The Twenty Minute VCElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
95 min read · 18,770 words- 0:00 – 2:05
Intro
- CRCarles Reina
We had two employees that in February had already achieved the entire full-year quota.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm so excited to welcome Carles Reina. Carles is the CRO at ElevenLabs, one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet.
- CRCarles Reina
Customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business.
- HSHarry Stebbings
He scaled the revenue org from zero to over three hundred and fifty million in ARR.
- CRCarles Reina
The role of a CRO is fundamentally thinking about not the revenues today, but the revenues of tomorrow. Let's do the things that no one is doing. That is what makes me passionate, and that is what a good CRO needs to be doing because we're not here to do easy stuff.
- HSHarry Stebbings
This is a masterclass in scaling sales in an AI-first world.
- CRCarles Reina
It's like the fastest product in terms of revenues that we've ever had.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Wow.
- CRCarles Reina
It's just insane.
- HSHarry Stebbings
On top of that, Carles is also an incredible investor with his own solo GP fund, Baobab Ventures, which has backed the likes of Revolut and of course ElevenLabs in the early days.
- CRCarles Reina
If you want to do something, budget is never going to be a problem.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So what is the problem if you want to do something and you're not allowed to? Why would that be?
- SPSpeaker
Ready to go? [rock music]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Carles, listen, I know a show is successful when I get friends of mine outside of tech be like, "Oh, loved the clip with Carles." [chuckles] And I'm like, "Really?" And they're like, "I never thought that quota and sales comp would be so interesting." And I'm like, "Thank you, Sarah. I had no idea you were interested in it." So it was such a successful show. I thought we had to do a round two. Thank you for joining me, man.
- CRCarles Reina
Thank you for inviting me. This is great. I'm happy people were interested in, like, sales.
- HSHarry Stebbings
[laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Sales and sales comp according to that clip, which again, now it's, like, five million-plus views, which is insane. Dude, I actually wanted to start on you have now kind of led the way in a new CRO charge, I think. ElevenLabs is probably one of the most exciting companies on the planet. You as CRO there lead the way. Um, are a generation of CROs being left behind?
- 2:05 – 2:55
The new CRO playbook: how go-to-market has fundamentally changed
- CRCarles Reina
Some of them, yes. But I think, I think it's fundamentally that, like, the market has changed. The way that we build companies today has completely evolved. We can do deals much quicker. But also, like, for me, the key item is, like, a deal can be done. You can hire teams that, like, have a ton of experience. But how do you think beyond a single deal and think about, like, distribution entirely, right? And I think that's what we're thinking, like, what we're actually missing in many ways. Like, yes, it's great to do business development. It's great to, like, think about affiliates. How do you think about much more on a strategic level, but also, like, able to execute? Um, and for me, and, and those are the key components. How do you embed AI in your entire distribution component so that, like, you are able to actually do more with less, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you mean by that? Is that, like, simply, uh, using Artisan, Qualified, Monaco, and having, like, AI SDRs do outbound for you?
- 2:55 – 5:46
Why AI outbound tools don't work — and what ElevenLabs built instead
- CRCarles Reina
No. That doesn't work.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Good. Glad I suggested that. [laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs] It, it doesn't work. Like, and I've tried, like, the-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Lucky you're not hiring me, huh? I mean, dodgy start to the interview.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs] Nope. You're fired. [laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
[laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
No, but it, it's like I've tried a very large number of, like, AI, uh, go-to-market tools, and they don't work. And they don't work because they see everything as a transaction. Like, the problem, like, if I was building it, and hopefully, like, some people will be able to actually use this. If I was building an AI, like, um, agentic platform for sales, right, I would be like, "Okay, let's actually understand each one of the core potential leads. What do they prefer? Do they prefer to actually be reached out over email? Do they prefer to actually attend events? Do they prefer to actually, like, um, have a phone call?" And you can try to map some of those components by what people put on LinkedIn and social media, right? So, like, that is the most fundamental element. But what we're actually seeing on the AI SDR front is that the majority of these tools track everyone as if they actually want to receive a message, and people hate it. And you see, like, the response rates on outbound, uh, emails has dropped to the lowest at, of any point in time. It's, like, less than zero point zero one percent. Like, people getting message on LinkedIn is like, it's ki- has skyrocketed. And you can perceive that as actually a transactional email mass sent to everyone, or it was generated by AI. That doesn't work.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So outbound is dead.
- CRCarles Reina
Outbound is dead unless you do it with humans or unless you do it humanly, and that's fundamentally the key item. I can tell you, like, at ElevenLabs, I spent, uh, the past two years plus trying to convince, uh, the team to actually hire, uh, engineers to actually help me build AI agents for revenue, for sales, right? Um, and it was only last year that actually, like, they were like, "Okay, let's do it." So we end up hiring people, and we end up building AI SDR that handles inbound, super good results. I have now an AI proposals manager that, like, scans the web for RFPs and RFIs and then proposes scores and proposes things. I have, like, an AI customer success manager that fundamentally leaves in the back in an email and essentially proposes emails, looks at all of the data of a single customer, all of the pricing tiers and everything that we have in the contract, and then proactively proposes things. So when my AI customer success m- m- my customer success manager goes in the morning to check the emails, that person has a number of, like, drafts that the AI has created, and then that person can change those draft to put it out there and to send it back. We store what we actually sent and what it was originally created and what are the responses are to actually fine-tune. So each one of the customers ends up getting a slightly different message with a slightly different tone, and if they speak other languages, then it's a completely different language. That works, and that has closed deals for us already. We generate money from that AI customer success manager fundamentally because it is humanly, right? It's human. It's specific as
- 5:46 – 6:41
Will AI agents shrink sales teams? Carles' 50% productivity goal
- CRCarles Reina
human.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So are we cutting the size of our team if we can do so much with these different AI agents? Are sales teams of the future gonna be dramatically less?
- CRCarles Reina
I think that we will end up seeing the fact that, like, um, people are becoming much more efficient. I think, like, the goal for me at ElevenLabs is, like, 50% improvement in productivity.That's the one that I want to do because then it means that I can, I can hire less people, right? And that's fundamentally... I prefer to manage a smaller team that was-- gets super well compensated. Any upsells, any contracts that the AI agent ends up closing, I will pay those commissions as if like a human actually closed it, and I'm very happy with that. But also that means that like the people that we want to retain and have are gonna be extremely top talent that are performing at Eleven that no one else is performing. That has a consequence. That is instead of actually doubling my team or doing a 5X or doing whatever it is over the next like two years, I end up hiring less people, but they're very concentrated.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Totally.
- CRCarles Reina
That has an impact, for sure,
- 6:41 – 11:27
Commission structures: ElevenLabs' 20x quota model explained
- CRCarles Reina
in the industry.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Totally get that. You, you mentioned the word commissions there.
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm really intrigued. Like we see like OpenAI don't have commissions. It's like, "Here's your salary, and then here's your equity." And often people say salespeople are coin operated. You said that actually, uh, last time you have a 20x-
- CRCarles Reina
Yes
- HSHarry Stebbings
... um, quota, which is a lot higher than anyone else. Um, we interviewed the, the head of sales at Clay recently, and they said theirs is six to eight. Um, post 20, what is the commission structure, and how do you advise me as a founder on how to set the commission structure?
- CRCarles Reina
I mean, I can tell you like we, uh, we like we had two employees that in February had already achieved the entire full year quota. Yes. And, uh, I, I put a message in Slack saying, "These two people have reached the Mont-Mount Olympus of, uh, sales at ElevenLabs," because in two months already like did their quota, right? And I think like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I mean this in the nicest way. Did you not massively miss that quota then?
- CRCarles Reina
I don't think so. It's like I think you need to put a, a quota that is challenging but also fair. And if people miss it fundamentally because it's too high, then you need to do the right thing and then lower it or compensate them correctly, right? But also, salespeople, good salespeople, they wanna be the best ones. They wanna... Actually, they're moved by the coin. They're moved by the fact like, um, like a big challenge ahead of them. If you don't put that challenge, they're just gonna be like slacking. They're just not... You're not gonna get the best out of it, right? And I think for me, that's the key item is like we say like, "Hey, you reached your quota 100%. Fantastic." And then you start unlocking accelerators to the point that like I'm very happy. Like if we sign a million-dollar commission check, I'm the happiest person alive fundamentally because like that person did so much money for the business and for our shareholders and for the rest of the company, that it's an absolute no-brainer. Again, like for me, it's like for every $1 million in revenues that any single person signs, and I don't care if it comes from like the SDR, the account exec, the CSM, or it's an engineer that went all in and then managed to get a contract, it's like every single million has $33 million in extra valuation for the company. If you put it that way, it's a benefit for everything. Like, like some people get more equity on the engineering side. Great. They deserve it because they don't get commissions. Fantastic. They were popping up the entire value of their stock.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you get the accelerators, how do you advise me on how to structure the accelerators?
- CRCarles Reina
It depends. Like, so the way we do it, and I think it's fair, is like for every single extra year, you get another 25% extra commission on top of it. Um, like we start at like 5% commission on any sal- anything that you sell, and then we have the accelerators-
- HSHarry Stebbings
After your quota, that is.
- CRCarles Reina
No, that is including your quota. And then after your quota, yes, ex- uh, additional like, and we have like a 1.1X, 1.2X, 1.3X, 1.5X, and so on, right? So the more you keep selling above your quota, then you, uh, hit those accelerators. But then we have like accelerators for or spiffs specifically for, for, uh, for individual products. So if we are incentivizing one product because a quarter we want to incentivize that product, then we will put an accelerator or a specific spiff for that specific, uh, product, and then people even are more motivated on that front.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you find that always works?
- CRCarles Reina
No.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Accelerators.
- CRCarles Reina
No, no.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why?
- CRCarles Reina
I think like, like it's easy to get hooked on spiffs on or like specific incentives with... and, and lose the entire, the entire sight of what you're trying to do. If you put too many accelerators, if you put too many incentives in one place, you create the wrong behavior, which is people try to sell whatever it is to actually unlock it. For instance, like we don't pay commissions on pilots. No. Like, because why? Like, it's not adding to our valuation as a company, and because it's not adding to our valuation as a company, like the engineers, the researchers, the ops people, the people, no one is actually getting a boost in their equity, then why should we pay it? Let's do the right thing, and let's do the complex thing, which is like let's do the pilot if needed. Let's convince the customer that the metrics are there and we're doing it really well. And then on top of that, once we sign an yearly contract or a two-year contract, then we pay you the commission.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But you pay on retention and expansion?
- CRCarles Reina
Yes. Yes. So like first 12 months, like, um, you can close at a yearly. It doesn't really matter, $50,000 or a million dollars or $10 million, whatever you want. And then anything that you, like that gets expanded over the next 12 months, you will get, um, commissions. Great. And you can hit accelerators with that and so on. If it's a strategic account, um, and we have designation of what is a strategic account, so for instance, like the top 20 or 30 accounts in a given market, depending how big the market is, then, uh, fundamentally, then you will unlock commission for two years fundamentally. Um, and we can change it if needed, right? But, um, at a practical level, we found
- 11:27 – 14:23
Hunters vs farmers, customer success as a revenue function
- CRCarles Reina
that that's like the fairest way.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I will never forget one of the great CROs saying to me on the show, "You do not ever want your farmer going against someone else's hunter."
- CRCarles Reina
[chuckles]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Meaning your kind of cushy but super nice CS enablement, "Hey, like let's get champions in your company," kind of happy, um, against someone else's all-star hunter who is there to close your business. How do you feel about that? True? And then how do you think about then retaining the hunter on the account?
- CRCarles Reina
The hunters are important, very important. Specifically when you think about distribution, you think about like outbound, inbound, you think about like a lot of different pieces, right? Um, but at the same time, a hunter that is not well managed will create more damage than actually like opportunities. So let's say for instance, you're trying to close a company that is, has multiple comp- multiple sub-companies. Uh, it's a big holding company.We can use any num- name you would want, right? And then you have a hunt that essentially tries to go to each one of them, but doesn't do it in a very structured way, like trying to align what are the incentives for this big account. Like then fundamentally, you end up having discrepancies on pricing, you end up having discrepancies for like what is the actual like, uh, the value for them, and then each one of them discrepancies ends up coming back to hunt you down essentially when you try to renew the contract or the other forms. So like it is important to have them, but at the same time you need to have like them in check together with the customer success. I actually am a big believer of customer success. I don't believe customer success as a satisfaction or happiness moment for customers. No, it's like customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business that incent- in- works for the customer, but also works for the business to incentivize growth, expansion, cross-sell.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What, what, what do you mean by that then? 'Cause I had Chris Degnan on the show, who's like one of the all-time great CROs, Snowflake, you know, zero to four billion or whatever it was. And he's like, "CS is complete bullshit. Complete bullshit. You have professional services, pay for it, and we'll make you great." To what extent do you agree, or do you think customer success is-
- CRCarles Reina
In the world where like Snowflake grew up, um, like that made sense. In the world we are in today with AI, that doesn't make any sense because fundamentally, like anyone can spin up a competitor of your product in the next two days. Anyone. So fundamentally, like your customer success, you need to actually re- like go as deep as you can as early as possible and try to close it as q- as soon as go- as possible a single contract, and then your customer success is the one that actually will help you expand it, uh, uh, quickly and retain the customer. So if it becomes a services business only where you're charging for every single penny, then you become a transaction. You're not building a community. You're not retaining, uh, of the, of the long term. You should be incentivizing them to actually like do both things, community, trust, and also like incentivize the long term. So that's why like I am, I'm in favor of charging for like services, but in not all the cases it makes sense fundamentally.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Totally.
- CRCarles Reina
The game has changed.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where else has the game changed? Where else are old school CROs out of date?
- 14:23 – 19:52
The myth of "one market at a time" & hiring experienced sellers
- CRCarles Reina
In general, like y- like one single market, going one market at a time, it doesn't work. Traditional VCs, like they've, like the traditional method has been like, oh, you open one market, you go deep, you win the account, you show like the value, then you go to the next one, and then you go to the next one and so on. And that's like the bullshit advice that like VCs have been giving like for many years. And I know like now it's changing fundamentally because like, hey, like the reality is like if you're gonna have 100 competitors, um, in the next like month because you're starting to get some traction or because of whatever reason or everyone is thinking about the same problem and then going deep, then go, opening one market after the other one, after the other one instead of actually parallelizing and trying to do multiple bets at the same time, then it's just counterintuitive.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is that only enabled by a PLG motion though? A PLG motion allows you to do multiple markets at the same time much easier because if you have enterprise motion, you need, you need everything from SDRs to AEs to CS in that place.
- CRCarles Reina
Why? No, not really. So for instance, like one of the... And, and I know like this is gonna be controversial, but like I think like all of the tech startups are afraid to actually hire someone that has had twenty years experience, twenty-five years experience. And the excuse that they use is like, "The person is not gonna fit the business." And I think it's bullshit. I think it's full wrong, right? Fundamentally, someone has twenty years experience in sales and has been selling for the past ten years to the same like financial services firms in the city or in the US has so much wealth, so much knowledge, they can propel the entire business. Now, the question is like not all of them are gonna fit your business, but a good portion of them, if they're still hungry and they still want to actually do something that is meaningful, they're gonna fit really well. That p- those type of profiles will shorten your s- sales cycles because they will join and be like, "Okay, now I know the product really well. I have, I know the vision. I know how to properly like pitch it. Let me call all of my friends that I've been interacting and all of my stakeholders that I've been interacting for the past ten years, twenty years. Now we just go directly to the C-level."
- HSHarry Stebbings
Dude, is that not a massive misalignment of cultures when you think about like the super young, hungry reps, and then you're bringing in 50-year-old Simon who's been selling into the city financial services for years?
- CRCarles Reina
The biggest example is like Google in the early days. You have like Sergey Brin and Larry Page like together with Eric Schmidt. Like that's amazing. A guy that had ton of experience, was really successful, ended up coming in and magic happened. I think fundamentally, like both parties want to make it work, it can happen. But you need to make it work, and you need to hire the right people that will have like, will be in the same brainwave as you are.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you worry that people pull ElevenLabs so much out of your hand that anyone could sell it?
- CRCarles Reina
No, I don't think so. I don't think it's that easy to sell, especially in this environment. Of course, I think if you have a big brand like an OpenAI or like an Anthropic or ElevenLabs-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I mean, I mean, uh, yeah
- CRCarles Reina
... it's easier a little bit.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And the nice thing about this being around too is I can push back more in the moment.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
You can't have a 20X quota and say it's not easy to sell. You can't have that much better people than everyone else.
- CRCarles Reina
I, I think you can. [laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Your people are not... I love you, dude, but your people are not 4X better, 4X than everyone else in market.
- CRCarles Reina
I do 100% believe that our people are like 4X better, like without thinking twice. And I would take them to war. I would go with w- to war with them, every single one of them. It's because like we are tough on them, but also like they're tough on us. Like they give us the r- the, the feedback, the difficult feedback, and I get it every single day. And I'm happy that they give me the right, the, the tough feedback because what we're trying to do here, and I've always believed and grew up with the idea of like we're trying to like find the ground truth. And what the ground truth means, like today means X, tomorrow means something else, and the following day will mean something else. So if you don't have people that are constantly challenging you and constantly thinking beyond what the actually is happening today, you're not gonna be able to survive.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where-
- CRCarles Reina
And those are the people that we hire.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where are people challenging you where you don't have an answer?
- CRCarles Reina
Which market should we be opening? Like, how deep should we go into like some of the structure changes? Like the company's going, growing very quickly. Do we need a, uh, global accounts team? So I'm already thinking about a global accounts team. When do we implement it? How do we implement it? How do we motivate people?Um, like should it be 20X? Should it be something else? Like, um, which product should we be selling? Should we be selling to competitors? Should we be selling to resellers? So there is all of those things, like the team challenges every single day. And I love it because it's intellectually is stimulating, but also because it forces the entire business to rethink our position every single day.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you would advise founders today to go to as many markets as possible as soon as possible?
- CRCarles Reina
Not as many markets as possible. I think like you need to map out and have a reasoning and a thesis of why that market, so that you can now refer to that and understand whether the market conditions have changed, and then you have to actually like, uh, evolve your, your thesis. But for me, this is like go-to-market is similar to like b- investing in, in venture capital, right? You need to test like 100 things to actually be able to find like the three, four, five, six things that actually perform and do really well. We do the same in venture, right? We invest in companies knowing and believing that all of them are gonna work and all of them can be like a billion or trillion dollar company, and then we realize like, shit, it not worked, but I still have like three or four or five that are gonna be working really well. Go-to-market is actually the same thing. Like test as many things as you can, not only in the opening markets, but also like, do you need to try like self-service? Do you need to try like working with resellers, like with partners, with a cloud ecosystem, like with a grants program, with an affiliates program? There's so many things, and opening
- 19:52 – 38:24
What didn't work: failed bets, the India reset & going back to zero
- CRCarles Reina
markets is one of those ones.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What did you test that didn't work, and what did you learn?
- CRCarles Reina
At ElevenLabs I've tested like endless, endless amounts of things, and I absolutely love it. Like for instance, like media entertainment in the beginning did not work for us. It just didn't.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What does media and entertainment mean?
- CRCarles Reina
So big brands, like big, uh, entertainment studios, and the thesis was like, they're generating so much content, we should be able to actually sell to them and make a ton of money on this. And the reality was that like, yes, they do make a lot of content, but when you have like, um, a- an industry that essentially like is very heavily influenced by the public, the audience, the quality they need to produce, like, um, like events, all of that stuff, then potentially the industry might not be ready for technology that you're trying to sell. That was a big learning, and we spent months and months and months trying to break into the entertainment industry to realize that like we were not growing as fast as we wanted. So we ended up pitching, like switching and having another ICP was like, okay, let's work with media creation platforms, right? That worked really well for us. And then we end up saying like, "Hey, actually the world is moving." We had a thesis around like the more of... The world is moving towards agentic systems. How do we also bring a product to market that fits really well in the agentic world? And we had a vision on that, so we ended up working on that. And today, AI agents, it's absolutely fantastically huge for us. Fundamentally because we had the vision, we bet, we went early, we started working with partnering with like some companies, and that panned out really well.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You said the words not growing as fast as you wanted.
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Now you're an investor on the other side of the table. You've seen how fast a company can grow with ElevenLabs. You've also seen it with Revolut, to be fair, two edge cases [laughs] um, to be fair.
- CRCarles Reina
But you need those two edge cases. That's what we said.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But that's all business. Like that, that is the business of venture. My favorite thing with VCs is when you get other VCs be like, "I don't know if Carles is very good because like if you actually take out ElevenLabs and Revolut, he's not that good."
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
And you're like, "Yeah."
- CRCarles Reina
One of them four unicorns. It's fine.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. Like, you know. [laughs] Okay, sure. Um, but, but my point is, has it changed how you think about attractiveness in company growth?
- CRCarles Reina
I don't know. I think, I think you still need to have companies that grow from one to four or from zero to one, and it takes them like 18 months to get there. And I think that's actually not bad. It's like, this just means like you need to incentivize the portfolio to be able to actually like iterate and experiment as much as they can because we don't know what's gonna work. And I think it is us. Like us still even with new products that like I'm, I'm heading and I'm trying to get to market, I truly don't know how we're gonna price it. I truly don't know if it's gonna work out. I'm just trying to iterate. Is it gonna take us a little bit longer to get to like the first million and the first five million and the first 10 million? Fine. We have the ability, but we need to iterate, and I think it is exactly the same. At ElevenLabs we have like a business that grows extremely quickly, like we're like smashing it, all of that stuff. But at the same time we have like brand new bets, like are not generating any revenue. And that's great, but it's bets that we're doing for next year. So I think like the idea of us-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the biggest bet you've got today that's not generating revenue?
- CRCarles Reina
Um, so we, we have... We're generating a, a good amount of revenue, but like government work fundamentally just like it's a tiny portion of it. And I think that's okay because like the role of a CRO is fundamentally thinking about like not the revenues today, but the revenues of tomorrow. I'm already thinking like all of this quarter I've already been thinking like how do we put the pieces together so that the ElevenLabs next year grows even faster than this year? Because I know this year we'll smash the numbers. I have the right team. We're gonna continue hiring. We have like the motion that we set last year. It's gonna grow really well. How am I doing it for next year, being very creative, so that I can start putting the right bets? That's what been my quota this year.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You'll hit a billion in revenue by end of year?
- CRCarles Reina
Who knows? Who knows? I, I would love to, I would love to hit a billion dollars in revenues by the end of the year. We have some targets internally. It will be great if we can do it. If not, it will be a little bit later. That's fine. That's absolutely fine.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Any big lessons on forecasting? It's fricking hard to do.
- CRCarles Reina
It's impossible. It's just impossible. Like we forecast, and then we realize usually that like we've like... We, we would just like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But that's different. Traditional sales leaders on the show for the last three or four years, because I've done 20 something, have, have been like, "Oh, I can pretty much get there to, to 3 to 5%."
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm like, wow. Now-
- CRCarles Reina
Impossible
- HSHarry Stebbings
... I'm fucking clear.
- CRCarles Reina
But it's impossible if you think about it from an experimentation perspective, and I always tell my team, like I want us to test as many things as possible. I, I only need one of those ones to work really well to give me another $100 million in revenues or 200 or 300.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And so when you say things, do you mean like channels, like affiliates, like partners, like referrals, or do you mean like products?
- CRCarles Reina
Channels, products, ideas. Should we be pitching services? And I was like in a, in a meeting with a CEO of an airline, um-Very recently in, in a, a few days back, and we were talking about like agents and all of that stuff, and then at some point he was like, "But Carles, like everyone, it keeps pitching me. I get over 100 pitches every week of pitch, like companies doing like customer support. Like, I mean, I don't want to have another, another pitch on that." And I was like, "And you're 100% right." And I hate it. Like, actually, don't get me wrong, we do it, and we do it really fucking well, but at the same time, it's boring. Like the majority of companies will start with the bottom line optimization. And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Sorry, what's boring? Customer support or?
- 38:24 – 44:55
Does brand reduce enterprise sales cycles?
- HSHarry Stebbings
reduce enterprise sales cycle?
- CRCarles Reina
Yes. One million percent. And whoever tells you no, it's like just lying. That is a fact, right? And I think like the ideal scenario is like no one gets fired. Like the idea, like you remember like IBM, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
It's fine. Yeah.
- CRCarles Reina
It's like no one got- gets fired for actually buy, buying IBM.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CRCarles Reina
It's like that is the ideal scenario for any brand. It's like literally you become the safest asset in the block. Great. It's, it's a long way. I think like the two companies that today have been able to make it is... Well, three companies if you want. OpenAI, Anthropic, full respect for them. Cursor. The three of them I think for me are like key-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Cursor have killed enterprise unbelievably well.
- CRCarles Reina
Yeah. They, they've done super well. And it's fantastic. Like those are the three like brands that are like blue chip organization right now in like, in, in the procurement, like teams perspective and IT teams perspective. It's fantastic. It's great. We need to replicate that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No, but I read on Twitter, it's one of these really funny ones, but I read on Twitter it's like, "And no one uses them anymore. We all use Claude code. You're such idiots." And it's like, sure, but go into HSBC in Hong Kong, like, or wherever around the world, like Barclays Bank in Swansea. Like I, I promise you, they're, they're using Cursor actually in their local dev shop. Um-
- CRCarles Reina
And it is great. Like it just means like brand will help you solidify your position, but also you need to like the bigger pro- like the bigger-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But also the stickiness of these big enterprises. That's the also the unwavering one.
- CRCarles Reina
And it's not that easy to get into the big enterprises anyway, right? It's not that easy. You've done it. Y- or you, you've done it with like the portfolio companies. You know how difficult it is for them. But once you start getting into the motion, then fundamentally you get there.
- HSHarry Stebbings
As a venture capitalist, I've, I've done it, period. I have-
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
All of the companies we invest in, we basically found. You know, we, we do all the work really.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
It's exhausting. Uh. [laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
But you do it with LPs.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, yeah.
- CRCarles Reina
So imagine your LP is like, it's exactly the same concept. Like your LP is like the big whales.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Multi-year sales cycle. Multi-year sales cycle.
- CRCarles Reina
Exactly, yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I mean, seriously multi-year sales cycle. One of our biggest LPs was a six-year sales cycle.
- CRCarles Reina
Yeah. I'm not surprised.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, absolutely.
- CRCarles Reina
But how do you create enough FOMO? How do you create enough brand to be able to actually like reduce that six years to like a lot less?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. Brand does that.
- CRCarles Reina
Exactly.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What percentage of your new sellers work out?
- CRCarles Reina
The majority of them.
- 44:55 – 59:41
Hiring obsessed salespeople: spotting top talent in 20 minutes
- HSHarry Stebbings
wins?
- CRCarles Reina
For me, like you can get it very quickly, right? Like, people that have extremely high energy, that are sharp, that like are thinking quick, and also like there's other people that like will be slightly opposite, but also like they're gonna be very, very deep. And it's like it might take them a little more lo- like, more time to actually like get there, and those are like less obvious. But once they do, it's just insanely good, right? But like if people are like sharp and they're energetic and passionate and they come across as like someone that really wants to win and you can ask them like, "Hey, like pitch me ElevenLabs as if I was, I don't know, like a fish," whatever it is, like it doesn't really matter, right? Like then you get a sense of like how quickly they're thinking and how passion they have, like how much passion, how much actually, um, like they've researched the company, who are they thinking, all of that stuff. Like, you end up having in a, in a very short conversation. Like, I don't need to spend more than twenty minutes to know if, um, if I wanna hire someone or not. And I will tell you like, um, the majority of times I end up putting my feedback in, uh, in Ashby. We use Ashby internally. I end up putting my feedback in Ashby during the conversation. By the middle of the conversation, I have my feedback. And I'm one of those like crazy guys that like write a lot while I'm talking to someone. I hate when it gets recorded, um, because then people end up behaving in a very specific way versus actually like being themselves. So I write a lot when I'm, while I'm interviewing people, and then I have my summary. And in parallel, I'm writing and I'm doing my summary. And that's it. And it works really well for me. And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why do you hate the recorded element? So for me, uh, all of our calls in The Launch Fund are recorded because it's important for us that we can share them-
- CRCarles Reina
Yep
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and I can ramp up without being in the room.
- CRCarles Reina
My personal take is that like interviews, like people behave differently if they think that they're being recorded versus if they think that actually they have freedom to say whatever they think is, is best. In sales, we are always like ask everyone to record it, and we have like it's mandatory for everyone.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You use Gong?
- CRCarles Reina
We use Gong, and it automatically fills out our s- like Salesforce, and so we try to automate as much as possible. And by the way, like Loveable has the best CRM that I've ever seen. Those guys have really smashed it. Like, shout out to them.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Loveable CRM?
- CRCarles Reina
Uh, yes. Like, so Loveable ended up building their own platform where like you can interact with it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No shit. Can you imagine if they didn't? I mean, that'd be [laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
We should be building our own platform as well, but like we're not.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you buy that? Do you buy the SaaSpocalypse of like you will customize your own software entirely in the future?
- CRCarles Reina
For some areas, yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where will you? Where will you not?
- CRCarles Reina
I think like for like core application, core things, yes. Um, so a CRM, I would love to customize it. I would love to actually build it, uh, myself, uh, even like it doesn't really matter. You can... You don't have to spend that much time. I mean, just like, um, a pool of data-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But you haven't in your Salesforce.
- CRCarles Reina
We haven't, we haven't done it. Uh, we use Salesforce. Uh, but for some other applications, like, I mean, why wouldn't you do it? If it fits better in your entire ecosystem of applications, if it's easy enough, then, then maybe you should. Would I build an entire Google Drive or a Gmail? No, I wouldn't. Like, it wouldn't make any sense. But for a, a good amount of applications, for sure. If I was like a procurement guy, I would be building a procurement software for myself.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you think the SaaSpocalypse is over exaggerated?
- CRCarles Reina
I think there is a very large portion that is over exaggerated, but I think like there is a, a real fact that like people will end up building their own applications, and I think that's, that's key. I think it's, it's why not?
- HSHarry Stebbings
What would you like to do with ElevenLabs today that you're not able to do because of lack of budget?
- CRCarles Reina
Oh, we've never actually like put any constraints on the lack of budget. Like, you... If, if you wanna do something, budget is never gonna be a problem, and that's been since the beginning.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So what is the problem? If you want to do something and you're not allowed to, why would that be?
- CRCarles Reina
It's... It might well be because, um, you haven't proven with a test or experimentation that that is the right thing to do right now. Um, so for me it's like you want a, a budget. You want... What do you want? 100K? You want 50K? You want 200K to actually prove that things? Do it. Don't ask me for a million dollars. Don't ask me for like dedicate an entire team to it. Don't ask me to actually dedicate six months of your time to, for that specific thing. I'm not gonna do it. But if you do it on the side and then you prove me that like you, you can actually make it work and I start seeing some results, we'll scale it, and we'll give you all of the budget that you want.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You're the CRO, and you said that. It's so interesting about kind of I wanna see the data before I scale it. You now do paid, uh, and you do paid, uh, you know, on an F1 car.
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Remind me of the team.
- CRCarles Reina
Uh, oh, the Revolut F1.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How did you weigh up the decision to do that when it's a big investment and you had no data honestly to suggest it would work?
- CRCarles Reina
It took us a long time to actually get comfortable with the idea.
- 59:41 – 1:09:22
Partner ecosystems: the biggest mistakes and how to do it right
- CRCarles Reina
of being successful.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What are the biggest mistakes that you think people make with partner ecosystems? I think people think of them as like a, a silver bullet. Oh, we'll have a partner-
- CRCarles Reina
Yeah
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and then it's done. I think you need to have people who nurture those partners incredibly well, to teach them, train them, onboard them.
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What would be some others from your perspective?
- CRCarles Reina
It takes time. It takes fucking long time. Like, and that is a reality is like, um, if you're coming into like the distribution side with partners, uh, or you're building the entire partner ecosystem thinking that you're gonna be like making another 20% of revenues like in two quarters, you're, you're wrong. Like that doesn't happen that way. You need people dedicated to it. You need incentives for them because people lose interest, and you need your incentives for your own team. So initially start using like SQOs, uh, sales qualified opportunities, or SQLs, so sales qualified leads, to be able to actually track how much volume has been generated and what is the actual traction being generated. And then once you start having a solid like motion in there, then you start tracking and move it towards like the revenues. So each one of the SQOs needs to be generating a certain amount of revenues.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Other than letting them invest, how do you incentivize your partners to push you?
- CRCarles Reina
You have ... You can always ... And Salesforce has done it extremely well. For me, they are the reference in this, um, is like they built a partner ecosystem that like where they get deals from like Salesforce, but also they send deals to Salesforce, right? And in some cases, like in the markets where they cannot be billing the customer, they actually do send the deal and be like, "Oh, you're my partner. You will be billing the customer, and then, uh, I will bill you independently," right? That's a fantastic ecosystem to be building.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Like how do you think about the justification of rep time across account? And what I mean by that specifically is like any company that's very large could spend a large amount of money.
- CRCarles Reina
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And with PLG, everyone tends to start small, and then the hope is they expand much bigger and bigger and bigger. How do you think about what ACV is large enough for reps to spend significant time on trying to get it?
- CRCarles Reina
$1,000 a month.Your brai-- When you start spending $1,000 a month, uh, as a business, your brain completely switches because you don't want to put it anymore in your credit card. And at that point, you start believing like, "Shit, I'm spending a lot of money at the, in there. With that software, I do have high expectations." At that point, if you have a motion from a sales perspective that is fast enough, then it doesn't really matter.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Are you ready for a weird one? One of my favorite sayings I've heard recently is like, "Fear is a, a mile wide and an inch deep."
- CRCarles Reina
Mm-hmm.
- HSHarry Stebbings
A-and you need to take the step to realize it's not as scary as you think.
- CRCarles Reina
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where have you thought the thing was very scary and difficult where it actually wasn't once you did it?
- CRCarles Reina
I had a very clear conviction that like AtEleven Labs launching India was gonna be extremely difficult, um, and we might fail. And what I end up realizing is like I didn't know enough the market to realize like if you do it well, you can make a ton of money and also generate a ton of buzz and generate a lot of ROI.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you have to send OG team members to every market you open?
- CRCarles Reina
No. But we do it centrally, right? We always try to like build, um, like a market, like centrally from HQ, trying to close some deals so that it is for free. For me, it's free to actually like deploy a single person on the ground.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Sorry, how it's free to deploy a single person on the ground? What do you mean?
- CRCarles Reina
Because like I'm already making revenues. I'm profitable. I'm making revenues in that market. I've proven that like it is a market that is getting sort of-
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you only go into new markets when you've already got a lot of customers and you can see the PLG?
- CRCarles Reina
No, not on the PLG. I don't even look at the PLG numbers. I don't. I don't care about those ones. I look at like what are the enterprises, what are the companies in that market? How is my portfolio construction in that market, and how can I close some of those number, how some of those companies to get to a certain level of revenues? At the moment that I get to that certain level of revenues, for me, I've nailed like a product idea that needs to grow and needs to prove that like it can scale, and it can have like product market fit, but at least I've proven that actually can start selling in there. Then that's the moment that I actually, I can get the team on the ground.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What market are you not in today, geography or sector, that you would most like to be in?
- CRCarles Reina
Um, we, we are everywhere these days. Like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Literally everywhere?
- CRCarles Reina
Everywhere. I have teams all around the world. Some of them have been announced, some of them have not been announced, but we, we have teams all around the world, yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where are you weakest?
- 1:09:22 – 1:20:06
Should operators also be investors?
- CRCarles Reina
the dynamic changes, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
You, you mentioned a couple of times about also investing as well. A fantastic investor, obviously we've invested a lot together. Um, should more operators be investors at-
- CRCarles Reina
Yes
- HSHarry Stebbings
... the same time?
- CRCarles Reina
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. [chuckles] It should always.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No. No. No.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs] But actually, like, my, my, my thinking here is like, it is because, like, in, founders want to be backed by other founders. They want to be backed by the best operators. They also want to be backed by the best invest- investors. So if you are, like, an operator and you are willing to deploy time, not money, time, to help a company, like, navigate and try to be successful, at some point you will end up realizing that, like, why not to actually do it from, with institutional money?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. Because flip side, when you take institutional money, it's a great responsibility-
- CRCarles Reina
Yes
- HSHarry Stebbings
... taking on other, someone else's money, and you have already made a promise to your employer that you will devote your best efforts and all of your energy to making them successful and the company successful. If you're suddenly looking at defense companies at seed, you are not doing that job to the best of your ability.
- CRCarles Reina
I don't think so. I think that you can do, like, both things in parallel and one contributes to the other one. Like, I don't think there is any conflicts in there fundamentally. Like, I think-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I don't think so. I think you can-
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
... 'cause you have reached an... I'm, I'm, I'm your friend, but you've reached an echelon that you can.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
But I don't think otherwise. Like, honestly, if I was one of your sellers and, like, I was going home and in the bath time reading about next generation drone companies and the cost curve to launch drone companies-
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
... you'd be like, "Dude, your motherfucking turf is France and it's media. You could route that instead." I would be saying that if I was you.
- CRCarles Reina
100%. And I, I would understand it. Like if you-
- HSHarry Stebbings
No, but I'm getting the best out of myself by doing that, Carles.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs] But, but you know what? But the interesting thing is, like, I think you, you put it really well in the other, in the other podcast, which is like, you are the hardest working person in the office, right? I am the same. And if you want to do both things at the same time, you need to prove every single day that you are the hardest working person in the office. Like, and I think that's when it works fundamentally. Like, you will work really hard for the company, but also you will work really hard for your investors and your LPs. And I was, when I was negotiating my, my LPA, um, with, with my LPs, I mean, we got stuck in one s- clause. You know, like always you get stuck in clauses and things like that. And, and it was like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What was the clause?
- CRCarles Reina
I can't even remember. But like, and I remember, like, that clause, which was like, for me was absolutely silly, and I was like pushing back and, like, for them it was, like, core to, to them. I was like, I called my, my, my main LP, which is absolutely fantastic, like Sindana Capital, they're really amazing guys. But like, I, I remember calling them and be like, "Guys, like, we need to get over this. Like, if we are fucked, if I don't return the money and I don't do all of these things, we're all fucked. It doesn't really matter how we see it, right? It's like, it just doesn't really matter. So let's move on. Let's close this thing. Let's make sure that I start deploying the capital, um, and then we will celebrate. And if it doesn't work out, I'm fucked. I'm accountable for all of this. I lost all of this money. We'll figure it out, but I don't think I will lose your money. I think I will do like a 10X, and I'm happy with it." And we ended up, like, moving on.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What fund would you be happy with? Like, what, what, you know, what do you say to investor? I would, I would be very happy with a 10X. I'd be very happy with a 6X. I'd be very happy with a...
- CRCarles Reina
Um, I think like for me it's like the way I, I thought when I was raising a fund is like, I will be very happy at the moment that I actually have seven unicorns in my fund.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Seven?
- CRCarles Reina
It has to be seven. I'm not gonna be happy-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why seven?
- CRCarles Reina
I don't know. It's a number that I had in mind.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You just like David Beckham?
- 1:20:06 – 1:25:26
Quick-Fire Round
- CRCarles Reina
I think that's okay.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'd love to do a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?
- CRCarles Reina
Okay.
- HSHarry Stebbings
The reason I look kind of dazed and confused there is I was trying to remember this brilliant quote, and it's likeWhat would you need to achieve to be happy in 2026?
- CRCarles Reina
Oh, I mean, for me, like if, uh, if I get three unicorns and ElevenLabs crosses a billion dollars in revenue, so I would be very happy.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Wow!
- CRCarles Reina
Three unicorns for the fund, I will be very happy.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the single hardest thing for you today?
- CRCarles Reina
Time. It's like, it's really-
- HSHarry Stebbings
That's not an answer.
- CRCarles Reina
It is. Like it's-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I love you, Dio. It's not. Uh-
- CRCarles Reina
It is. Like it is... It's, I don't have the time, and I lo- and I, I love to spend-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But this is like a job interview. I work too hard.
- CRCarles Reina
No, no, no, no, no, no. It is not. And, uh, I, I, I think like the problem is like if you don't have enough time for certain things, then you're sacrificing like, like, uh, your partner, your like, uh, your friends, all of that stuff. And f- that's the hardest thing for me. Like it's, I choose to actually work, um, like the amount of hours that I work, and work for ElevenLabs, and work for my fund, and for my LPs, but there's a choice, and then you're choosing to do things, putting aside other things that are also equally important.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's your escape?
- CRCarles Reina
Plants. Like, um, like gardening. I absolutely love it. I talk to my plants. I have so many plants at home. I talk to them all the time. I water them. I like, I take like small scissors, and I chop, chop them. Like it's so nice. I really like it. And that's when I'm really stressed, when I don't understand like how to fix a thing, then I start essentially like spending an hour or two hours like looking after my plants. I can like spend time like looking at them and not doing anything, just talking to them. That gives me back energy.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Fucking weird. [laughs]
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs] It's very, very strange, but it is.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What... No, no, there's no such thing as strange. I think we all need to be a bit more strange.
- CRCarles Reina
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Um, what is the thing that makes Mati so good?
- CRCarles Reina
What makes him so good is like, I think it's his ability of listening to people, and then making a decision, um, regardless of whether he gets it right or wrong, and he will acknowledge if he got something wrong, and then change it immediately. And I think that's what I really value because like you get CEOs that will tell you like, "Most of the times I need to get it right," and then make some mistakes in there. And if, for me, the, it's actually the opposite. It's like you should be always getting it right or like 99% right in like 5% of the things that are really mega important. Like in the 99%... 95% remaining things, you should be getting it mostly wrong. And I think that's what Mati's trying to do, and he's very successful at that, like allowing people to like experiment and get it wrong, and then push back, but also run with their ideas. And if there's a thing that he believes like it is like fundamentally, like it needs to happen in a specific way, he will say it, and he will do it, and everyone gets to... needs to be aligned. And he has that ability of like combining both things in different moments in time, and it works really well. We've seen it at ElevenLabs.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Final one for you. What are you most excited about when you look forward to the next 24 months?
- CRCarles Reina
I am actually looking forward to the next wave of foundation model companies.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Huh? What the f-
- CRCarles Reina
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What?
- CRCarles Reina
I, I, I, I believe that like there is a, a brand new world of opportunities that we are unlocking or that is gonna be unlocked with a new wave. And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Whoa, whoa. Are you-
Episode duration: 1:25:37
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