I was one of Lovable's first 50 hires. Here's how I got the job after initially getting rejected.

• Mindaugas Petrutis was initially rejected for a Lovable job, but later became one of its first 50 employees.
• He decided he wanted to work at Lovable and said he tried to get noticed in various ways.
• Petrutis said applicants should think outside the box and shouldn't rely on submitting applications.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mindaugas Petrutis, a 43-year-old content creator and consultant based in Dublin. His former employment and identity have been confirmed by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a free agent. I do content creation, build products with AI for people in fashion and music, and do some consulting for startups on influencer marketing.

I discovered Lovable around August 2024, when they were still in the very early stages. I was completely non-technical and couldn't write a line of code, but I started playing around with different tools, and Lovable really stuck with me. It felt very accessible as somebody who's non-technical.

I built a daily practice: Every day, I would build something in 30 minutes. Even if I had no ideas, I would ask ChatGPT to generate five random ideas, pick the most interesting one, and try to build it.

The goal was to understand the tool's capabilities and limitations, and to learn something new. Eventually, I used ChatGPT to help me come up with a self-service two-week job-search sprint platform, where I distilled my process about how to look for jobs and coached people.

There were seven steps that progressively unlocked every two days. I recorded a lot of voice notes, collected all my writing on how I approach job searching, and distilled it into this product.

I decided I wanted to join Lovable

I got a bunch of customers, and kept building with Lovable and talking about it. I was so obsessed with Lovable that I applied for a role at the company. A few days later, I got a rejection email.

A couple of months later, the team reached out and was like, "Hey, would you be interested in having a chat?" So I jumped on a call, and they asked me to come in and help solve the problem they had, which was influencer marketing. That was the job description. We did an hour brainstorming session a few days later. Then I met one of the founders, and they made me an offer.

That's how I've ended up in interesting places, companies, or projects for the last 10 to 15 years.

I had decided that I wanted to join Lovable, and a lot of the things that I did were to get noticed by them. Instead of building with Lovable in isolation, I started posting about it. I knew their head of design from an online community I had built a few years ago, and I started emailing him everything I built. A lot of those emails went into the void. He's a busy person.

But he responded to some of them, and he did see them, and I stayed top of mind. He was the one who mentioned me internally when they had hired the head of growth, and when that person came in, they said, "Hey, I'm going to be hiring for these types of people. Who do you know?"

I refuse to accept a rejection

A lot of people apply for a role, either don't hear anything back or get rejected, and then think, "That's it."

I literally refuse.

I often don't even apply for roles because I was a recruiter many years ago, and I know how imperfect those systems are. Often, someone who is perfect for the job may never end up on the hiring manager's desk because of how those systems are set up.

My advice is always to not take "no" for an answer and find another way in. The best founders raise money from VCs using the same approach. You have to be personalized. You have to provide something of value.

It's so easy right now because everybody has something online. Instead of messaging a hiring manager to say, "I see you're hiring for this job," which they get hundreds of, find a way to stand out.

Find something interesting about them, like a blog post they published. A lot of people DM me asking for my time, but the only ones I answer are those who say something like, "Hey, I was at an event that you spoke at, and I really liked what you said about this. Here's my counterpoint."

Once I see that they've referenced something specific in the first couple of lines, I'm sold, because you spent 20 or 30 minutes doing the research, and now I'm more willing to give you my time.