Why Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable rejects candidates who want rigid structure — and hires for 'founder DNA'

• Lovable is planning to grow to about 400 staff this year, its people chief said, up from 146.
• The startup hires for "founder DNA," favoring ownership over structure, Maryanne Caughey said.
• Lovable prioritizes team impact over individual wins, Caughey added.

Lovable is hiring fast — and the vibe-coding startup is doing it in its own way.

The Swedish company expects to grow to around 400 employees globally this year, Maryanne Caughey, who leads Lovable's people team, told Business Insider, up from 146 employees in early March.

Instead of chasing head count, it's focusing on hiring in key areas like engineering, product, and design to help it build faster.

"If someone wants a highly structured, low-ambiguity environment, they won't be happy at Lovable," Caughey said.

Beyond product roles, the startup is also hiring across go-to-market functions, including sales, customer success, and marketing, as well as core operations such as people operations, finance, and security, to support its growth, Caughey said.

Lovable, whose annual recurring revenue surged by more than 30% in a single month earlier this year, prioritizes what Caughey calls "founder DNA" — people who take ownership, move quickly, and are comfortable operating with autonomy.

New hires are expected to ship meaningful work early, often from day one, with clear goals but freedom on how to achieve them, she said.

"We keep the process rigorous regardless of source," Caughey said. "Every candidate goes through the same structured interviews and must clear the same bar, and we monitor for network bias to keep hiring fair and diverse."

A founder-first mentality

Lovable CEO Anton Osika said in an X post earlier this week that many of the startup's employees in key roles were founders before joining, describing the startup as a place where "founder-types thrive internally."

That's by design.

Caughey said ex-founders often bring an ownership mindset, and they're typically comfortable making decisions with imperfect information and adapting quickly as they go.

However, there are trade-offs, she said: some former founders may be used to setting strategy alone or prioritizing speed over collaboration.

Lovable tries to counter that by setting clear expectations and hiring for traits like humility and learning ability, not just experience.

It also leans on referrals — which account for about 30% of its hires — to find candidates who fit its pace and culture, Caughey said.

Most decisions are made in writing and shared in public channels, using a simple framework known as "IPS," which stands for Issue and Proposed Solution, and lays out the problem, options, input from others, the decision-maker, and the timeline, Caughey said.

"The goal is to give founder-types room to move fast, while keeping decisions transparent, repeatable, and easy to follow across time zones," she said.

How Lovable sets itself apart from US tech firms

In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, Osika said what he sees as a Swedish trait — long-term thinking and team building — is attracting some talent away from Silicon Valley.

Caughey said the startup's differences from US tech firms show up most clearly in how quickly Lovable ships work and makes decisions, and how it treats ownership and credit.

Rather than relying on layers of process like at some larger corporates, the startup pushes decision-making down and expects teams to ship work quickly, she said.

It's an approach that Big Tech companies like Meta and Amazon have been moving to recapture in recent years by flattening management structures and working in smaller teams, with the goal of becoming more efficient.

Lovable does not have a "move fast and break things" culture, Caughey said, adding that speed comes from trust and accountability, with teams sharing learnings early and operating in tight feedback loops.

It also actively rewards what it calls "founder energy," meaning it expects employees to propose bold ideas, test them quickly, and learn fast — while maintaining a high bar for quality.

And unlike companies that celebrate individual heroics, Lovable treats impact as a "team sport" by sharing credit and each other's wins.

"They are performance expectations," Caughey said. "That tends to be sharper than environments where individual heroics are celebrated more than durable, repeatable team execution."

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