Sep 8, 2025 · 1h 22m · 20vc
ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this episode of the 20VC podcast, ElevenLabs CEO and Co-Founder Mati Staniszewski discusses the extraordinary rise of his startup, sharing masterclasses on proprietary AI model development, competing with tech giants, strategic fundraising, and scaling the company to $200 million in Annual Recurring Revenue.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 18.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 1.8 Harry pushing back 4.4
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 57:30 Refuting European work ethic stereotypes
Mati explicitly rejects the host's premise regarding European work ethic, noting that Central/Eastern European hires outworked West Coast US employees.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 1:00:49 Calling out headcount contradictionHarry directly challenges Mati's positioning, calling out the hypocrisy between claiming a 'small and mighty' philosophy while adding 150 employees in four months.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:02:25 Crossing $200M ARR in 10 monthsMati reveals going from $35M ARR to $200M ARR in just 10 months, leaving Harry visibly shocked and joking that the hypergrowth is depressing as an investor who missed out.
Harry holds his own ▶ 34:43 Attacking formal founder roadshowsHarry forcefully asserts his venture capital domain expertise, contrasting his ability to issue 1-day term sheets with inefficient multi-week founder roadshows.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highlight Montage: Pre-Seed and AI Debate | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks standard biographical questions about Mati growing up in Poland and the origins of his ambition. Mati reflects collaboratively on his high school environment and talent density without friction. | |
| The Birth of ElevenLabs and the Dubbing Problem | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Mati educates Harry on the single-narrator dubbing culture in Polish films, explaining how that specific problem inspired 11Labs. Harry listens passively and validates the experience. | |
| Pivoting to Text-to-Speech | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Mati describes cold emailing YouTubers and pivoting from dubbing to simple text-to-speech narration based on user demand. Harry prompts key architectural questions briefly. | |
| Proprietary Models vs. Existing API Integration | 7 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Harry demonstrates strong technical investor knowledge by questioning model plateauing and distinguishing adoption from progression. Mati pushes back mildly, explaining why voice AI curves differ from general LLMs. | |
| The Competitive Moat Against OpenAI | 6 | 6 | 2 | 6 | Harry brings up direct existential questions regarding OpenAI encroaching on 11Labs. Mati defends his moat by outlining research talent concentration and specialized workflow layers. | |
| Retaining Top AI Talent in a Competitive Market | 5 | 4 | 1 | 4 | Harry probes the pre-seed round timeline and valuation details, calling out how recent the metrics were. Mati details early investor rejections and retaining talent against tech giant capital. | |
| Beta Launch and Achieving Product-Market Fit | 4 | 5 | 0 | 2 | Mati shares early viral product market fit signals, including an audiobook author pasting text 500 times. Harry guides the timeline and queries product market fit definitions. | |
| Lessons on Product Launches, PR, and Grassroots Growth | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Harry validates Mati's realization about PR, sharing his own early experience with TechCrunch. Mati details why grassroots channels like Discord, Reddit, and newsletters drove actual user growth over legacy media. | |
| Fundraising Strategy and Investor Relationships | 5 | 4 | 0 | 3 | Harry asks tactical fundraising advice regarding investor engagement between rounds. Mati outlines how to test prospective investors with real tactical problems prior to taking term sheets. | |
| The Series A Round with a16z and Nat Friedman | 6 | 5 | 0 | 5 | Harry presses on why 11Labs bypassed local London funds for a16z and Nat Friedman. Mati shares how Nat personally tested and gave critical API feedback before making an offer. | |
| Investor Speed, Roadshows, and Term Sheets | 8 | 6 | 4 | 7 | Harry forcefully attacks founder roadshows and defends fast 1-day term sheets. Mati counters Harry's romantic view by explaining why first-time founders need comparative process checks to evaluate partners. | |
| US vs. European Venture Capital and Back-Channel Checks | 6 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Harry shares personal deal experiences with Brian Kim to highlight US VC strengths. Mati explains the importance of reference-checking VCs on how they behave during down cycles. | |
| Sharded Org Structure and High-Ownership Teams | 5 | 6 | 1 | 5 | Harry asks about low points in company culture. Mati candidly recounts how an enterprise partner's intern used 11Labs APIs to build a competing dubbing product two weeks before 11Labs launched its own. | |
| Model Progress, Speed of Execution, and In-House Data Centers | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | Harry questions why 11Labs builds custom data centers rather than renting cloud GPUs from providers like CoreWeave. Mati breaks down the unit economics and 2-year breakeven math for continuous model training. | |
| Margins and Unit Economics in AI Application Layers | 7 | 5 | 2 | 6 | Harry cites specific AI application layer startups (Lovable, Replit, Bolt) to challenge low AI software margins. Mati agrees that generic application wrappers face poor unit economics but defends 11Labs' full-stack model. | |
| Horizontal vs. Vertical Launch Strategies | 6 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Harry asserts that 11Labs should have focused vertically rather than staying horizontal. Mati rejects this advice, arguing horizontal launches are necessary for novel core technology platforms. | |
| The Advantages of Building in Europe | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Harry brings up the American perception that European talent lacks US hustle. Mati strongly refutes this narrative, noting his Central and Eastern European engineers consistently outwork West Coast US hires. | |
| Hiring Strategies, Mistakes, and Scaling Globally | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Harry calls out Mati's plan to add 150 people in months as contradicting his 'small and mighty' philosophy. Mati justifies the headcount expansion through localized international outposts. | |
| Hypergrowth: Crossing $200 Million ARR | 6 | 7 | 1 | 5 | Mati reveals crossing $200M ARR in 10 months, leaving Harry stunned. Harry probes valuation multiples, contract stickiness, and growth trajectories while processing the financial numbers. | |
| Top-Tier Investors, Acquisition Offers, and Secondary Liquidity | 7 | 5 | 2 | 7 | Harry aggressively presses Mati on inbound acquisition offers and whether he was tempted to sell. Mati explains how regular secondary liquidity tender offers remove founder financial pressure. | |
| Quick-Fire Round: Industry Predictions and Leadership Lessons | 6 | 6 | 4 | 7 | In the quick-fire round, Harry demands binary choices on AI stocks and ARR metrics. Mati resists forced options, shares a bold policy idea to proxy EU AI law to US standards, and hints at evaluating a massive acquisition target. |
Statements from this episode (44)
ElevenLabs Reaches $200M ARR, Doubling Revenue in 10 Months
“So we crossed two hundred million now. 20 months to hundred, and then 10 months to 200.”
ElevenLabs' Largest Enterprise Contract Is Approximately $2 Million
“Our biggest contract is around two million, and they are mostly in a call center, Customer support, personal assistance base.”
Staniszewski: OpenAI will definitely enter the AI voice market
“They definitely will, but I think they, you know, they lack the...”
Staniszewski: Voice is becoming the primary interface for surrounding technology
“How now the interaction is shifting, where voice is this big interface for the technology around us.”
Staniszewski: Early YouTuber outreach for AI dubbing yielded lackluster interest
“There's like roughly, it was like, 15% reply rate initially from the first batches that we sent. I mean, we sent thousands of them. But the interest was like lackluster. All of them were, it's like, oh, I don't fully believe this is possible.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs V3 combines reasoning and speech in a multimodal architecture
“Over what is now more of a theme where you kind of train a more of a multimodal approach where you combine a reasoning and speech together to create even better speech experience. So that's our most recent generation is effectively that the Releven v. Free.”
Staniszewski: New AI Models Will Not Drastically Improve Audiobook Narration
“In narration, we think it's plateauing. You, the new model generations will not make narration of an audiobook drastically different. It will still be, it will be still in a similar quality”
Staniszewski: LLM Progression Is Flattening While Voice AI Progresses Rapidly
“In voice, you still will see Pretty, pretty, pretty quick curve. On the lamps, I agree, it's probably a little bit flattening to some extent.”
Staniszewski: Only 50 to 100 top voice AI researchers exist globally
“The number of researchers in the world working on voice and being exceptional is super small. Probably like 50 to a hundred people at like this top level”
ElevenLabs employs 5 to 10 of world's top 100 voice AI researchers
“Piotr and people around him were able, so Piotr was able to assemble one of the best teams in the space. I think we have five to 10 people that are in the top In a top hundred”
ElevenLabs speech-to-text beats OpenAI and Gemini on benchmarks
“Then speech to text is beating open AI, Gemini on benchmarks.”
Staniszewski: Tech giants pay for AI talent to acquire model architecture know-how
“As I think about meta and others, they are of course paying for the know-how as much as they are paying for the raw talent too, where getting those early people gets you some insight into the models and architecture that you can then bring across and accelerat…”
ElevenLabs raised its pre-seed round at a $9M post-money valuation
“Nine million post. The amount was exactly 11% of the equity that, that, that the first investor was buying, and then the other ones were layered in.”
Staniszewski: Every funding round must tie directly into a product launch
“Our philosophy was always the round should have another purpose, which is Bring the product out and help you get the product into the users and celebrate a set of customers to show that you are arrived in a specific sector bring a new research model into play.…”
ElevenLabs lacked product-market fit until pivoting from dubbing to voiceovers
“When we worked on dubbing and the first early days, and we were like emailing, we didn't have product, product market fit. It was like very clear that, you know, people were slow to reply, then we sent samples, they weren't engaging, so we didn't through the 2…”
Staniszewski: Continuous fundraising mode is destructive for startup founders
“I think it's a waste of time to, Kind of be in this, like, continuous fundraising mode. It's, you know, destructive. You need to have conversation. It's not useful.”
Staniszewski: Test investors with specific requests before accepting a term sheet
“Where you do get the interest from investors, I think this is the best time to actually test whether they can be helpful. And before you accept any term sheet, any money, it's like, Now, can you help me with angels that you want on cap table? Do you want the i…”
Staniszewski: Optimize angel investors for missing domain and go-to-market expertise
“On angels, we would usually optimize for do they have domain expertise that we don't have? That's one category. Second, can they help us validate ourselves in specific, specific circles we might not have access to? So like if you are an AI founder, it's maybe …”
Staniszewski: Nat Friedman was the only investor to test ElevenLabs' APIs
“Which was the only investor ever to do that was, so I tested your APIs and this thing doesn't work. This works. Voice here wasn't good. A stability wasn't very clear parameter. So he was the only person that tested our APIs, decided that it was actually valuab…”
Staniszewski: a16z connected ElevenLabs with celebrities before investing
“A-sixteen Z was phenomenal. They did exactly what we spoke about, which was, they've shown us that they cared before they invested. They introduced us to incredible people, to some celebrities to work on the voice licensing. So they were like on it for two wee…”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs Pitched Lower-Priority VCs First to Test Pitch Messaging
“The way we approach fundraising was always, you know, especially in the early days, like, queue, queue investors we really care about, and First speak with maybe one or two that maybe aren't a priority so we understand whether, like, we are at all kind of perc…”
Staniszewski: Founders Should Value Investor Partnership Over a 20% Valuation Bump
“I don't like founders that are trying to do that too much. Like that if they are trying to get you to get the first time sheet to bump the other ones, I think it's a wrong approach. I think you should like, it's, you know, okay. If it's like order of magnitude…”
Staniszewski: US VCs focus on betting bigger rather than downside protection
“So I think they are playing a different game. I think the, you know, they're, they are all from our experience so far, a lot more keen to take the risk. Like, You know, even our conversations are always like, how do we bet bigger rather than like optimize for …”
ElevenLabs has 250 employees split into roughly 20 small teams
“As an organization today, we are, you know, we're 250 people, but really it's more like 20 teams couldn't go to market of like five to 10 people that are just executing on specific project where where They have higher ownership.”
Staniszewski: Enterprise partner beat ElevenLabs to AI dubbing launch in 2023
“One of the enterprise clients, we told them that we are planning to launch our dubbing solution, combining those components later, later in that, it was it was, I think September later in that, that month. And they took the components and released dubbing two …”
Enterprise Client Made Tens of Millions From Intern-Built ElevenLabs Hack
“So they gave it to their intern and they, the intern has built that project and then it exploded, but it was, it did give them like in tens of millions of revenue over, over that period of time.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs holds a 6 to 12 month research lead over competitors
“I think it depends on the use case, but six to 12 months, I would say.”
ElevenLabs built its own data centers for training AI models
“So we've built our own data centers for training, and then for inference, we of course use some of our great partners across across the traditional.”
Staniszewski: Owning data centers breaks even within two years versus renting compute
“In our case, it was if we assume we continue training the models that the way we want to. So very continuously, a lot of those models. Then second for the data transfers, and as we think about continuously bringing more data we will likely on a two year horizo…”
Staniszewski: AI model cost declines will validate weak application-layer unit economics
“The unit economics in most of those cases that you mentioned is pretty, pretty poor, but I think the strategy is that yes, one, the models will optimize in cost, and then two, they will be the brands that customers trust, and then they can actually use a lot o…”
Staniszewski: Launch horizontal for novel tech, vertical when domain expertise exists
“I think if you're launching something very new, very different, and you don't yet fully know, you know, like, a subset of customer base, but you know that there is a bigger one, I think horizontal is, is completely fine. If you know, and you have domain expert…”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs will cultivate local European talent over US executives
“We want to grow talent here.”
Staniszewski: European startups must build from Europe, not for Europe
“I think you want to be able to build from Europe, but not built only for Europe. And I think those two get conflated where sometimes building from Europe meant, okay, you are building for European ecosystem, which isn't the right thing. You still want the glob…”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs' Eastern European team worked harder than US West Coast hires
“I think you can find people that want to work harder, and we've had it actually at some point a team where we hired some people from west coast of US and our people where we have quite a few from central eastern Europe where like, oh yeah, they don't work actu…”
Staniszewski: Fire new hires immediately if unsure during first weeks
“If you are not unsure in the interview, but let's say you are bringing them, giving them a chance, and you are not sure in the first weeks or months, you should separate straight away, rather than keep giving, giving the chance.”
ElevenLabs reached $35M ARR by the end of 2023
“The end of twenty-twenty-three, I think we were between 35, 35? Thirty-five million.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs raised at 30x revenue at $80M ARR
“Well, it was, you know, I think the first, so we did the round in October of 24, so we were probably at 80 when we got the docs, and then it was signed then. We, so the way we approached any of the fundraisers, it's, can we bring some of the bets forward? In t…”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs voice agents can become a multi-billion dollar revenue business
“It's interesting because it's on the relative basis, I think the, our agents work is, is, is already huge, but I think it's just scratching the surface. I think it's going to, if we play it right, it's like a multi-billion dollar revenue generating business ju…”
ElevenLabs offers employee secondary sales in almost every funding round
“Almost every round we can, we do secondary and a tender offer for all employees that have vested stock so they can sell the stock.”
Stebbings: European tech founders sold early due to lack of secondary liquidity
“The thing I often think is how many great European companies of the last 20 years would have not sold had we had secondary and liquidity options available at the time, because so many did sell, because we didn't have that and it was so meaningful.”
Shorts cut from this episode
▶ Choosing the Right Investors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@29:38)
▶ The Problem with Always Fundraising · 20VC with Harry Stebbi (@27:01)
▶ Why We Always Include Secondaries · 20VC with Harry Stebbing (@1:13:22)
▶ Why OpenAI won’t beat ElevenLabs · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@12:53)
▶ The Problem with Traditional Media · 20VC with Harry Stebbin (@24:50)
▶ Breaking $200M in ARR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@0:00)