Inside ElevenLabs GTM: Speed, culture, and growth

0:00The biggest difference is everything we do, we move extremely fast. And sometimes it's not perfect, and we know that, but we move super fast. And the speed, the speed is so important at the moment. Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show, a podcast by SaaS.com. Here, we interview SaaS founders from around the world who've been there and done that. They share the ins and outs of how they built their businesses, their operations, their path for securing investment, and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your well-being, and navigate the complexities of this ever-changing industry.

0:38I'm your host, Alex Dima, and together we'll explore the good, the bad, and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. All right, I'm Alex Dima, CEO and founder of SaaStock. I'm here live at SaaStock Europe, joined by Jean Chimouni, who's GTM at 11 Labs. And John, I thought this was your first SaaS talk, but it's not. You've been here a few times with some different companies, right? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, hi, Alex. And yes, no, it's not my first SaaS talk. I've been here quite some times, actually. I came here with three different companies, Intercom, Latice, and now Eleven Labs. So I know pretty well SaaS talk.

1:16As I told you, for me, it's an iconic event. I'm from Dublin. I'm French, obviously, but live in Dublin. And yeah, love this event. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming. Obviously, we have some of the 11 Labs team here as well. I know you've been participating in the new program and meetup. How have the meetings gone for you? Love that. Love the energy. It's 15 minutes, so straight to the point. We meet great people. And yes, so far, excellent. So I said before we were recording, your colleague Stan, who I believe hired you at Intercom, is now working together with you at 11 Labs. He gave some high acclaim in terms of the things that you're doing.

1:54and specifically, obviously, in GTM around AI and this kind of new playbook. So this is obviously really where I want to pick your brains or just let you speak and tell me and the audience in terms of what you're doing. I think most people know 11 Labs, but this is a big assumption. But you guys are in the news a lot, and certainly in the social media feeds. I just hit 200 million ARR. There's a very quick jump from 100 to 200. and obviously some of the things that you're doing and the company are doing are leading to that. Maybe just a quick sentence in terms of what 11 Labs is, what it does for those that don't know, and then we maybe can jump into this new AI playbook and the things that you're doing, experimenting with.

2:38Yeah, for sure. So 11 Labs, if you're not familiar with the company, if I would have to explain super as it is the voice of technology, what we want to do is to bring the world knowledge, the best stories and all the experience with AI, with audio AI. I'll give you one example. We work with influencers on YouTube. They use our technology to develop their channel. But we also work with bigger companies like Deutsche Telekom to create a new immersive experience. It can be for customer support. It can be for sales with the agent. But also we work with companies using us for dubbing. We work with companies using us for voiceover, for SFX, and also recently we launched a new model for music.

3:26I don't know if you managed to catch the Nathan Latker talk yesterday, but I did mention that you guys just hit or passed 200 million, but he showed this kind of graph of your ARR, and I don't know, it was like this, and that journey certainly to 200 million has really exploded very quickly. I don't know what the time has been between 100 to 200. I think it was 10 months. 10 months, okay. But it's a very rapid growth. And so what we're seeing, the AI native companies are growing, many of them are growing much faster than the classical SaaS that took. Some of the examples, in fact, today, I think Sam Jacobs from Pavilion showed, like Slack was at one point the fastest growing SaaS company, but it took them 24 months to get to 50 million ARR.

4:10You guys are crushing it at the moment. You have this new AI playbook. what are the things that you're doing to really help with this explosive crazy growth yeah um so i think i mean the numbers are super amazing i was super proud yesterday when i was attending to the to the presentation of net and latke it was it was great to see uh to see that he mentioned 11 labs i think it's multiple things explaining that the first thing is the team behind 11 labs and the models that our research team developed just amazing models to clone the voice to create text to speech, speaks to text. I think the team behind is just amazing.

4:46But having a great technology is not just good enough. What you need also is having the right team behind. And so, of course, the GTM team. But I would say at Eleven Labs, it's all the people working at Eleven Labs that are really amazing. It's the way we recruit as well. It's a part and it's one of the components of the success of Eleven Labs. We raise a bar in the way we recruit the people. It's also, I think part of the culture of 11 Labs, you know, we don't have any job titles. So people are really surprised when I'm working with my GTM, you know, function. They don't understand what is GTM.

5:21And this is the thing is we are all part of one single thing is developing 11 Labs and providing, you know, great value to our customers. So this is this mindset also that explains why we're moving so fast. There is a high intensity because we're all super excited about what we build. and just to be more specific in terms of GTM also the way we work and this is what we discussed in intro we don't try to duplicate the whole playbook but we try not to invent the wheel but we try to move super fast on how we work and we're coming with new ideas we try to innovate all the times 11 Labs, for example me I created the self-development labs at 11 Labs where basically I try to innovate with new way to get pipeline what was uh so so you don't really have it's kind of like a flatter org uh a lot of your gtm leads what was your title uh before in your previous job uh to now going to gtm lead was there any like also like apprehension for you like i was this and now i'm just going to be a gtm lead how that impacts my career yeah it's a really good question so before before joining 11labs i was a head of sales for international at atlatis and actually i would say that the job title is is a distraction for you uh if you are only joining 11 labs because of a job title a fancy job title okay i'm senior director blah blah blah it's you are missing the point it's it's not about that we are looking for people who want to build with us and it makes a difference on on the results that you will get from them and and that's why you are all gtm in the sales organization uh stan is gtm and GTM, any SDR is GTM or all GTM.

7:03And that's great because the way we interact, you know, you don't think twice when you want to Slack, for example, someone in a normal company will be a VP, for example. And I think it makes a difference. And also when you prospect because people, they don't know who you really are with the GTM, they reply to your emails. So it's a good tip. You mentioned the sales development lab. And I want to dig into that. But are like yourself, Stan or the GTM leads are you working on like specific ideas and projects like individually is there teamwork around specific projects how does that work with all these GTM yeah totally so just to give you also an idea some context about that we Stan for example was a founder I was a founder myself it's part of the DNA of the people joining us they work for early stage startup or they founded a company and the thing is you have to see us like a startup within the startup and to give you a real example i developed the aisdr at 11 labs basically i identified that yeah we can be better we can we can be more efficient on the way uh we we we manage the inbound leads so i created with the 11 labs agents i created an agent that can help me to qualify in real time so it was one of my project came with that worked with some people in the team and i created this and we have great results would it be did you look when you were creating this to see if there is actually anything in the market that you can just buy this off the shelf rather than building it it's i'm very lucky because we have the best technology on the market when it's about the voice so i always try to to use our own technology um give you another example when we launched 11 v3 which is the most realistic model on the market i started to play with it and to send audio message with this model with a clone of my voice to my leads and the message was hey alex wanted to invite you to a demo but actually hey you are already experiencing the demo because this is a clone of my voice so every time i try to show the value of our products you know when i when i prospect someone so the kind of thing that that we do do you think then this is this is a big part of the or key to the success around the gtm 11 labs that you are let's say dog fooding and that many other companies should be doing the same with their products certainly if they can if they can for example me in the past atletis it was more complicated you know to do that so if you can of course you have to do it when i worked at intercom is what we we were doing as well using our own technology just to prospect um i think is what what is important is to be so easy to recruit people from great you know companies that we all know super successful in in sas and just say okay just apply the playbook you are successful when you work for this company just do the same but it doesn't work and in this new world of ai it doesn't work at all so i'm not saying that we have to reinvent the wheel but i'm saying that we have to try new things you probably remember a couple of years ago five years ago we were all with a starbucks cup with your name you know on it it's over you do that it doesn't work anymore yeah so we have to find a new ways and we know that it's not going to last forever it's to be honest it's four six months most of the time and then you have to find new ideas and this is something that i asked to my team i organized an offsite recently in varso with all of them and I told them, bring me ideas that on the purpose are a little bit crazy.

10:21You know, I want that. And yes, I know that some of them are not going to work, but that's fine. I want to try new things. And it's also a way to, you know, it's extremely saturated at the moment. I'm sure you receive so many phone calls, outbound calls and emails and you don't read that. So how we can be innovative with that using new channels, using new types of message, but also connecting with you personally. I think the time where we were behind the screen, I think it's over. And Sastalk is a good example. It's meeting our leads, you know, face-to-face makes a difference. So this is what we do at 11am.

10:57It definitely makes a difference. So you shared there, obviously, and I've heard this a lot this year, in the era of AI, it's becoming more important to meet people in person. It's a channel that's, I guess, kind of working for you and I think many other companies. What are some maybe new or surprising channels that are kind of working well for you guys? So what I'm going to share with you depends a lot of your market, of course. If you are listening to us in Germany, it would be very different, or in the US. But for example, WhatsApp in some countries in Europe works incredibly well. If people don't reply to the phone, they will reply on WhatsApp, which is great.

11:39So WhatsApp, SMS works really well. something that we that we do also is audio message using our own technology of text to speech so i will be able to send messages on linkedin with variables of your name using my clone voice something that works really well are you seeing any so like we're obviously doing a podcast i know that you have the ability to translate podcasts and we're talking about that and it'd be interesting to see if we adapt this podcast to the well because we have a global audience right into other languages and understand the complexity or not around doing that. Are you seeing podcasts out there which are just kind of clones of the podcast host, which are just like agents talking to agents?

12:25Is that there yet? Do you think this is going to take on? Maybe. I mean, every day I discover new use cases, you know. But just on the point about translating your podcast, something in terms of accessibility, 80 % of the world don't speak English. So meaning that you, if you want to increase your reach, just translating a podcast will be a great start already. Is it easy to do? It's quite easy to do. It's just a couple of clicks and you can do it. Okay, there we go. I have to speak to Chloe. Let's do it. So one of the things in terms of what we spoke about or you talked about, let's say in terms of the dog fooding side of things, that obviously you have the capability to do this and not every company is going to be able to necessarily do that.

13:14Around the structure, and again, maybe getting back to everybody having the GTM sort of title, do you think this will translate well to a lot of AI native companies or SaaS companies that are going to AI first to rethink their organizations in this way? or do you think it's quite specific to certain organizations and their culture? It's something that I see very often. If you discuss with people at, let's say, OpenAI or Anthropic, they're all GTM, for example, sales team. So I think there is this new era of no job titles that's just focused on our business and they grow the company. And the past where it was, okay, I'm SDR, then I will be account executive, then senior account executive.

14:02it's over, I think. And you mentioned, obviously, you use 11 Labs in the sales development labs and some other use cases. What are non-11 Labs AI tools that you're using in your GTM? So many, so many. But one that I really love, and I hear this one all the time on your podcast and everywhere, it's Granola AI. Yeah. Granola. And just, for example, for the meetings here, I was with my iPhone using Granola. it works really well so really love granola of course like everybody we use a lot chat gpt for personalization preparation of meetings and and you know it's something that we use a lot and then i would say ai is almost everywhere when you are using i don't know gong or other tools it's yeah is everywhere but yeah i would say the number one tool for me at the moment as we speak it's definitely granular.

14:55We use Fathom, but actually I don't know, I haven't looked into it. I'm only using Fathom to record our video meetings, but I did hear obviously on the podcast when I was speaking to a CEO that actually beyond video meetings, you can record meetings and have the same sort of use case. So I need to kind of look into whether we can do that for Fathom. I'm sure it's possible. I'm sure it's very possible. And like with what I've heard a lot, and not only just at Sassock sort of Europe this year, but throughout the year, is that distribution is it's becoming harder. But it's the key thing that a lot of people are trying to crack.

15:40Right. So in your guys case, obviously, you've got the GTM structure. You've got all the projects that you're doing, the things to kind of help grow the business. is there anything that you're doing that would say like more classically like content marketing and distribution that again it's just proven that it works it doesn't have to be that yeah no we do as I told you we don't run the wheel and we do what every company is doing I think the biggest difference is everything we do we move extremely fast and sometimes it's not perfect and we know that but we move super fast and the speed is so important at the moment.

16:21We are in a world where everything should be instant and immediate. So everything that we do, we try to move super fast. How does the CEO, Matty, or just the company instill this urgency, the speed in everyone? Does it come through just at that point of hiring, making sure that you're just hiring the right people, but to instill the rhythm? because I'm sure many companies struggle collectively as a whole just to kind of keep that speed up to get everybody moving at a certain pace. And it's tough. But how do you guys do it? Yeah, two things. I mean, the way I see it is the people that we recruit, as I told you, founders are used to this fast-paced environment.

17:06This is the first thing. Second thing is we are all passionate about the mission of 11 Labs. We are the voice of the technology. and because we work like a small startup within the startup, we move super fast. There is no need of five approval when you want to do something, we move fast and it makes a difference. Small teams, multiple teams, but small teams all the time. What do you think for, let's say, SaaS companies that are moving to AI first, their biggest challenge around GTM is going to be, let's say, over the next 12 months. What could be the biggest challenge? What is something that they really need to be doing?

17:45I think it's a lot about the recruitment, recruiting the right talents. Something that we do at 11.0 that, for me, explains also the success of the GTM team is we don't recruit, for example, many companies in Dublin. They only recruit in Dublin. We are a remote company. And if there is a great talent, let's say in Barcelona, that's not a problem at all. We will recruit this talent in Barcelona. and it helps also having a team that is very diverse but also finding the best talent where they are. I think it's super important and one of my recommendations if you want to create this kind of team it's having a remote company helps a lot.

18:25At least at Elevina it works really well. Awesome. What is the next project that you've got? So you've done sales development labs. what's the next thing that you're kind of working on that you're able to kind of share that you're excited about? Personally, I'm super excited about AI GTM. So how we can go deeper into this AI motion. The thing is not to replace human, don't get me wrong. The thing is really how we can amplify, you know, the reps. So we are doing it with SDR. But when you think about it, it could work also with the account executive, could work also with the CSM. And I'm super excited about that because it can help us moving faster and every time when we do that, you understand with dog fooding, is also we are selling 11 Labs in some way.

19:09So I'm very excited about that. I think the next six months, it will be all about the IGTM just for the organization. And just in terms of 11 Labs, yes, we have many surprises for you for sure. Okay, well, I look forward to the surprises. I'm also going to be speaking to Chloe about translating this podcast, maybe even this episode, into many other languages. Thank you so much, John, for joining us on the podcast today. being at SassTalk Europe once again. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Sass Revolution Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and follow the show.

19:48It helps more Sass and AI founders to discover the podcast and keeps us bringing you the leaders who are shaping the future of the industry. For more insights and to join the SassTalk community, head to sasstalk.com. Oh