Skip to content
The Twenty Minute VCThe Twenty Minute VC

ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup

Mati Staniszewski is the Co-Founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the world’s leading AI voice platform. Since launching in 2022, ElevenLabs has raised over $350M, most recently at a $3.3BN valuation, making it one of Europe’s fastest AI unicorns. The company counts Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Sequoia Capital among its backers. Today, Mati announces that the company has hit a staggering $200M ARR. ElevenLabs took 20 months to hit $100M ARR. 10 months to hit $200M ARR. Can they do $300M in 5 months… ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:20 Early Life & Founding Origins 06:23 Building the Product & Early Challenges 17:00 Pre-seed Fundraising 30:20 $90M Raise & Working with A16z 41:14 Team, Culture & Scaling 1:02:20 Revenue Growth & Business Model 1:12:00 M&A Offers & Secondary Liquidity 1:14:43 Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Mati Staniszewski on X: https://twitter.com/matistanis Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #MatiStaniszewski #founder #ElevenLabs #chatgpt5 #OpenAi #europe #aimodels #CEO

Mati StaniszewskiguestHarry Stebbingshost
Sep 7, 20251h 22mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

ElevenLabs’ meteoric rise: Europe’s voice-AI rocket to $200M ARR

  1. Harry Stebbings interviews ElevenLabs CEO and co‑founder Mati Staniszewski on building one of the fastest‑growing AI startups from Europe, going from beta launch in January 2023 to over $200M ARR in under two years.
  2. Mati explains ElevenLabs’ origins in bad Polish movie dubbing, their decision to build proprietary voice models, and the strategic choice to be a global company built from Europe with a small, high‑density team.
  3. He walks through difficult early fundraising, landing top‑tier US investors like a16z, Sequoia, and Nat Friedman/Daniel Gross, and details their philosophy on speed of execution, product over PR, and pairing research excellence with focused use cases.
  4. The conversation also covers culture, hiring, talent retention, competition with OpenAI, unit economics, infrastructure strategy, and the future of agentic voice platforms for call centers and customer support.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Pair deep research with a sharp, evolving product focus.

ElevenLabs started with a dubbing idea, discovered tepid demand, and pivoted to narration/voice‑over where creators had immediate, painful problems—while still using that work to build the technical foundation for dubbing and broader voice AI.

Use proprietary models when off‑the‑shelf quality clearly limits the product.

In 2021–2022, existing TTS models were obviously subpar, so ElevenLabs invested in its own text‑to‑speech, speech‑to‑text, and now music models, gaining a 6–12 month quality lead that underpins their platform and differentiates them from API‑wrappers.

Time funding and PR to real product milestones, not vanity events.

They routinely delayed funding announcements until they could pair them with substantive product launches; traditional press drove little user growth, whereas niche channels (Discord, Reddit, Hacker News, AI newsletters, YouTubers) were far more effective.

Speed of execution across research, product, and fundraising is a core moat.

Mati repeatedly emphasizes that in a commoditizing AI landscape, moving faster than incumbents—shipping models, products, and deals quickly—is often more decisive than any single technical or capital advantage.

Small, autonomous teams with high talent density beat large headcount.

Even at ~250 people, ElevenLabs is organized into ~20 small, product‑oriented squads (5–10 people), avoids formal titles, and lets leadership emerge by impact, which preserves ownership, speed, and cross‑functional learning.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Pre‑seed was tough. Pre‑seed was hard. We spoke with between 30 to 50 investors.

— Mati Staniszewski

They definitely will do something, but I think they lack the genius that I’m happy my co‑founder and the team has.

— Mati Staniszewski (on OpenAI as a competitor)

We did 20 months to 100 [million], and then around 10 months to 200.

— Mati Staniszewski

More people frequently doesn't fix the problem. You don't need that many people to do something special.

— Mati Staniszewski

You can build a company from Europe at the global scale.

— Mati Staniszewski

Founding story of ElevenLabs and the initial dubbing/narration problemAI model strategy: proprietary voice models, multimodality, and research edgeFundraising journey: tough pre‑seed, then rapid growth and US tier‑one investorsBuilding from Europe for a global market: talent, culture, and small teamsGo‑to‑market strategy: self‑serve creators, enterprise voice agents, and announcementsCompetition, defensibility, and the “why not OpenAI?” questionFinancials, infrastructure (own data centers), unit economics, and future growth bets

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome