Apr 11, 2026 · 1h 25m · 20vc
ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this masterclass episode of the 20VC podcast, host Harry Stebbings interviews ElevenLabs Chief Revenue Officer and solo GP Carles Reina on scaling high-growth sales teams in an AI-first era. Reyna shares tactical advice on designing aggressive quotas, maintaining a hyper-efficient organizational culture, balancing API infrastructure with direct product competition, and combining operational leadership with early-stage venture investing.
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 23.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 5.4 Guest teaching 4.6 Guest disagreement 2.5 Harry pushing back 3.8
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 17:24 Carles forcefully rejects rep quality skepticism
Carles strongly rejects Harry's assertion that 11Labs sales reps aren't four times better than market competitors, declaring he would go to war with every single rep.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 1:10:11 Harry confronts Carles on operator vs investor focusHarry directly refuses Carles' framing that running a solo GP fund doesn't distract from his CRO job, telling Carles that as his employer he would demand full focus on core markets like France.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 57:40 Carles details revenue-tied CVC contract mechanicsCarles educates Harry on how to structure corporate VC investments by requiring CVCs to sign commercial revenue commitments with explicit buy-out penalties if targets are missed.
Harry holds his own ▶ 26:48 Harry maps out the AI customer support market landscapeHarry demonstrates extensive market expertise by citing 16 funded AI support startups, specific competitors like Sierra and Decagon, and incumbent dynamics to argue why CS is uninvestable.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Role of a CRO in an AI-First World | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry sets up the discussion by asking if traditional CROs are being left behind in an AI-first world. Carles outlines how distribution strategy and embedding AI into GTM workflows define the modern CRO role. | |
| The Downfall of Transactional AI Outbound Tools | 2 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Harry asks if AI SDR tools like Artisan work, and Carles flatly shuts it down with 'No, that doesn't work.' Carles educates Harry on why transactional automated outbound fails (<0.01% response rates) and details 11Labs' internal human-assisted AI agents. | |
| Productivity Gains and the Future of Sales Teams | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry demonstrates industry expertise by citing OpenAI's non-commission comp model and Clay's 6-8x quota benchmarks compared to 11Labs' 20x quota. Carles explains the valuation leverage ($33M valuation boost per $1M ARR) behind paying full commissions. | |
| Commission Accelerators and the Risk of Wrong Behaviors | 7 | 5 | 4 | 7 | Harry directly challenges Carles on setting a 20x quota if reps hit it by February, asking if he missed the target. Harry then cites Snowflake CRO Chris Dagnon's take that CS is 'complete bullshit', prompting Carles to argue why that framing is obsolete in AI SaaS. | |
| Expanding Globally and Hiring Veteran Sales Talent | 7 | 4 | 5 | 8 | Harry aggressively pushes back on Carles' claim that 11Labs reps are 4x better than competitors and questions hiring 20-year veterans into a young startup culture. Carles strongly defends his team, stating he would take every rep to war. | |
| Treating GTM as Venture Investing and Learning from Failure | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Harry asks if founders should launch as many markets as possible simultaneously. Carles corrects the assumption, reframing GTM experimentation as venture portfolio management and candidly sharing 11Labs' initial failure in media studios. | |
| Strategic Growth Bets and the Government Vertical | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry teases Carles on his VC track record and probes on forecasting difficulty. Carles explains long-term strategic GTM bets like the government vertical and creating 'Labs' units with enterprise clients. | |
| Choosing Complexity and High-Value Enterprise Solutions | 8 | 6 | 3 | 6 | Harry showcases deep sector knowledge by mapping out 16 customer support AI startups raising $75M+ alongside incumbents like Zendesk and Intercom to argue CS is uninvestable. Carles reveals 11Labs profits by powering all those platforms as infrastructure. | |
| Maintaining Transparency in a Competitive Ecosystem | 7 | 6 | 4 | 6 | Harry cites Jason Lemkin's 'year of substitution' thesis regarding high voice AI costs. Carles rejects the premise, explaining that enterprise operational and orchestration complexity keeps clients on 11Labs even when open-source alternatives exist. | |
| Product Expansion Decisions and the Pitfalls of Early Verticals | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Harry asks about vertical sales team pitfalls. Carles gives a candid post-mortem on prematurely segmenting the sales force in India, which crushed reps' quota attainment until they reset to horizontal GTM. | |
| Balancing Quota Ramps, Long-Term Bets, and Investor Relations | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Harry presses on why 11Labs enters slow-moving government verticals despite high seller ramp times. Carles explains portfolio construction at a country level and balancing short-term liquidity with long-term enterprise moats. | |
| The Massive Impact of Brand Equity on Enterprise Sales | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Harry contrasts Twitter narratives about developer tools with real enterprise procurement behavior at banks like HSBC and Barclays, noting Cursor's enterprise dominance. Carles agrees on the massive sales cycle reduction enabled by brand. | |
| Hiring for Alignment and Setting the Bar High | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry asks about scaling high-intensity cultures, doubling sales headcounts, and handling low-performing reps on internal scorecards. Carles describes public Slack leaderboards and upfront filtering during candidate interviews. | |
| The Psychology of Competition & The Resilient Sales Profile | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | Harry asks about rep demoralization from public scorecards and challenges Carles' preference against recording candidate interviews, noting Launch Fund records every call. Carles explains candidate behavior changes when recorded. | |
| The "SaaSpocalypse" & The Trend Towards Custom In-House Software | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry asks if Carles buys the 'SaaSpocalypse' trend toward custom internal software and probes on the high cost of 11Labs' Audi Revolut F1 sponsorship deal without pre-existing ROI data. | |
| High-ROI Marketing: Dinners, Conferences, and Custom Events | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Harry asks for event marketing advice for portfolio company Solve Intelligence. Carles compares the low ROI of trade conferences against high-ROI executive dinners and custom summits. | |
| Leveraging Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) & Strategic Partnerships | 6 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Harry probes the mechanics of corporate VC distribution partnerships. Carles details a novel contract model where CVC investment allocations require contractual customer revenue guarantees, backed by buy-out penalties. | |
| Setting the Sales Threshold: The $1,000 Monthly Milestone | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Harry asks what ACV justifies direct seller attention. Carles identifies the $1,000/month threshold as the psychological pivot point where buyers shift off credit cards and demand high accountability. | |
| Content Democratization and Hollywood's Traditional Crisis | 6 | 6 | 4 | 5 | Harry asks if Carles is happy 'powering the decline of Hollywood', citing a Wall Street Journal piece. Carles rejects the premise, reframing Hollywood's crisis as a bloated budget issue that AI content testing solves. | |
| The Operator-Investor Debate & Managing Dual Roles | 7 | 4 | 5 | 8 | Harry forcefully confronts Carles on the conflict between being a full-time CRO and running a solo GP VC fund, arguing LP responsibilities distract from driving core sales in primary territories like France. | |
| Fund Return Targets, "Seven Unicorns", and VC FOMO | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry and Carles exchange banter over fund return expectations ('seven unicorns') and the herd mentality of VCs rushing into rounds only after top-tier institutional funds lead them. | |
| GTM Hunger, Spanish Robotics, and the Value of Slow Burners | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry asks how to evaluate founder GTM hunger and cites Linear as an example of a successful slow-burner company. Carles agrees that slow burners remain valuable venture bets. | |
| Aspirations for 2026 and Personal Sacrifices | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Harry conducts a quickfire round, calling out Carles' generic 'lack of time' response as a cop-out before Carles reveals personal sacrifices and his hobby of talking to plants for stress relief. | |
| The Next Wave of Foundational AI Companies | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry asks Carles to evaluate foundational AI valuations, asking whether he'd buy OpenAI at $83B or Anthropic at $50B. Carles chooses Anthropic, citing focus and Claude's product superiority. |
Statements from this episode (72)
Two ElevenLabs salespeople hit full-year quota by February
“We had two employees that in February had already achieved the entire full year quota.”
Reyna: Customer success must generate money for the business
“Customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business.”
Reyna scaled ElevenLabs revenue from zero to over $350M ARR
“He's scaled the revenue org from zero to over three hundred and fifty million in ARR.”
Reyna: ElevenLabs' latest product is its fastest revenue generator ever
“It's like the fastest product in terms of revenues that we've ever had.”
Reyna: AI go-to-market tools fail because they treat sales transactionally
“No, but it's like, I've tried a very large number of like AI go to market tools, and they don't work because they see everything as a transaction.”
Reyna: Outbound cold email response rates have dropped below 0.01%
“And you see, like, the response rates on outbound emails Has dropped to the lowest of any point in time. It's like less than 0.01%.”
Carles Reyna: Outbound sales is dead unless executed humanly
“Outbound is dead unless you do it with humans or unless you do it humanly.”
ElevenLabs generates revenue using an internal AI customer success manager
“And that has close deals for us already. We generate money from that AI customer success manager fundamentally because it is humanly, right?”
Reyna targets a 50% sales productivity increase at ElevenLabs
“I think like the goal for me at 11 Labs is like, 50% improvement in productivity.”
ElevenLabs pays human sales reps full commissions for AI-closed deals
“Any upsells, any contracts that the AI agent ends up closing, I will pay those commissions as if like a human actually closed it.”
Reyna: Every $1M in sales adds $33M to ElevenLabs' valuation
“For every one million dollars in revenues that any single person signs. And I don't care if it comes from like the SDR, the account exec, the CSM, or it's an engineer that went all in and then managed to get a contract. It's like every single million has thirt…”
Reyna: Excessive sales accelerators drive harmful rep behavior
“If you put too many accelerators, if you put too many incentives in one place, you create the wrong behavior, which is people trying to sell whatever it is to actually unlock it.”
Reyna: ElevenLabs does not pay sales commissions on pilots
“For instance, like we don't pay commissions on pilots.”
Reyna: Professional services models fail in AI due to two-day copycats
“In the world where, like, Snowflake grew up like, that made sense. In the world we are in today with AI, that doesn't make any sense. Because fundamentally, like, anyone can spin up a competitor of your product in the next two days. Anyone.”
Reyna: VC advice on sequential market expansion is bullshit
“In general, like one single market going one market at a time, it doesn't work. Traditional BCs, like, they've, like, the traditional method has been like, oh, you open one market, you go deep, you win the account, you show, like, the value, then you go to the…”
Reyna: Tech startups are wrong to avoid hiring veteran sales reps
“I think like all of the tech startups are afraid to actually hire someone that has had 20 years experience, 25 years experience. And the excuse that they use is like, that person is not going to feed the business. And I think it's bullshit. I think it's full w…”
Reyna: Go-to-market strategy should be managed like venture capital investing
“Go to market is similar to like investing in venture capital, right? So you need to test like a hundred things to actually be able to find like the three, four, five, six things that actually perform and do really well.”
Reyna: ElevenLabs initially failed at targeting media and entertainment studios
“Media entertainment in the beginning did not work for us. It just didn't.”
Reyna: Government contracts represent a tiny fraction of ElevenLabs' revenue
“We have, we're generating a good amount of revenue, but like government work fundamentally just like it's a tiny portion of it.”
Reyna: Traditional sales forecasting is impossible in experimentation-driven startups
“Impossible. But it's impossible if you think about it from an experimentation perspective, and I always tell my team, like, I want us to test as many things as possible. I only need one of those ones to work really well to give me another hundred million dolla…”
Reyna: Enterprise AI customer support automation is boring bottom-line optimization
“But at the same time, it's boring. Like the majority of companies will start with the bottom line optimization.”
ElevenLabs is testing consultative AI labs to drive enterprise revenue growth
“I'm spending a lot of time these days on like, how do we prove that the idea of labs for companies where we essentially are their consultants and help them build those agents that will generate top line revenue with new ideas, new products is actually somethin…”
Stebbings: AI customer support software is currently uninvestable due to competition
“I think customer support is uninvestable today, and I get so much shit on Twitter for this, because everyone shits on them, but I'm like, Sierra and Dakagon, obviously two market leaders in terms of brand, and how much money they've raised, and you've got 16 p…”
Reyna would personally pass on investing in customer support startups
“I would not personally invest, but I also think that, like, the opportunity for companies that are, like, established and growing a lot to go into that space is good. It's big, right?”
Reyna: The majority of ElevenLabs customers begin with customer support
“We do customer support, and the majority of our customers starts with customer support, and we make an absolute ton of money on that.”
Reyna: ElevenLabs powers customer support AI competitors like Sierra and Decagon
“But I also think, like, you look at, like, all of our competitors, like, you mentioned Sierra, DecGone, and all of the other ones, we power all of them.”
Reyna warned top platform partners before ElevenLabs launched competing AI agents
“So when we launch our agents product, I called the biggest platforms, agents platform that were operating in our platform, and I told them, like, guys, FYI, like in the next couple of months, we're going to be launching our agents product. We're going to be co…”
Stebbings: Enterprise AI buying frenzy will last only 18 to 24 months
“I think you have to be unwaveringly aggressive now on BD and sales, because I think you have an 18 to 24 month period where CIOs, CISOs are like, hey, we have to have it, we have to have a message for it. That won't last forever.”
Reyna: Open-source AI models won't commoditize ElevenLabs due to enterprise complexity
“A lot of people were talking last year about, like, oh, open source models are gonna take over, like, even on the AI voices space, like, you're gonna get commoditized and so on. And for a period of time, I kind of believed it. I was like, yeah, I mean, There i…”
Reyna: Enterprises waste three months trying open-source before returning to ElevenLabs
“We're like, yeah, we could go with open source models. Excellent. Do it. You try to operationalize it and they've lost three months and then they come back.”
ElevenLabs utilizes verticalized sales teams in mature sectors like healthcare
“We have verticalized sales teams right now in specific markets. Markets that are much bigger or markets that are much more mature, 100%. We'll have people that only do like VFSI, only teams that do like healthcare.”
Reyna: Segmenting sales teams into verticals too early causes failure
“And like, if you do it like early on, if you segment too early, then you fundamentally end up like screwing things up.”
Reyna: Account executives need both whale deals and fast-closing pipeline liquidity
“Actually you need like the liquidity, but you also need the big whales. So each one of my account execs needs to have the ability of like closing big whales, specifically on the enterprise segment, but also having like liquidity in the pipeline so that they do…”
Reyna: ElevenLabs is willing to lose money entering the government vertical
“And I don't care if I don't make enough money to justify it or like I lose money. It doesn't really matter to me.”
Reyna: Software companies never leave the government vertical once inside
“So the moment you actually get in, then it's just like, you never leave that industry.”
ElevenLabs reps closed deals in month one after dropping vertical strategy
“Literally, we lost a quota. We end up changing all of that, form the ground up, and then you could see, like, people starting closing deals in the first month, and it was, like, insane, because, like, it was day and night.”
Reyna: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cursor are enterprise AI's only blue-chip brands
“I think, like, the two companies that today have been able to make it is, or three companies, if you want, OpenAI, Anthropic, full respect for them, Cursor. The three of them, I think, for me, are, like, Cursor has killed enterprise unbelievably well. Yeah, th…”
Stebbings took six years to close a major LP for 20VC
“One of our biggest LPs was a six-year cell cycle.”
Reyna: Explicit warnings about workload filter out poor sales culture fits
“When I make an offer I tell every single person, it's like, 11 Labs is going to be extremely difficult, right? Extremely difficult. We are a hard company to work for because we have extremely high expectations. You're going to work, like, a huge amount of hour…”
Reyna: Tech companies are overstaffed by 25% or more
“You look at what Marc Andreessen was saying the other day, and, like, companies are overstaffed by 25% and even more, right?”
ElevenLabs plans to add about 120 sales reps this year
“We, we're about adding about like another a 120 people, more or less.”
Reyna: ElevenLabs makes all revenue and rep performance open internally
“For us, like, all of the stats are publicly open to everyone, so everyone knows how much revenues we make, everyone knows how each one of the reps.”
ElevenLabs uses an automated Slack bot for weekly sales rep leaderboards
“We post automatically, we have a bot that actually will post automatically into the sales channel every single week, a summary of, like, what percentage of quote attainment, year to date, for that specific quarter, and all of that stuff, and the forecast.”
Reyna: A large portion of modern sales reps have grown soft
“I think a very large portion of them are because they don't have the environment to actually like just push harder or because they've already lost the passion in that.”
Reyna: 20 minutes is enough to evaluate job candidates
“Like, I don't need to spend more than 20 minutes to know if I want to hire someone or not.”
Reyna: Lobo has built the best CRM software
“And by the way, like, Lobo has the best CRM that I've ever seen. Those guys have really smashed it.”
Reyna: SaaSpocalypse is overblown, but custom in-house software will grow
“I think there is a very large portion that is over-exaggerated, but I think, like, there is a real fact that, like, people will end up building their own applications, and I think that's key.”
Reyna: Choose premium branding on lower teams over secondary on top teams
“Premium branding on the worst team. 100%. You get more exposure, and also, like, you have a lot more creative freedom, and also you're betting.”
Reyna: Executive dinners yield the highest ROI for enterprise GTM
“Like when we do a dinner with like execs in a given city that has the best ROI that that you could have.”
Reyna: Industry conferences yield zero return on investment for ElevenLabs
“The worst, like, ROI for us has always been, like conferences. It just, there's no ROI in there.”
Reyna: Startup founders should value CVCs as internal enterprise champions
“You know, like, this is gonna be controversial, but like, I actually love CVCs, like Corporate Venture Capitalists, because they help you navigate big brands, they are your champions internally, and their incentive is to actually make it work really well for t…”
ElevenLabs partnered with Toyota, Deutsche Telekom, and Liberty Global
“Today we've proven with 11 Lab that like we dedicated time to actually partner with like Woffing Capital from Toyota. With the Deutsche Telekom guys, with the Telefonica guys, with Liberty Global that actually joined our cap table.”
ElevenLabs forces CVC investors to deliver revenue or face contractual penalties
“So how do you figure out something that works along the way so that, like, you put and end up saying, you know what, you will invest for every million dollars that you want to invest, you need to actually, like, bring X amount of revenues in the next 12 months…”
Reyna: Partner distribution ecosystems cannot add 20% revenue in two quarters
“It takes time. It takes fucking long time. Like, and that is the reality. It's like if you're coming into, like, the distribution side with partners or you're building an entire partner ecosystem thinking that you're gonna be, like, making another 20% of reven…”
Reyna: $1,000 monthly spend marks buyers shifting off credit cards
“A thousand dollars a month. When you start spending a thousand dollars a month as a business, your brain completely switches because you don't want to put it anymore in your credit card. And at that point, you start believing, like, shit, I'm spending a lot of…”
Reyna: ElevenLabs ignores PLG metrics when deciding on geographic expansion
“I don't even look at the PLG numbers. I don't. I don't care about those ones. I look at, like, what are the enterprises? What are the companies in the market? How is my portfolio construction in that market? And how can I close some of those numbers, some of t…”
Reyna: South Korean tech and media companies build for global export
“The thesis on Korea was, they produce a ton of content, they're very innovative when they want, and they're producing products and services, not for the local market, but for the international market. So in reality, yes, you need to be selling in Korean, But t…”
Stebbings: Defense products require $200M and 5 years before first revenue
“It's actually why I find defense so hard to invest in, which is like, it takes five years And 200 to two hundred and fifty million dollars before you can make your first dollar of revenue on a defense product.”
Stebbings: Managing institutional capital conflicts with full-time employer duties
“When you take institutional money, it's a great responsibility taking on someone else's money, and you have already made a promise to your employer that you will devote your best efforts and all of your energy to making them successful and the company successf…”
Reyna: Operating full-time while investing presents no fundamental conflicts
“I think that you can do, like, both things in parallel, and one contributes to the other one. Like, I don't think there is any conflicts in there, fundamentally.”
Reyna: Dual operator-investor roles only work if you work hardest
“If you want to do both things at the same time, you need to prove every single day that you are the hardest working person in the office. Like, and I think that's when it works.”
Reyna: Small angel checks of $5k to $50k do not impact startups
“The money that you're investing is not worth it. Like, I mean, it's just not worth anything for any company. Like, if you put, like, a five K check, or you put a 10 K check, or you put, like, a 50 K, it's not gonna make or break the company.”
Stebbings: Angel investors should keep check sizes strictly uniform
“I always say do the same size check every time. Do not do the whole, oh, I think this one's great, I'll put 50. This one, I'm not sure I'll do 10. It's like, no, no, no, just do 25 every time, whatever it is.”
Reyna: Sizing up angel checks out of conviction usually leads to disappointment
“Sometimes, like, of course, we fool ourselves, saying, this is the company. And you know how, like, the majority of times that we do it, like, you end up getting disappointed.”
Reyna passes on founders who focus on research instead of go-to-market
“If in the first conversation, I want to understand, like, how are they thinking about go-to-market already? And if they tell me, like, sorry, I'm just, like, I'm only thinking about, like, building research and doing all of these things, like, fantastic, I lov…”
Reyna calls Spanish startup Theker Robotics the smartest robotics founders ever
“I love that there's a company in, in Spain called Teke Robotics, T-H-E-K-E-R. They're doing like robotics for like the manufacturing industry and like services industry and like, sorry like warehouses and all of that stuff. Absolutely the most geniusest guys t…”
Reyna committed to investing in ElevenLabs after a 30-minute conversation
“11, I mean, like, I talked to Matic for 30 minutes and I committed, right?”
Reyna targets $1B ElevenLabs revenue and three fund unicorns by 2026
“Oh, I mean, for me, like if I get three unicorns and 11 Labs crosses a billion dollars in revenues, I would be very happy. Three unicorns for the funds.”
Reyna: Leaders only need to be right on 5% of decisions
“Like, you should be always getting it right, or like, 99% right in, like, five percent of the things that are really mega important. Like, in the 99%, 95% remaining things, you should be getting it mostly wrong.”
Reyna: OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs will buy new foundational model startups
“OpenAI and Anthropic will end up, and Google will end up buying, and 11 Labs will end up buying, like, all of the new foundational model companies that will be popping up and creating research and paying just, like, a few billion here, a few billion there, and…”
Shorts cut from this episode
▶ "ElevenLabs is gonna be extremely difficult" · 20VC with Har (@40:40)
▶ How Exec Dinners are the best ROI for ElevenLabs · 20VC with (@51:42)
▶ $1M Revenue = $33M in Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@8:38)
▶ Inside ElevenLabs' $350M ARR Sales Machine · 20VC with Harry (@0:00)
▶ Why ElevenLabs are 4x better at Sales · 20VC with Harry Steb (@17:30)