Product Growth in an AI Disrupted World: How Disrupted Distribution Channels and Vibe Coding Impact Every Product

Elena Verna’s talk was an especially interesting one because it serves as a wake-up call to those of us whose products don’t have a moat – meaning an edge that defends our market position – in order to survive the upcoming era of custom-built apps and eroding distribution channels. But let’s start at the beginning, before we get ahead of ourselves.

How to Define Growth?

Being in charge of growth for Lovable and having led growth at companies like Dropbox, Miro, Amplitude, and SurveyMonkey, Verna brings deep experience with the traditional concept of ‘growth’, which she defines as the result of A – a good product – combined with B – good distribution. She outlines how this combination usually results in strong growth, though she tilts the scale slightly in favor of distribution. She rightly points out that most of us have been forced to use mediocre or outright bad B2B software simply because our employers were sold on it by particularly convincing salespeople.

She then gives a handful of examples of well-executed growth loops – virtuous cycles that get products into the hands of more and more people by following a defined sequence of steps. Broadly speaking: you acquire a user (input), the user does something valuable, and that action generates new input. To put it more concretely, she shares the case of SurveyMonkey: users sign up, create a survey, send it out, and automatically generate new leads because each survey includes an ad for SurveyMonkey that recipients see. A share of those recipients go on to create their own surveys – and growth occurs.

PLG – The Era of Product Led Growth

This used to be the status quo. But a few years ago, something shifted. While the concept had existed for some time, Product-Led Growth was formally introduced to the world of B2B distribution. Salespeople and traditional distribution channels took a back seat in favor of more organic growth.

This shift, according to Verna, was made possible by four distinct factors:

1. Users became buyers instead of their companies: Modern SaaS tools offer simple onboarding and run in the browser. If something works, companies adopt it from a grassroots level.

2. Channel lifecycles shortened: Campaigns that used to run for 3–6 months now often burn out within days. Distribution via marketing channels has become more expensive.

3. We have access to more product data: We can now measure much more about how users interact with products, enabling faster and more targeted improvements.

4. Roles have blurred: Marketers can build websites and product managers dive deep into data.

Together, these changes prompted the industry to embrace Product-Led Growth and shift the emphasis away from distribution. But that, says Verna, is no longer true. We’re at the brink of a dramatic change brought on by AI – especially large language models. Two major forces are colliding at once.

First, our distribution channels are in trouble – AI is actively dismantling them. Verna shows how web traffic is declining as people turn to chatbots for answers instead of using search engines or visiting websites. At the same time, social platforms are becoming increasingly hostile to outbound links – as the case of LinkedIn illustrates. In short, the “distribution” side of the ‘product + distribution = growth’ equation is breaking down.

Second, our products themselves are in trouble. Lovable – the company where Verna currently leads growth – is a prime example of why: We now have ever-improving tools that enable anyone to build simple software using only natural language. Tools like Lovable, Cursor, Windsurf, Bolt, Replit and V0 can generate functioning applications without a line of code. So the “product” side of the growth equation is crumbling as well. Simply building an elegant and simple product is no longer a winning strategy. A striking example Verna shares is that of a team who recreated DocuSign in just two days – and are now facing legal threats from DocuSign.

How to Weather the Storm to Come?

So if both product and distribution as we knew them are no longer reliable growth levers – what should we do to prepare for what’s coming? According to Verna, there are three key steps:

1. Identify your moat: What can you do that others can’t easily copy?

2. Open the gates: Get as many people in as possible

3. Lock them in: Ensure recurring monetization through retention mechanisms

To help identify possible moats, she offers several examples:

• Context and memory lock-in: Users receive a better experience because of the valuable data they’ve already stored in your system

• Deep workflow integrations: Embedding deeply into users’ existing software ecosystems increases stickiness

• Ad and monetization layers: Users benefit financially from staying on your platform

• Control over context and portability: Make it harder to leave by limiting content exportability

• First-mover ecosystem advantage: Be the fastest to sign on partners to secure better placement and support

In any case, Verna makes it clear: change is coming fast. If you want to be on the winning side, you’ll need to act now to ensure that distribution and growth continue to work in your favor in the years ahead. And considering that tools like Lovable are quickly removing the foundations that once made Product-Led Growth viable – you’d better start soon.