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ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface

ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface

19 segments available

ElevenLabs CEO and co‑founder Mati Staniszewski joins Jennifer Li to explain how the team ships research‑grade AI at lightning speed—from text‑to‑speech and fully licensed AI music to real‑time voice agents, and why voice is the next interface for human‑computer interaction. He shares the small, autonomous team model, global hiring approach, and how the Voice Marketplace has paid creators over $10M while evolving into an enterprise platform. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:20 Lucky Number Eleven 02:50 Early Research and Product Work with Piotr 03:35 Shipping quickly with small, high ownership independent teams 04:40 Balancing research and product launches 06:50 A Remote-first approach: Meeting talent where they are 10:01 US vs Europe work cultures 10:40 Removing titles and flat leadership layers 13:35 The creative industry’s adoption of AI 15:10 The Voice Marketplace: Empowering creators to earn 16:43 Challenges in licensing and 18-month negotiation process 18:05 Hiring in complex domains 19:10 Finding risk-tolerant talent 20:45 Transitioning from creator-first to enterprise adoption 21:48 Lessons from hiring the first salespeople 23:34 Scaling orchestration, long sales cycles and cultural adjustments 26:22 Customer choice in adopting early features 27:55 Phases of company growth: product, sales, scaling 30:06 Turning down licensing to a competitor Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, please like the video and share it with a friend. And if you want more like this, subscribe to our channel for updates on new releases. Resources: Follow Mati on X: https://x.com/matistanis Follow Jennifer on X: https://x.com/JenniferHli Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Segments Timeline

1
0:00 - 2:20
2:19 duration393 words

Intro

"We don't want to become same as previous generation of of the editing suite. So instead, let's solve it on the research level where it will know based on the voice exactly how it should speak with the..."

2
2:20 - 2:50
0:30 duration93 words

Lucky Number Eleven

"three years ago and um so it's it's uh great to hear all the kind notes but also what they didn't realize when we partnered the infrastructure team was free people and of course now I'm 11 loves found..."

3
2:50 - 3:36
0:45 duration164 words

Early Research and Product Work with Piotr

"think first piece I have a I think the smartest person I I I got to know as my co-founder P who who has been the research brain for creating a lot of the the models and then being able to assemble wha..."

4
3:36 - 4:41
1:04 duration194 words

Shipping quickly with small, high ownership independent teams

"a lot of small teams. So today we have roughly 20 product teams each of five to 10 people size which with full independence can go ahead and ship products. Of course that carries some of the um uh um ..."

5
4:41 - 6:51
2:10 duration424 words

Balancing research and product launches

"20 products. How do you think about balancing both like keep progressing on the model research but at the same time not delaying sort of the product launches? Yeah, it's very tricky. I'm sure many of ..."

6
6:51 - 10:01
3:09 duration639 words

A Remote-first approach: Meeting talent where they are

"places. um how do you think about building this global expansion and finding talent um globally versus I guess the trade-offs of building at in the same place? >> Yeah. And we so we started uh so me a..."

7
10:01 - 10:40
0:39 duration151 words

US vs Europe work cultures

">> and I think in Europe also people like this was a interesting one in US people are very keen and excited to to to work and if you if you go for any social event it's it's like you want to talk abou..."

8
10:40 - 13:35
2:54 duration604 words

Removing titles and flat leadership layers

"also maintained a pretty flat or structure um and have people own quite laterally a lot of um responsibilities. Can you talk about the rationale behind that? And I guess there was also a no title poli..."

9
13:35 - 15:12
1:36 duration305 words

The creative industry’s adoption of AI

"lot of the creative work whether it's from uh art, music or advertising that are starting to adopt AI tools. And in the beginning that was not the case. there was a lot of resistance and now we're jus..."

10
15:12 - 16:43
1:31 duration311 words

The Voice Marketplace: Empowering creators to earn

"like in the future and then too. Of course, to be able to cut to all those different use cases, you need such a big array of different voices, different languages, different accents, um different styl..."

11
16:43 - 18:06
1:22 duration257 words

Challenges in licensing and 18-month negotiation process

"It took us 18 months to figure out the agreement that works. And in the end I think the main thing uh was was adding set of forcing functions or forcing timings to um to find a a effectively a trigger..."

12
18:06 - 19:12
1:06 duration199 words

Hiring in complex domains

"head and lead some of these functions and these are mostly unknown territories of how to navigate it like where have you been seeing um success in bringing the right people? >> So here for the spaces ..."

13
19:12 - 20:45
1:32 duration296 words

Finding risk-tolerant talent

"the commercial business opportunities to you know help guide the right chain of actions in each of those domains. I found that very fascinating >> 100%. I mean legal I'm I don't know how many of you a..."

14
20:45 - 21:49
1:04 duration201 words

Transitioning from creator-first to enterprise adoption

">> for sure. Um 11 Labs uh started as more of a creator brand um everywhere from the individual creators to the the creators that are building businesses but now you have been having a lot of success ..."

15
21:49 - 23:34
1:45 duration340 words

Lessons from hiring the first salespeople

"now and that really as you can imagine didn't work out in this specific case. Um but we learned our lesson uh and we we now do invest in in a combination of that. It's 80% sales 20% engineering. Uh so..."

16
23:34 - 26:22
2:47 duration579 words

Scaling orchestration, long sales cycles and cultural adjustments

"easier easier way and then of course the the biggest gap that's the most common it's easy to do a demo but how do you actually build it to production how do you test how you version control how you ev..."

17
26:22 - 27:55
1:33 duration303 words

Customer choice in adopting early features

"choice has been the the most important lever like do you do do you want it or not and and some are are are um incredible on doing that that um innovation and and and and showing some of their work or ..."

18
27:55 - 30:07
2:12 duration432 words

Phases of company growth: product, sales, scaling

"Uh my partner Martin Casado always say companies go through three phases. There is a product phase, there's sales phase and there's a scaling phase. And given you have been through some of those phase..."

19
30:07 - 31:10
1:02 duration197 words

Turning down licensing to a competitor

"come back to us let's speak about it and just course. So now we are explicit with all our sales teams that if they are seeing a deal that let's say might be competitive in nature and our pricing table..."