We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.

Hey Product Fans!

Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas!

If you’ve been forwarded this or just stumbled upon it, you’re in for a treat. For the best reading experience, check out the web version and sign up for future editions here.

What’s on the menu this week? 🧑‍🍳

📰 Not Boring – This week, Oura adds AI-powered glucose tracking, OpenAI makes the surprising move to remain non-profit, and new startup Fellou launches a browser with built-in agentic capabilities. Meanwhile, UK retailers face serious cyberattacks, TikTok gets hit with a $600M EU fine, and Apple's Tim Cook warns about tariff impacts while reportedly partnering with Anthropic on an AI coding platform.

⌚️ Productivity Tapas – This week's tools help you conduct AI-moderated research interviews, transform your content consumption into searchable knowledge, and leverage the latest MCP servers from Auth0, ElevenLabs, and PayPal. Plus, don't miss our deep dive on mastering evals—the skill that top AI product leaders are calling critical for your career.

🍔 Blog Bites – Nielsen Norman Group explores how prompt suggestions enhance AI user experience, John Cutler offers a mental model for contextual planning and funding approaches, and Strategy Breakdowns examines how Cloudflare turned vulnerability into strength through radical transparency.

🎙️ Pod Shots – Back with another 20VC episode, where Anton Osika, co-founder of Lovable, shares how a weekend project transformed into Europe's fastest-growing company, now adding $2M in ARR weekly with impressive 85% retention rates for its AI-powered software development platform.

Plenty to get stuck into—off we go! 🚀

📰 Not boring

• Oura adds AI-powered glucose tracking and meal logging

• OpenAI is buying AI-powered developer platform Windsurf (for $3bn) — wonder what happens to its support for rival LLMs? 🤔 

  • And in quite the turnaround OpenAI also decides to stay non-profit

• New Startup Fellou launches new browser with full agentic capabilities built in

• Whilst we’re on agents, Hugging Face releases a free Operator-like agentic AI tool (but it’s still a bit slow and occasionally makes mistakes)

• Fox Entertainment has done a deal with Runway AI for video creation

• Sam Altman's World Coin Orb that verifies your human rolls out in the US. Not dystopian at all. No issues here. Nope.

• Several major UK retailers faced serious cyberattacks: Marks & Spencer and the Co-op outages disrupted payments and inventory, with the Co-op also reporting a data breach. Harrods confirmed a security incident as well, but hasn’t shared specifics

• TikTok fined $600 million for China data transfers that broke EU privacy rules

• Figma introduces vibe-coding AI software design feature - go from website description to live all in Figma

• Over at the big G

  • Google set to launch a standalone NoteBookLM app (by popular demand)

  • They just unveiled Gemini 2.5 Pro (even better coding, video to code & more)

  • Also, Google’s new ‘Simplify’ feature for iOS uses AI to make dense text easier to understand 

  • And YouTube is testing a discounted two-person Premium subscription tier

• Whilst in Apple land, CEO Tim Cook says tariffs to add $900M in costs in Q3 (1% revenue and 4% of net income), but future uncertain

  • Plus Apple and Anthropic also reportedly partner to build an AI coding platform. Everybody be vibe-coding

• Reddit will tighten verification to keep out human-like AI bots

• But other bots are good right? Airbnb is quietly rolling out an AI customer service bot in the US

• Pinterest updates visual search with more AI-powered features

• Stripe Brings Stablecoin accounts to more than 100 countries. For those that wonder, Stablecoins are Crypto’s biggest use-case by far and it’s only getting started

• Great article on lessons from working with LLMs; TL;DR Large Language Models are probabilistic, requiring ongoing evaluation, human oversight, and trial and error, making development unpredictable and future-proofing difficult; unlike traditional software, LLMs also incur ongoing costs after deployment.

Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.

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⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

• Conveo: qualitative research platform that conducts and analyses in-depth, AI-moderated voice & video interviews

• Cerebro: use AI to turn everything you read and watch into answers you can actually find

• Motherboard: the mother of all dashboards. It extracts key numbers from any website and puts them into a private dashboard on your computer. Just click, name, and you're done—no code, APIs, or cloud needed, and it works with your existing tools

• New MCP server releases [hat tip to the Department of Product for this one]

  MCP is the hot ticket right now. Here’s a set of MCP servers that seem pretty damn useful:

  • Auth0’s MCP server manage user identity infrastructure

  • ElevenLabs’ use Claude to build voice agents

  • PayPal’s create invoices with Claude

Remember, as a Product Tapas Pro subscriber you can access the full time saving tools database for fast approaching 400 time-saving tools relevant for product managers and founders 🔥.

Check the link here to access.

⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Deep Dive - Mastering Evals

When the Chief Product Officers of both OpenAI and Anthropic independently confirm that evals will be the most critical skill for product teams going forward, we should take notice.

Many are saying that mastering evaluations is the single most valuable skill a product manager can develop in this new AI landscape.

I've created a comprehensive guide covering what evals are, why they matter, and how to implement them effectively in your AI products. Continue reading here to learn the four-step framework for building an eval system and discover why this skill will define your PM career.

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

UX: Prompt Suggestions - Guiding Users Through AI Interactions

In a recent post, Nielsen Norman Group explores how system-generated prompt suggestions can enhance user experience with AI tools by providing contextual guidance, reducing cognitive load, and encouraging exploration. Read the full article here.

Strategy: Funding, Planning, and Context

As ever, John Cutler has a written about a great mental model - this time it’s how context shapes effective planning and funding approaches across different team types, stages, and work patterns. He argues that as companies grow beyond their initial "one context" phase, treating all teams identically becomes increasingly problematic. Read the full article here.

💡 "In a lot of early-stage startups and companies experiencing rapid growth, there is basically only one context. Any variation is consumed by inertia and the 'one thing'. But as these companies grow and mature, it becomes increasingly untenable to treat everything the same way."

Strategy: Cloudflare's Radical Transparency

We recently had a Podshot on monday.com’s radical transparency, and this Strategy Breakdowns covers similar approach from Cloudflare. Cloudflare turned vulnerability into a competitive advantage through radical transparency, building a paradoxical trust with customers that helped drive their growth to serving 22% of all internet traffic.. Read the full article here.

💡 "If you aren't transparent with 'negative' news, customers have no way to tell if you have nothing to report because you're nailing everything, or because you're hiding something."

🎙️ Pod Shots - Bitesized Podcast Summaries

Remember, Product Tapas Pro subscribers get access to an ever growing database of all the top Podcast summaries we’ve ever created. 

Check it out here

🚀 From Side Project to Fastest-Growing Company in Europe: Inside Lovable's Meteoric Rise

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📆 Published: March 5th, 2025

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 3 mins. Time saved: 46 mins🔥

💡 The Origin Story: How a Weekend Project Became a Phenomenon

Anton Osika, co-founder and CEO of Lovable, didn't set out to build Europe's fastest-growing company. What began as a caffeine-fuelled weekend project to prove a point about AI's potential has transformed into a business growing by $2 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) per week.

"I was traveling with my now wife as her engagement trip, and when you're traveling, I get extra creative," Anton explains. During those moments, he conceptualised putting large language models in a for-loop to create an AI agent that could write code.

Upon returning to Sweden, Anton spent "one main weekend and then a bit of polish over two weekends" building the first version of what would become GPT Engineer—an open-source project that generated a functional snake game from a simple prompt. The project quickly gained traction, accumulating "dozens of academic references and millions of users."

🏗️ Building the Team and Product

Despite the project's success, Anton wasn't immediately convinced it should become a business. He first focused on nurturing the open-source community while planning his exit from his previous company, Depict.

The turning point came when Anton recruited a co-founder—"the most super efficient, zero fluff engineer and entrepreneur" who had previously sold a company. Together, they began building what would eventually become Lovable.

Rather than rushing to market, they spent a year refining the product, releasing preview versions called "GPT Engineer App" to gather user feedback. "The first versions were good. They were not very good," Anton admits candidly. The team focused on creating those crucial "aha moments" where users could see the real value.

Key Takeaways:

• Finding the right co-founder can be transformative—look for complementary skills and shared values

• Take time to refine your product before full launch, even with early traction

• Focus on creating clear "aha moments" that demonstrate your product's unique value

🔥 The Launch and Explosive Growth

Lovable officially launched on November 21, 2023. While Anton describes it as not "one of these 'wow' launches," users quickly recognised the product's quality. Growth accelerated rapidly, with the company adding "$1 million ARR per week at some point" in December, which has since increased to $2 million ARR per week.

This growth hasn't been without challenges. The team faced significant scaling issues and made the bold decision to "rewrite everything" while experiencing explosive user adoption. "It took a bit more than eight weeks," Anton notes, but the investment has enabled them to ship features faster.

Key Takeaways:

• Sometimes technical debt must be addressed even during periods of rapid growth

• A great product can drive growth even without a splashy launch

• Be prepared to make tough technical decisions when scaling quickly

🧩 The Product Philosophy

When asked about product development, Anton emphasises simplicity: "You should say no to as many things as possible and make it more of like an Apple feeling—the things you do, you do them with purpose."

This philosophy extends to Lovable's user experience. Rather than a traditional landing page, users are immediately presented with a prompt box—an inviting interface that delivers quick "aha moments" for those who engage.

The product's power lies in its ability to transform simple prompts into functional software. "Today, Lovable can build an entire SaaS business from a prompt, and people have built their entire SaaS companies and made money by just prompting our AI," Anton explains.

Key Takeaways:

• Simplicity and focus create better products—say no to features that don't serve your core purpose

• Design your onboarding to deliver value immediately

• Create interfaces that invite engagement rather than explanation

📊 Impressive Retention and Growth Metrics

Perhaps most impressive are Lovable's retention numbers. "We have month one retention that's better than ChatGPT's month one retention," Anton reveals, citing an 85% retention rate for paying customers. The company has amassed nearly 40,000 paying users in just four months.

Their North Star metric focuses on users who "go all the way to getting users on what they built"—measuring not just who creates software with Lovable, but who successfully deploys it with actual users.

Key Takeaways:

• Focus on metrics that measure real user success, not just activity

• Strong retention is often more important than rapid acquisition

• Choose a North Star metric that aligns with your long-term vision

🌍 The European Advantage

Despite conventional wisdom suggesting that staying in Europe limits a founder's potential, Anton remains committed to building in Stockholm. "The most important thing is talent and culture, and there's more raw available talent in Europe," he argues.

He acknowledges that building from Europe means "playing on hard mode," but he's excited by the challenge of "showing that you can create a category-defining company from Europe." Anton also points to the "incredible superpowers in using the arbitrage pricing of incredible engineers in Europe and selling into the US."

Key Takeaways:

• Geographic arbitrage can be a competitive advantage when building globally

• Embrace the "underdog mentality" as motivation rather than limitation

• You can build for global markets while leveraging local talent advantages

🔮 The Future of AI and Software Development

Looking ahead, Anton envisions Lovable becoming "the best place for builders to create products," with a goal of attracting "a million of the most talented builders." He's also exploring ways to integrate more comprehensive founder support—potentially offering everything "you get out of Y Combinator" directly within Lovable.

When asked about the future of AI, Anton takes a bold stance: "We have models today that are really smart... they're smarter than humans, but they don't have memory in the same extent as we do." He believes the next frontier involves developing better systems for storing and utilising context and memory.

👥 Leadership Philosophy

Throughout the conversation, Anton emphasises the importance of talent, culture, and execution. He favours hiring "generalists" over executives and believes in empowering team members rather than creating management layers.

"The most important thing for everyone at our company, which I talk about, is to role model how much you care about the product, the users, the entire team, how well the team works," he explains. This sense of ownership and care is what he believes drives successful execution.

Key Takeaways:

• Culture is maintained through modelling the behaviours you want to see

• Hiring executives too early can sometimes slow down nimble teams

• Empower generalists who can adapt to rapidly changing priorities

• Maintain a sense of ownership as the team grows

🔑 Final Thoughts

As Anton reflects on Lovable's meteoric rise, he remains focused on the challenges ahead rather than celebrating past successes. "A lot of things in the last few weeks have just blunted me, and I'm just focused on all the things that we have to fix and improve. That's all I think about."

This forward-looking mindset may well be the secret to Lovable's continued success as it reshapes how software is built in the AI era.

Key Takeaways:

• Stay focused on improvement even during periods of tremendous success

• The best founders are never satisfied, always looking for the next challenge

• Building category-defining companies requires constant evolution and adaptation

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📅Timestamps:

• (00:00) Intro

• (00:48) How a Side Project Turned into a $200M Company

• (02:04) Why Talent is 10x More Valuable Than Experience

• (05:24) How to Use a Waitlist Pre-Launch to 10x Growth (09:32) How to Master a Public Launch: $0 - $1M ARR in a Week

• (15:35) Why Raise a Large Seed Round

• (20:42) How Sustainable is Lovable and AI Revenue

• (23:41) What are Lovable’s Biggest Threats: Incumbents or Open Source

• (26:15) Raising Series A: Should You Always Take the Money

• (26:49) How to Compete in the US from Europe

• (27:53) Is Europe as F****** as the World Thinks

• (30:40) Building in Europe vs. Silicon Valley

• (33:17) The Future of Foundation Models: Who Wins

• (36:33) Grok vs OpenAI vs Anthropic: Buy and Short

• (43:46) Quick-Fire Round

That’s a wrap.

As always, the journey doesn't end here!

Please share and let us know what you would like to see more or less of so we can continue to improve your Product Tapas. 🚀👋

Alastair 🍽️.