The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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.”
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 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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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: 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 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: 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”
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…”
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.”
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: 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…”