Building One of AI’s Fastest-Growing Companies | Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs

Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, an AI audio company he started in 2022 with his longtime friend Piotr Dąbkowski. He explains how a frustration with poorly dubbed content in Poland led them to build frontier speech technology, why ElevenLabs combines audio research with product deployment and how its focus on voice shapes where the company chooses to compete. Mati also describes the Palantir-inspired operating model behind ElevenLabs: small autonomous teams, a flat organization and forward deployed engineers who work directly with customers and feed what they learn back into the product. He discusses using AI to amplify human potential, helping people who have lost their voices speak again, why imperfections can make AI voices feel more human and his belief that voice will become one of the primary ways people interact with AI. After turning down multiple acquisition offers, Mati says he and Piotr are committed to building ElevenLabs independently and pursuing what they see as a rare opportunity to reshape how humans communicate with technology. Show notes: https://www.davidenra.com/mati-staniszewski Made possible by Ramp: https://ramp.com Deel: https://deel.com/senra AppLovin: https://applovin.com/senra David Senra Website: https://www.davidsenra.com X: https://x.com/davidsenra Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidsenra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsenra Facebook: https://www.linkedin.com/company/senrashow Threads: https://www.threads.com/@davidsenra Spotify: https://spti.fi/TVrr557 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4msoZtb Mati Staniszewski ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/authors/mati-staniszewski X: https://x.com/mati LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiii Chapters 00:00:00 Building an AI-Native Company Before ChatGPT 00:02:59 Why ElevenLabs Started With Audio & Dubbing 00:12:37 Research + Product Deployment: How ElevenLabs Is Built 00:16:15 Focus as a Competitive Advantage 00:18:47 Building an Ecosystem Around Voice 00:22:25 The Communication Platform & Deutsche Telekom 00:28:29 Forward Deployed Engineers & Lessons From Palantir 00:33:41 Flat Organizations, Transparency & AI-Native Management 00:37:19 Small Teams & Putting Engineers Everywhere 00:43:00 Where ElevenLabs Is Growing Fastest 00:44:38 Taste, Art & Science in AI 00:48:23 Using AI to Amplify Human Potential 00:55:19 Becoming an Entrepreneur & Building With Piotr 00:56:49 Why Mati Won’t Sell ElevenLabs 01:04:01 Voice as the Interface for AI 01:06:49 Turning Conferences Into a Business Tool

David SenrahostMati Staniszewskiguest

Sep 9, 20261h 11mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

ElevenLabs’ playbook: frontier audio research, fast deployment, and voice-first AI platform

Mati Staniszewski describes ElevenLabs as an AI-native company built to combine frontier audio research with rapid product deployment into real customer workflows.
ElevenLabs started with a dubbing vision inspired by Poland’s single-narrator localization style, but shifted toward high-quality speech generation and creator tooling after discovering more immediate customer pain.
The company maintains a deliberate research focus on audio while building a broader communication platform (creative tools, agents, reader app) and an ecosystem via an authenticated voice marketplace.
Enterprise expansion is driven by forward deployed engineers who integrate with customer systems (CRM, telephony, knowledge bases) and feed deployment learnings back into the core product.
Staniszewski argues voice will become a dominant interface for AI, enabling more natural, emotion-aware interactions and widening adoption beyond today’s screen-and-keyboard paradigm.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

ElevenLabs is designed as “research + product deployment” under one roof.

ElevenLabs is structured to invent at the frontier (TTS/STT/dubbing/agent orchestration) and rapidly operationalize those breakthroughs into real deployments across marketing, support, sales, and operations.

Relentless focus on audio is a competitive moat—especially versus larger generalist labs.

Staniszewski frames research focus as both offense (better architectures, better quality) and defense (harder for generalized labs to out-execute in a niche where taste and quality matter). Product and ecosystem then compound that advantage over time.

The company pivoted from “dubbing first” to “solve speech quality + creator pain now” based on user pull.

The original wedge was dubbing inspired by Poland’s one-voice narration tradition, but early creator feedback revealed more urgent needs (post-production line fixes, script narration, voiceover). That led them to prioritize world-class speech generation first.

Forward Deployed Engineers turn enterprise deployments into scalable product learning—not just services revenue.

FDEs sit in the product org (not just sales) so their work both solves specific deployments (CRM + telephony + call flows + testing) and converts hard-won domain lessons into reusable product capabilities for the next customer.

Ecosystem strategy: a voice marketplace with authentication and revenue sharing builds defensibility.

The marketplace creates supply (tens of thousands of voices across accents/styles/languages) plus a compensation loop for voice talent, reinforcing trust and differentiation while expanding what customers can do without ElevenLabs building everything themselves.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

I would introduce, uh, consistently the company as a combination of research and product deployment.

— Mati Staniszewski

If the product experience doesn't have a big bottleneck in that audio and the voice communication side, then it's not our forte. It's not our-

— Mati Staniszewski

FDEs are part of the product team. They are not part of the go-to-market team. They are part of the product team.

— Mati Staniszewski

AI really needs to work for the people. It needs to amplify human potential rather than replace it.

— Mati Staniszewski

If you love what you do, they couldn't pay you to stop.

— David Senra

AI-native company building before ChatGPTAudio-first focus and model architectureDubbing and localization origin story (Poland)Research-to-product deployment loopVoice agents and enterprise integrationsForward deployed engineers (Palantir lessons)Voice marketplace, authentication, and creator compensation

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.