Mati Staniszewski, Co-Founder at ElevenLabs: $11bn valuation and $330m ARR

0:00Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson-Rukasan and we are here at the 11 Labs Summit. I'm joined by Mati, co-founder and CEO of 11 Labs. You are Europe's newest Decacorn founder. How does it feel?

0:12Mati Staniszewski:So, Seb, thanks for the conversation. As you said, we are here in the 11 Labs, we're doing the 11 Labs Summit here in London where it all started. So just such a good moment to cross that 10 billion mark, raise that 11 billion dollar valuation and see the community, the customers, the partners, the team getting where we are today with the full of energy and excitement for what's ahead and in the future. And how did raising this round, you raised half a billion dollars from Sequoia, arguably the greatest firm in the world. How did raising this amount of money from this firm compare to your$2 million pre-seed and$9 million valuation just three years ago?

0:50Mati Staniszewski:So, well, it evolved quite significantly, you know, like 2 million rand at the time was so hard. We tried to raise capital, it was 2022. So the year where people are still obsessed about crypto, about metaverse, kind of that was the tail end of that. AI was not the topic. So we started the company, We started the research in the product. My co-founder, one of the most brilliant minds in that space, has started developing the model. So it was so hard to believe that we can actually, A, do something. Two, it's an important problem to work on. Three, it's defensible. Of course, lots more to do. But my co-founder proved that we can build the best models.

1:27Mati Staniszewski:We proved the market and that interest in voice is as big as ever. Now, as you're thinking about transforming how we interact with technology, how we create the technology, That use case is as clear, not only in our case, but across the customers. And of course, we see that and appreciate the investors too. They see the help of the business. They see what we can do. They see the excitement for the future. So this round, a great validation of where we've bought in and the proof point of where the space is. Amazing. And let's talk about a bit about birth. So it took you 20 months to get to 100 million.

1:58I think it was 10 months to 200 million. And then five months from 200 million to 330 million of AOR. When are you going to hit$1 billion?

2:07Mati Staniszewski:It's, of course, the next milestone, the next goal, and the best proxy for valuation. I'll give you a longer answer. Of course, a very important thing in any revenue draw is how healthy that revenue is. Will it stay for the long time? In over the last six months, especially, we've seen probably the highest amount of enterprise adoption. What does Ambrose reflect? Companies building those conversational experiences with agents, whether that's in custom experience, whether that's in sales, whether it's internal operations, whether it's Logitelecom, Deliveroo, Revolut, Klarna, all of those companies innovating in any way.

2:43Mati Staniszewski:And that is where we see even more potential in the future as this technology permits more Fortune 500s, more enterprises around the world. So now the only bottleneck is the planet. I'm saying it's only, it's of course a very important one. You want to ensure it's reliable, it's safe. You're working with the right partners. so we are not as concerned about the tempo but are very obsessed about the right use cases and if we can get there in the next 12 to 18 months we're doing a job Amazing, I want to touch on the Revolut partnership you signed a huge agreement with them you're also kind of co-branding in the F1 what's that partnership a bit like?

3:21Mati Staniszewski:do you think you can go even further with them? it was, so there were two independent events but the timing of that might have made it seem slightly different so we do work with Revolut on automaking the customers have more experience, now looking into even more use cases across their flow. Four million users in Europe can access that already. But then what we decided as a brand to do is sponsor Audi F1 as the new team coming in. Revolut is another sponsor of that team. That's why it's Audi Revolut F1. And felt like the right time for the brand. We want to support the underdogs, support a new team, 11th team on the grid, to hopefully go for the big fries, go for the church chip.

4:00Mati Staniszewski:They feel like the right team. And of course, what that means from the other sponsors they brought in, like the other space, they are looking to invest heavily in technology, invest heavily in innovation, which is what we do with them. And from our angle too, beyond the sponsorship, we are looking to deploy new ways of engaging the fans of Audi through interactive experiences where you can speak with potentially the drivers, potentially in any language that you want, in a completely new token. Last year, you're working on put-ups right now with the team. Any timelines that you can share about when that's going to be coming out?

4:38Mati Staniszewski:I can't share any timelines, but of course, the season is starting soon and it's going to be down there. The audience is the brand of speed. We are the brand of speed, so it's a good match to make it quick and show the value to the users as soon as possible. You've always raised on these multiples of 11, like 11 billion 6.6, 0.3, 1.1. 1.1. Are you going to carry on this way? And what's next? Is it 22, 11 squared? 11 squared. 11 squared is the next goal. So it's going to be 21. No, it's, you know, it's, the kind of the real answer is we only bring money if we need it. In this case, we want to double down on agents.

5:18Mati Staniszewski:We want to build the best conversational models. You want to continue the international expansion and build local teams in both to market and engineer it at every market in the world, if we can accelerate those wins, we'll bring money on board. So the next valuation, if things are doing well, we'll be proxy of the capital we need and where we are from that business perspective. If it's 22 and we need a capital soon, great. If it's 121 and we IPO, also incredibly. Amazing. And let's talk about 11Asians. I want one specific use case that you are the most excited about. Always hard with one. So I'll give you two.

5:59Mati Staniszewski:Or maybe three. Very quick ones. You know, the one that's definitely the most adopted, the one that I'm excited from the commercial side, is the customer experience. It's, I mean, Revolut, Klarna, Deutsche Telekom are all examples of that. That's working, that's for the way back. The one that I'm excited for how all of our citizens can experience is the citizens' effort. Could all the governments, like Ukraine, have a central app where you can call in, get that voice experience, get that voice help, learn about what's happening in the country, get help with other programs that can call you back and get that information?

6:34Mati Staniszewski:Incredible. But I think three, the most impactful of all of them, less commercially, but probably most impactful for the level will be education. could all of us have a personal tutor a personal teacher that's available on the headphone and can teach us things when we need it i can imagine with their permission having albert einstein teaching you physics like you know how crazy everybody having their teachers for their lessons so when you study you can ask questions go deeper that's amazing one final question can europe build trillion dollar companies and can 11 labs become one of them you can build three on dollar companies from anywhere and I think with AI shift that's more possible than ever.

7:14Mati Staniszewski:Look we are shooting high. Of course if we, you know, I feel like our aspiration is to build your mission or come from land that will be there for the day 8th. If you are lucky to get to 121 we'll feel extremely lucky to get there. Of course the AI is the biggest shift in the world that has ever happened, we are having a chance of hitting. If we can go beyond that and get to the number you mentioned, well, that's beyond our imagination today, but hopefully we'll get there and we're full in in the grind mode to make it as big as possible. Amazingly, I'm reaching for you. Thank you so much. It's great to chat.

7:53Mati Staniszewski:Thanks for supporting the ecosystem and all we do with conversations with the founders telling the stories. My pleasure. Thank you.

8:05Thank you.