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Mati Staniszewski

Co-founder & CEO, ElevenLabs · 2 appearances 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.

19statements → 10claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4.16/5average certainty → 1.79/5average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 7 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · 5 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 7 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
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 15:33 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

262 words/min while actually speaking · 31.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mati Staniszewski: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 5,621 words across 2 episodes 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 →

Everything Mati Staniszewski said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Staniszewski: Only 50 to 100 top-level voice AI researchers exist globally
“We don't think there's that many researchers in the world that are at the top level, especially in invoice, maybe 50, maybe hundred.”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 5:08 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Staniszewski: Screen-first computing devices will shift into the background
“A lot of things are screen first. Most people will have a laptop, the phone, and most of the day in front of them. I think a lot of that will move into the background where, where you will be able to be a lot more present.”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 1:00 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story
Insight
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 13:09 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Disclosure
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 16:29 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Disclosure
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 30:29 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Staniszewski: AI voice tutors will personalize future classroom learning
“When I imagine, say, studying in a classroom in the future, you have on headphones, you can have the most smart physicist, mathematician historian helping you through learning the subject.”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 1:09 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Staniszewski: Voice AI will dissolve global language and cultural barriers
“And with voice and with technology, suddenly this will become possible, where you can speak any language in the world, and fully understand, ah, not, not only what is said, but how it's said, ah, kind of feel a closer part, which will be just incredible future…”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 1:33 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story
Insight
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 5:45 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
What-if
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 7:09 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Disclosure
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 8:37 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs eliminated corporate job titles in 2024
“We removed titles a year ago”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 10:54 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Supported
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 15:33 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Disclosure
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…”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 21:21 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Disclosure
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”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 27:24 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Staniszewski: ElevenLabs waitlist grew to hundreds of thousands upon launch
“So when we launched in early January, we already have a few thousand people lined up that we knew are very interested in actually using the product. But then, of course, the few thousand turned into a few 100,000 of users, and that was a magnitude probably hig…”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 2:39 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 3:38 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Supported
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 …”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 26:19 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ElevenLabs reaches 350 employees
“We are now a 350 people company”
Mati Staniszewski Nov 4, 2025 ▶ 28:28 ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
Assertion Supported
Staniszewski: Polish single-voice movie dubbing inspired ElevenLabs' founding
“In Poland, if you watch a foreign movie, all the voices, whether it's a male or female voice, are narrated with one single character. So one voice speaks all the lines. All the emotionality, all the intonation just disappears. And then back in 2021, we realize…”
Mati Staniszewski Feb 6, 2026 ▶ 1:59 From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story

The other half of the tape: Mati Staniszewski's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most David George 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112026episodesmentions
0112026episodes it came up in
000.50.5112026episodesmentions per episode
2026 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story Feb 6, 2026 3m
ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface Nov 4, 2025 23m
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