Dabkowski: Trusting 'mini-founders' drastically reduces company management effort
Piotr Dabkowski · From $0 to $11B: The ElevenLabs Story · Feb 6, 2026 · at 7:07
Piotr Dabkowski is the co-founder of AI voice company ElevenLabs. In this interview with a16z, he discusses company culture and operational philosophy as ElevenLabs scales.
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“If you can grade people, there is very little effort needed to run the company because you can just trust these mini founders.”
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Dabkowski: Voice is the only AI modality that evokes real emotion
“Voice is the only AI modality that can actually make you feel something. And so when you have text, yes, you can have a poem or a story but it doesn't give you that same kind of emotive feel.”
Dabkowski: ElevenLabs eliminated job titles to filter out high-ego applicants
“We removed all the titles, and it's a great way, both initially, of filtering for people who are very low ego, and so if you're coming in, yes, I want to be VP of blah-de-blah, you're not going to get VP, and so it actually will turn off those people, but I'd …”