How to Build Something Lovable
Most products get ignored. The ones people love are built differently. Here’s how.
Hi, I’m Felix. A designer, founder, and investor. Over the last few years I’ve worked inside Lovable, made angel investments in 30+ companies, and spent most of my time thinking about one question: what does it actually take to build something people love?
Early in my career, a design mentor introduced me to a framework that changed how I think about products. It’s called the Hierarchy of User Needs. A pyramid, originally conceived by designer Aaron Walter, that describes the four levels every product moves through on its way from existing to being loved.
At the base: Functional. Does the product work? Above that: Reliable. Does the product work consistently? Then: Usable. Is the product easy to use? And at the top, the hardest and rarest layer: Pleasurable. Does it make people feel something?
Most products never make it past the first two levels. They work, more or less, but they don’t delight. They don’t get recommended. They don’t get missed when they’re gone. The reason is almost never technical. It’s that the people who built them stopped once things worked and never asked what it would take to make someone actually love it.
For most of startup history, even reaching “functional” was hard. It took a lot of time, tons of engineers, and initial capital most founders didn’t have. The pyramid felt like a luxury, something you thought about once the product was stable, the team was in place, the funding was secured. Well, today with AI, that has changed completely.
AI has erased the cost of the bottom three layers: functional, reliable, usable. A first-time founder with a clear idea can reach all three in a day. The technical barrier is basically gone, which means the only layer left that actually differentiates a product is the one at the top.
Pleasurable. The layer that turns users into fans, and fans into the people who tell everyone they know.
That layer has a name now. It’s called Lovable.
This playbook is about building all the way to the top of that pyramid. It’s written for first-time founders, but also for anyone who has an idea and has been waiting for the right moment to start. That moment is now, and it’s closer than you think.
