Nov 4, 2025 · 31m · a16z
ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this a16z Podcast interview, ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski speaks with Jennifer Li about building generative audio models, managing autonomous product teams, partnering with music rights holders, and scaling from consumer voice tools to enterprise AI infrastructure.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 2.9 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 0.5 The host pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 4:50 Refusing traditional UI sliders
Mati describes firmly resisting user demands for audio speed sliders for nine months to avoid becoming like legacy editing suites.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 25:11 Challenging enterprise slowdownJennifer pushes Mati on whether taking on enterprise customer requests causes product launches and shipping velocity to slow down.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 28:30 Sales incentives as strategy indicatorsMati educates the host on how unaligned sales commission structures unintentionally dictate rep behavior over company strategy.
The host holds their own ▶ 27:40 Citing Martin Casado's frameworkJennifer demonstrates high domain knowledge by framing CEO transitions using Martin Casado's three-phase company evolution model.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Title Sequence | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Jennifer sets a warm, supportive tone celebrating 11Labs' execution speed across text-to-speech, audio models, and voice agents. Mati details their internal architecture, including 20 autonomous 5-10 person product teams and their 3-month research rule. | |
| Distributed Global Teams and Non-Traditional Talent Acquisition | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer draws on her background in China to relate to monotone dubbed foreign films. Mati outlines 11Labs' global remote-first origins in Europe and hiring talent from unconventional backgrounds like call centers. | |
| Flat Organizational Structure and Autonomous Product Teams | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer asks about maintaining a flat structure and no-title policy. Mati explains how small 6-month trial teams work and notes that restricting Slack channel access helps prevent employee distraction. | |
| Partnering with Creative Industries and Music Rights Holders | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Jennifer highlights Mati's early insistence on creator partnerships. Mati breaks down their $10M voice marketplace payouts and an 18-month negotiation with music labels using strict forcing functions. | |
| Strategic Hiring and Navigating Commercial Legal Risk | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer demonstrates insight into Mati's specific preference for commercially minded, risk-tolerant hires. Mati contrasts overly cautious Fortune 500 lawyers with effective startup legal partners. | |
| Transitioning from Consumer Tools to Enterprise AI Systems | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Jennifer frames the enterprise shift as a classic hurdle where consumer brands stumble. Mati candidly admits to an early failed experiment forcing an engineer to do traditional sales before finding an 80/20 balance. | |
| Balancing Enterprise Reliability with Pre-PMF Innovation | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Jennifer gently challenges whether enterprise custom demands slow down product delivery. Mati explains their strict boundary between pre-PMF teams given 6 months to prove products and post-PMF teams. | |
| CEO Evolution: Aligning Sales Incentives with Company Strategy | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer uses Martin Casado's three-phase company framework to prompt Mati on CEO growth challenges. Mati shares a nuanced breakdown of how sales quotas and commissions act as lagging indicators of strategy. |
Statements from this episode (13)
ElevenLabs operates roughly 20 independent product teams of 5-10 people
“Today we have roughly 20 product teams, each of five to 10 people size, which with full independence, can go ahead and ship products.”
ElevenLabs lets product teams build workarounds if research takes over three months
“If we think the research work will take more than three months, then the product is can do any, anything they want to start adding other models, adding some of the extensions.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs would not exist if started outside Europe
“And we, I think 11 Labs wouldn't have existed if we weren't starting from Europe.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs hired top AI researcher out of call center
“So we hired a person that had an incredible open source text-to-speech model and was working in the call center at the same time as a recipient of the calls to make money. And he's now on the team, one of the most brilliant researchers we have doing all the da…”
Staniszewski: Open Slack access causes distraction and requires restricted channel permission
“If you put a person into all the slack channels and give them transparency, they actually get frequently distracted because then they read all the messages. You can still choose not to read them, but they still do. So you kind of need to cut the access to a lo…”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs Voice Marketplace paid $10M to creators
“Today we have almost 10,000 voices. We paid ten million dollars back to the people in the community.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs partnered with Merlin and Kobalt to license music
“The, so we worked with labels that the Merlin and Cobalt, so fourth majors to bring their music into the music model so we can do it in a licensed way so you can generate that and give commercial rights so you are fully protected.”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs failed when asking software engineers to do sales
“Our initial take was, of course, we want to be an engineering company. We don't want salespeople. We would like to reinvent that and have, like, engineers do the sales. We did hire one traditional salesperson and one non-traditional salesperson, like an engine…”
Staniszewski: Deutsche Telekom is building AI podcasts with ElevenLabs
“Deutsche Telekom, with John here, is, is, is, is, is, is creating some of the incredible new podcast experiences, and that came from, like, testing, Early models of turning a text into like a more notebook LM style of a podcast with incredible voices that you …”
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs kills pre-PMF products if unproven after six months
“The pre-product market fit. Your mission is, is to ship until you think we've hit the product market fit, and usually we give the six-month period of, like, proving it out. If not, we kill the product, and we've killed product in the past in this way”
A foundational AI competitor attempted to license ElevenLabs models for demos
“We had this case recently where one of our foundational level competitor came to us wanting to license our models for demos, and of course the incentive would suggest that you should sell to them, but luckily, luckily we didn't.”