product people love and want to talk about
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
A replacement for the Minimum Viable Product standard. Because AI has collapsed the cost and time of building, 'viable' utility is now table stakes; the differentiator is emotional experience and delight that makes people share. Use it when deciding what quality bar to ship at in a crowded category where functionality alone no longer stands out.
Origin
Elena argues MVP belonged to the 2010s. At Lovable — a product literally named for the feeling it aims to create — the internal rule is 'if it's not lovable, we're not going to ship it,' and the fastest way to fix a bug is to say 'this is not lovable.'
Core principles
- 01Viability is table stakes; the bar is now emotional, not just functional
- 02The only way to create a word-of-mouth loop is to blow people's socks off
- 03Because software is cheap to build, invest the savings into emotional feel
- 04Brand should be felt through every product interaction, not a separate marketing layer
How to run it
- 1
Set the bar at 'lovable', not 'viable'
Make lovability a ship gate. If an interaction does not feel delightful and human, it does not ship.
Pro tip A shared vocabulary ('this is not lovable') lets anyone flag a quality miss and mobilize a fix immediately.
- 2
Design for a shareable story
Create experiences that make users feel they have superpowers and a secret worth telling — something that feels empowering to show others.
Watch out Functionality parity is easy for competitors to match; the emotional experience is the durable moat.
- 3
Put the brand into the product, not a brand team
Add 'love marks' and unique interactions into the product itself. Lovable has no brand marketing team — brand lives entirely in product interactions and building-in-public.
Pro tip Ask your designer regularly: how can we add more love marks and unique interactions here?
- 4
Hire the designer early
Because experience is now the differentiator, a designer should be one of your first hires, not an afterthought behind engineering.
In the wild
At Lovable, saying 'this is not lovable' about a bug makes everybody jump on it — 'sprints, no sprints, it doesn't matter. It's getting fixed right now.'
→ Quality culture embedded in the brand name itself.
Users build proposals, kids' tutoring apps, and portfolios and feel proud enough to show others — 'oh my gosh I have superpowers now.'
→ Word-of-mouth loop fueled by emotional delight rather than paid acquisition.
Common mistakes
Prioritizing functionality over humanity
Building pure utility in a crowded category. Elena says people 'deprioritize' emotional feel and lose the one lever that stands out.
Treating brand as a separate function
Waiting for a brand marketing team instead of expressing brand through every product interaction.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and product teams in crowded categories where AI has made functionality cheap and commoditized
Not ideal for
Regulated or infrastructure products where correctness and reliability outrank delight, or truly novel utilities with no competition yet
From the transcript
“Like it shouldn't be minimum viable product anymore. Viability is left in back in 2020 2010s. Now it's minimum lovable product. That's the only thing…”
“The only way to create a word of mouth loop is just to blow their socks off”
“your designer has to be one of your first hires now in startups. It's not just about the the engineering so to speak utility”
From the episode
The new AI growth playbook for 2026: How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year
Elena Verna (Head of Growth)