ElevenLabs runs its consumer apps as small pods that behave like separate startups, with a mobile team of about 12 people that is growing.
ElevenLabs prices its ElevenReader app by hours of listening rather than the credits and characters flagship users know, letting the team test more pricing and packaging.
Jack McDermott says ElevenLabs measures paid channels like Meta, TikTok and Google Ads incrementally rather than on day-six conversion, because the company is building a brand.
ElevenLabs bets speed and simple pricing win consumer voice apps
ElevenLabs runs its consumer apps as small, autonomous pods on top of its voice research, and bets that shipping speed beats polish. Using its own API makes the API better, and separate apps act as parallel labs for pricing and paywalls. As voice models commoditise, the edge comes from brand and an ecosystem users stay inside.
Takeaways
Building consumer apps makes ElevenLabs' API better. ElevenLabs sees itself as a research and product company that ships research through an API and through its own apps. Tanmay Jain argues that being the first best customer of your own API improves it. Small pods operate like 10 or 12 startups.
A second app doubles the pricing lab. ElevenReader, which turns uploaded PDFs into audio, got its own brand so ElevenLabs searches land on the right app. It prices by hours of listening instead of credits and characters, and both teams run parallel paywall experiments and swap notes.
Cutting a pricing tier was the biggest win. Jack McDermott stripped an entire tier and priced the consumer app by hours of content. Web pricing has upwards of five plans while mobile offers one price. Tanmay Jain warns a cheaper price cannot fix retention if users do not care.
Earned media compounds and branded search converts. Launches split into earned media moments and paid growth that must work month to month. Paid channels, from Meta to Apple Search Ads, are measured incrementally over weeks rather than on day-zero conversion, because ElevenLabs is building a brand people search for.
Speed is becoming the moat. The team trades polish for shipping, citing Brian Armstrong's line that action gets information. Copying ideas one-for-one has misled it. Hiring favors former founders and engineers whose side projects attack a real user pain, as headcount grows from 300 toward 400.
Find the product's natural shareable moment. Spotify Wrapped works because it makes passive listening shareable. ElevenLabs shows agent builders their hours of interaction, and readers post screenshots of voices like Michael Caine reading Dickens. Among 600-plus voices, none exceeds 10 or 12 percent of use.
An ecosystem defends against the model giants. Asked whether big model companies like OpenAI will absorb voice, Jack McDermott points to interlocking voice agents, evals, workflows and creator tools that deepen lock-in. Jacob Eiting argues advantages shift to the application layer as voice models commoditise.
How an ElevenLabs launch comes together
Start from a core value promise and write it as a Twitter thread.
Spend one to two weeks refining the story the launch leads with.
Tap a name to go there · tap a line to see why they are linked
On this episode 4
Show 1
Turn the thread into short-form video filmed by an in-house creator.
Ship on roughly a monthly cadence. Tanmay Jain's first launch came about six weeks after joining, against a twelve-month run-up and three months of messaging for a Canva video product.