Growth Is Now a Trust Problem

“Every marketing channel sucks right now.” — Andrew Chen, a16z, April 2025

This statement summarizes the current state of business growth. SEO takes too long and competes with listicles and Reddit. Paid ads have increasing costs and fraudulent clicks. Social media has algorithms hostile to external links and minimal organic reach.

The Law of Shitty Click-throughs is relentless: over time, every marketing channel results in progressively worse click-through rates. Channels that had 70% CTR decades ago now have less than 0.1%.

AI Is Accelerating the Collapse

It is no longer a question of “if,” but “how fast” traditional channels will lose relevance.

Gartner predictions:

-25% in search volume by 2026
-50% in organic traffic by 2028

AI Overviews reduce clicks on top-ranking pages by 34.5%. Organic CTR dropped 61% year-over-year when AI Overviews are present.

60% of searches today are zero-click — projected to reach 70% by end of 2026. ChatGPT processes 2.5 billion prompts per day. AI traffic grew 527% year-over-year.

Elena Verna’s Thesis

Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Lovable, proposes a fundamental shift: from performance to trust.

Lovable reached $200M ARR in less than 1 year with 100 employees. The secret? 60-70% of the old growth playbook is obsolete.

What AI Commoditizes

Three traditional value propositions are losing power:

Cheaper: AI offers $20/month solutions that cost thousands.

More Efficient: AI processes faster than any human.

More Effective: AI understands intent better through context.

What AI Does Not Replace

“Trust that this product and team will continue delivering better outcomes over time.” — Elena Verna

Trust compounds:

Hard to build, impossible to copy
Accumulates value exponentially
Creates sustainable competitive advantage
Transforms customers into distributors

Trust-Based Channels

What is working in 2026:

Founders and executives sharing transparency, failures, and roadmaps build credibility. Leader posts have 2x more engagement than corporate posts.

Employee Advocacy

Employees sharing content are 14x more likely to engage than corporate accounts. 30% of engagement on company posts comes from employees.

Creator Partnerships

Influencers transfer reputation through genuine belief in the product. The focus is authenticity, not follower volume.

Community-Led Growth

Users become distribution channels when they have infrastructure to share. Word of mouth is the primary growth engine.

Critical Insight: Every brand Elena Verna personally uses (Lovable, Miro, Stripe, ChatGPT) was discovered through referrals — not paid marketing.

Trust-Based Retention

Operational Practices

Transparent Roadmap: Real visibility, not sanitized commitments. Show what is being built.

Responsive Iteration: Respond to customer feedback with visible actions. Prove you listen.

Delivery Speed: Deploy daily when possible. Micro-releases signal the product is alive.

Structural Changes

Product, Marketing, and CS aligned
Build in Public: progress from real builders
Less polish creates connection over hype
Aligned monetization: pricing models that grow with customer success

B2B Buyer Behavior

Forrester and TrustRadius data on 2025-2026:

Trust Levers:

Competence: 30%
Reliability: 19%
Consistency: 17%

Most Trusted Sources:

55% trust comparison sites
46% trust review sites
77% read user reviews
Only 9% trust vendor websites

2026: More than half of buyers will use trials to fully evaluate before deciding — even paid trials do not guarantee closing.

From MVP to MLP

The new era demands products that delight from the first use — not just minimum viable products.

MLP: Minimum Lovable Product

If the experience does not delight, no one tells anyone. Word of mouth is your primary engine.

Fundamental Changes

PMF Is Temporary: Re-find product-market fit every 3 months. Static optimization does not work.

Free As Strategy: Lovable gives credits aggressively. It is marketing investment, not cost.

Innovation > Optimization: Growth teams should focus on shipping new features, not optimizing funnels.

Defenses Against AI

Context and Memory: Lock-in through history and preferences.

Deep Integrations: Workflows that depend on you.

Monetization Layers: Ads and revenue sharing.

Action Framework

Area	Old Approach	New Approach
Acquisition	Paid ads, SEO, cold outreach	Founder-led social, employee advocacy, community
Messaging	Polished features and benefits	Transparency about roadmap, failures, and learnings
Retention	Contract lock-in, switching costs	Continuous delight, visible iteration, results
Metrics	CAC, LTV, funnel conversion	NPS, referrals, delivery speed, engagement
Organization	Marketing, Sales, CS in silos	Integrated teams, feedback-based decisions

The question is not whether you should adopt this approach, but how fast you can make the transition before traditional channels collapse completely.

Trust Is the New Moat

In a world where AI commoditizes capabilities, trust is the competitive advantage that truly matters.

At Victorino Group, we help companies build governed AI systems that generate trust with customers and stakeholders. If you need to rethink your growth in the AI era, let’s talk.