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

So, we crossed 200 million. (cash register dings)

Whoa. (cash register dings)

20 months to 100. (cash register dings) And then, uh, 10 months to 200. (cash register dings) (baby laughing)

Today, we have one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world, ElevenLabs. And I'm so thrilled... ... to welcome their co-founder... ... Matti, to the hot seat today.

(cash register dings) Pre-seed was tough. Pre-seed was hard. I think we spoke with a good amount of double-digit investors, between 30 to 50.

How much did you raise in the pre-seed?

We raised $2 million.

Do you remember the price? (cash register dings)

$9 million. For us, even from investor, from product perspective is like, especially now, the speed of execution, speed of investing is- is the only thing you have. Our biggest contract is around $2 million, and they are mostly in a call center, customer support, personal assistant space.

What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

That you can build a company from Europe at the global scale.

How do you answer the question, "Why won't OpenAI just do this?"

They definitely will, but I think they, you know, they- they lack the... (guitar music plays)

Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) Matti, dude, I cannot wait for this. I've wanted to do this one for a while, so thank you so much for joining me today.

Harry, thanks for having me. After working on a number of projects together, I'm so happy we can finally speak.

Dude, I am so thrilled we could do this. Now, I spoke to so many people beforehand, and I have to say, Luke was phenomenal on your team in prepping me so much. But I do want to start a little bit with the origins pre. You grew up in Poland, and this was Luke's... How did growing up in Poland impact your mindset towards the world and company building first?

You know, in Poland, the... It's a, it's a very different, much smaller world. So it's, um... For- for growing up, I was in a very lucky position where I was in suburbs of Warsaw, then I went to high school in Warsaw, then kind of started seeing more of that world, which, um, which was, of course, incredible because that kind of opens your eyes of like what's possible, that there's so much world beyond what you've seen in, uh, smaller cities. And I think in a similar way as you think about building ElevenLabs now, it's- it's, uh, the scale of what- what we don't know is still ahead of us, and this is, like, what's exciting, that we know that if we climb those- those traditional hills, the other mountains, we will see increasingly more. Um, and I think the second thing was in, um... I saw the transition where in- in suburbs of Warsaw, it's in like a public school, so, uh, school where- where you would have just any- any kids that would live in the area. And then high school and where I met my co-founder, you would have, um, a- a slightly different crowd, like a- a crowd of- of people that would win competitions, uh, need to go through a few steps to get there. And- and suddenly that like kind of density of talent was the most motivating factor to like explore more, learn more and do more, which now we are trying to, of course, replicate at- at ElevenLabs where, and any other company I'm sure too, is like you try to keep that density as high as possible because at the end of the day, that's what's most motivating being part of this incredible set of people.