The key facts
- In the first 90 days after launching a commercial product, fast early revenue is not a sign of readiness to scale — says Luca Arrighi of Lovable
- Products are easy to copy, so finding product-market fit is harder now, noted Ben Broca of Polsia
- Tomasz Tunguz: growth like Lovable's is an exception, but the pressure is real because there is more money in the ecosystem than in 2008
Discussion at TechCrunch Disrupt
In the AI era, startups can grow so fast that they reach high annual recurring revenue (ARR) figures and then crash a few months later. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Luca Arrighi, who leads go-to-market at Lovable, Ben Broca of the AI platform Polsia and Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures gave founders advice on how to prepare a company for success in the first 90 days.
Repeatability instead of early sales
Broca, whose company Polsia uses AI agents to build and run a business with almost no employees (he says he is its only employee), noted that product-market fit is especially hard to find now because products are easily copied by competitors. Arrighi replied that durable go-to-market strategies are ones that can be reliably repeated. According to him, the most important thing for early-stage founders is to develop 'learning density' and pattern recognition of where customers are, and not rush to build a top-down go-to-market until there are grounds for it.
Don't confuse early revenue with readiness to scale
Arrighi emphasized: in the first 90 days after launching a commercial product, founders should not mistake fast early revenue for a sign of readiness to scale. A startup is ready to build a sales team and chase growth only when it can attract new customers by repeating what has already worked. 'If I'm acquiring 10 new customers in 10 different ways to solve 10 different problems — yes, I've brought in revenue, but I have no way to scale go-to-market,' Arrighi said. 'If I'm acquiring three customers with a similar motion to solve a similar problem, now I have high confidence that I can scale.'
The Lovable example and market pressure
Lovable, an AI app-building startup, set many early benchmarks with its growth rate, and now founders everywhere feel pressure to replicate it. According to the company, investors value it at more than $13 billion, ARR has exceeded $600 million, and it has raised more than $700 million in funding. 'Expectations for overall speed of execution are absolutely enormous,' Tunguz said. At the same time, he said, growth at Lovable's level remains an exception, though moving fast is still worth it. The pressure is real because far more money flows through the startup ecosystem at every stage than when he began investing in 2008: a deal brought in by one of his partners at the seed stage today could be a round of $5 million, $50 million or $500 million.
Focus on customers
According to Tunguz, all the winners are focused on one thing: understanding customers well enough to know what will retain them even after the hype fades. 'Building community is really important, and closeness to customers is really important,' Broca said. He noted that founders can write letters and hold events, and he himself prefers to talk with many of his customers: 'The general rule is to always talk to customers.'
