As interest in “biological programming” spreads, so too does the influence of Lovable, a Swedish startup known for its AI coding tools for non-technical users. After raising $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation last December, the company opened its first U.S. office in Boston earlier this year — and brought company traditions from its Stockholm headquarters, including a no-shoes policy in the office.
Office standards aren’t an issue for Ryan Meadows, Lovable’s chief revenue officer, who joined last October and previously lived in Japan, where taking off shoes indoors is the norm. (Those who are uncomfortable with this policy get branded slippers.)
Meadows, who reports directly to Lovable co-founder and CEO Anton Osika and oversees the 35-person go-to-market (GTM) team, also welcomed the startup’s rapid progress. Behind the “exponential growth” — Lovable reported $400 million in annual recurring revenue in March, a 30 percent jump from the previous month — is evidence of “pent-up demand” for the company’s services, Meadows told the Observer. He noted an increase in projects created with Lovable, increased traffic to apps and websites created by Lovable, and plans to expand the company’s global footprint and headcount.
Before becoming an employee, Meadows was already a customer. He was trying out Lovable’s tools when the company first approached him about the role, a coincidence he described as “serendipitous.” He joins after six years as senior vice president of global sales at marketing platform Klaviyo, and seven years in sales leadership and general manager roles at software company HubSpot.
Lovable has continued to expand in the eight months since Meadows joined. More than 40 million projects have been created on the platform so far, with nearly 200,000 new projects created every day, Meadows said. Popular apps and sites now receive more than 600 million monthly visits, double the number in January.
Founded in 2024 by Swedish entrepreneurs Osika and Fabian Hedin, Lovable is among the companies making natural language programming, or so-called “vibe coding,” the hottest new trend in frontier AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI that are also expanding into programming.
Lovable, which uses leading models to power its products, differentiates itself by focusing on “non-technical people,” Meadow said, ensuring that even users with little or no programming experience can create apps, websites or agents. “We’re not just focused on getting developers to become ’10x developers’.”
While traveling to meet clients, Meadows discovered that non-technical employees were still not using AI enough: “If you’re not a developer, what are you really being offered for AI? Most people have a chatbot, and maybe some people have built an agent, but most people haven’t.”
Today, Lovable serves a mix of individual users and enterprise clients, including Uber, Microsoft, and ElevenLabs. Meadows added that the company, like its larger competitors, is “leaning in” to institutional clients for future growth.
In addition to revenue, Meadows focuses on what users build, and whether those products are successful. One client, real estate brokerage eXP Realty, replaced more than $2 million worth of legacy software with lovingly built applications, including a content management system (CMS) for the website and an internal chat tool.
Sweden is moving forward in the field of artificial intelligence
Sweden has long excelled at creating startups, and it is continuing that trend in the age of artificial intelligence. The country that has Highest concentration of unicorns per capita outside of Silicon Valleyhas spawned projects such as Dentio, a startup Focus on artificial intelligence assistants for dentistry which raised $2.3 million in January, and Pit, a workflow-focused company that raised $16 million earlier this month. Stockholm is also home to legal tech venture Legora, which recently secured $600 million in funding.
According to Meadows, Lavable’s Swedish roots have been an asset. He described the company’s backers – including CapitalG, Menlo Ventures and Accel – as “bullish on Europe,” adding that a shared interest in keeping Europe competitive in AI helped attract both backers and investors. “I think it was a very big plus for us.”
Meadows said the startup is not actively seeking to raise more funding yet. “We are not in a position to think about anything other than implementation at the moment.”
However, keeping him is a priority. Earlier this month, Lovable announced that full-time employees would automatically receive a 10% pay raise on their work anniversary — a policy more typical of Sweden’s generous labor practices than those in the United States.
The number of employees eligible for this increase is expected to grow rapidly. Lovable, which currently has about 200 employees, aims to double its headcount to 400 by the end of 2026. Along with expanding its teams in Sweden and Boston, the company is hiring in San Francisco, New York and London.
