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Mati Staniszewski

Co-founder & CEO, ElevenLabs · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveoperator@matistanis ↗LinkedIn ↗elevenlabs.io ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, a voice AI and synthetic speech platform launched in 2022. Before starting the company with Piotr Dąbkowski, he worked as a deployment strategist at Palantir Technologies and helped develop the Aladdin Wealth platform at BlackRock.

43statements → 21claims → 7claims resolved → 86%fully supported → 3.91/5average certainty → 2.05/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources → 59said about them ↓

6 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 12 not checkable as stated how the 21 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

7 predictions · 14 assertions · 1 opinion · 10 insights · 11 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 21 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 12 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mati argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
ElevenLabs speech-to-text beats OpenAI and Gemini on benchmarks
“Then speech to text is beating open AI, Gemini on benchmarks.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 14:06 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
88% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.1 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 4.1 · precision 3.8 · compression 3.5

redirected or did not address 1 of 45 assessed questions (2%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

278 words/min while actually speaking · 21.7 um and uh per 1k words · 46.9 false starts per 1k · 37.2% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: Polish). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 13,285 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 6/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 50%

Everything Mati Staniszewski said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 48:48 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 57:37 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 12:14 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
ElevenLabs speech-to-text beats OpenAI and Gemini on benchmarks
“Then speech to text is beating open AI, Gemini on benchmarks.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 14:06 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
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 …”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 44:04 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 48:27 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 49:06 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
ElevenLabs is considering acquiring a company worth hundreds of millions
“One that, that is, we are considering is an acquisition of another company now, which is a big company. And that company, you know, is in hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:21:28 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 0:00 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Staniszewski: OpenAI will definitely enter the AI voice market
“They definitely will, but I think they, you know, they lack the...”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 0:48 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 10:52 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 13:40 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 15:35 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 27:27 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 38:45 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
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 …”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 39:41 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 46:04 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 50:20 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 52:41 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 59:28 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs will reach 400 employees by year end
“We'll have 400 by end of the year.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:00:44 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Open · timeframe Sep 2030
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 1:07:34 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 0:32 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Sep 8, 2025 ▶ 5:51 ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Show 19statements(19 left)

The other half of the tape: Mati Staniszewski's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 55 times in 12 episodes on 20VC. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 33Luke Harries 8Matt Murphy 2Jeffrey Wu 2David George 1Cliff Weitzman 1Alex Rampell 1

Statements about Mati Staniszewski, by other people (4)

Disclosure
Luke Harries passed on angel investing in ElevenLabs early on
“I was kind of angel investing them. I was like, this is not something I want to invest. What do you mean? Step one, you're going to build the world's best AI audio model. Something no one else has ever done. Anyway, so I did an invest.”
Luke Harries Jan 11, 2026 ▶ 5:13 20Growth: The $6.6B Growth Engine Behind ElevenLabs | Why ElevenLabs Do Not Have PMs | The 7 Part Launch Playbook to Crush All Launches with Luke Harries, Head of Growth @ ElevenLabs
Disclosure
Harries Passed on Angel Investing in ElevenLabs Over Terrible GTM Plan
“And I was like, That is a terrible go to market plan. That's absolutely terrible. I was kind of angel investing them. I was like, this is not something I want to invest. What do you mean step one? You're going to build the world's best AI audio model, somethin…”
Luke Harries May 23, 2025 ▶ 6:11 20VC: ElevenLabs Head of Growth on Why You Do Not Need PMs | The 7-Part Launch Playbook That Gets 700K+ Views Per Product | The Truth About CAC, Payback & Performance Marketing in AI with Luke Harries
Assertion Supported
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?”
Carles Reina Apr 11, 2026 ▶ 1:18:59 ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski avoids Twitter in favor of in-person keynotes
“The way we think about it at 11 Labs, it's like, what channels really naturally resonate with the founders, and do they get really excited by? And so for us, Matty is fantastic in person, at large speaking events, at Fireside Chats, and so that's what he reall…”
Luke Harries Jan 11, 2026 ▶ 41:25 20Growth: The $6.6B Growth Engine Behind ElevenLabs | Why ElevenLabs Do Not Have PMs | The 7 Part Launch Playbook to Crush All Launches with Luke Harries, Head of Growth @ ElevenLabs

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0020440820252026episodesmentions
04820252026episodes it came up in
00346820252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 34 mentions in 8 episodes 4 per episode
2025 21 mentions in 4 episodes 5 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing Sep 8, 2025 1h 0m
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