Episode summary
ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface
The a16z Show
· · Hosts: Jennifer Li · Guests: Mati Staniszewski
Summary
ElevenLabs is pushing beyond text-to-speech into voice agents, speech-to-text, and a fully licensed music model, while trying to preserve the speed of a small research-driven startup. Mati Staniszewski says the company’s core advantage comes from a strong research foundation plus many autonomous product teams: roughly 20 teams of five to 10 people that can ship independently. When research work looks likely to take more than three months, product teams are allowed to move ahead with temporary alternatives.
The company’s product strategy has also been shaped by an early refusal to copy legacy editing tools. Instead of adding simple sliders for voice speed, ElevenLabs tried to solve the problem at the model level, even if that delayed the fix. That same “research first” approach now extends across creative tools and enterprise voice agents, where the company is building orchestration, deployment, evaluation, and monitoring capabilities on top of its models.
Staniszewski also argues that the company’s global, remote-first hiring model has been essential. ElevenLabs has hired across Europe, Asia, and the US, removed titles, and kept a flat structure with small teams and a few leads. On the go-to-market side, the hardest shift has been moving from creator-led adoption to enterprise sales, where incentives, long cycles, and deal discipline matter more. He says the company is now explicit about protecting strategy, even if that means walking away from attractive deals, including a recent licensing request from a competing foundational model company.
Key takeaways
- Mati Staniszewski says ElevenLabs ships fastest when small teams of five to 10 people own products end to end.
- He says the company uses a three-month research threshold: if a model won’t be ready by then, product teams can bridge the gap with other tools.
- Staniszewski says the Voice Marketplace has nearly 10,000 voices and has paid $10 million back to creators.
- He says ElevenLabs’ enterprise push requires orchestration, deployment, testing, version control, and monitoring, not just a strong model.
- Staniszewski says the biggest cultural shift was making sales incentives explicit so strategy does not get distorted by commissions.
Notable quotes
“So today we have roughly 20 product teams each of five to 10 people size which with full independence can go ahead and ship products”
“if we think the research work will take more than three months then the product is um can do any any anything they want to to start um adding other models”
“If you are early in your career you can you we we we try to hire you in the hub so you can immerse yourself in the company”
“Today we have almost 10,000 voices. We paid $10 million back to the people in the community”
“the biggest realization was that we are becoming a bigger company because there are clear behaviors that happen based on the commissions”
How the episode opens
We don't want to become same as previous generation of of the editing suite. So instead, let's solve it on the research level where it will know based on the voice exactly how it should speak with the speed. To be able to cut to all those different use cases, you need such a big array of different voices, different languages, different accents, um different styles.
Um so we launched voice marketplace where you you could create your voice and then uh share it. And when that voice is shared, you earn money in the return. Today we have almost 10,000 voices.
We paid $10 million back to the people in the community. There's some crazy stories from the voices. Just speaking through exactly the technology, showing the examples and kind of avoiding this initial knee-jerk reaction that AI is bad has has been has been tremendous.
Um, I'm excited to welcome our first speaker, Maddie, co-founder and CEO of 11 Labs. All right. So, good to have you here, Maddie.
Thanks so much for having me here. Great great to see everyone and good morning. And that that was uh the walkcom music generated by 11 Labs.
Was it? It was. We we we expand continuously across the audio space.
So we started with voices then created orchestration of how to build voice agents and now also create a fully licensed music model so can produce amazing music to go alongside with it. Awesome. We'll talk about all all about that.
I've um had the opportunity and also uh the luck to get to know from the very early days when 11 Labs got started and get to partner over the last three years to just see your execution everywhere from product launches to shipping new lines and models like you just mentioned everything from uh text to speech models speech to text and then we uh started uh doing music sound effects and now the AI agent platform um I'm very curious first I'm still in awe of the the shipping speed uh after all the three years.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- voice ai
- text-to-speech
- voice agents
- ai licensing
- small autonomous teams
Companies and tickers mentioned
- ElevenLabs
Watch the episode
Watch “ElevenLabs CEO: Why Voice is the Next AI Interface” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The a16z Show, this episode and its artwork belong to Andreessen Horowitz. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
