Inside The Pipeline: B2B Sales and GTM
00:14:20 · S2, Oscar Lanzendorf, Tris Tusa
[00:14:20] S2: Yeah. 100%. And you've got all these sort of different product lines and the company, as you said at the beginning of the conversation, is growing rapidly. How do the founders and the leadership team make sure that everyone has a sort of not singular focus, but very narrow focus as to what you guys are trying to achieve as a company? As as you guys grow, how do you go about doing that? [00:14:41] S1: I think we... I mean, we have an exceptional team of, like, you know, early employees and people that have been building and shaping this. You mentioned one before, Luke. Carlos is another one, force of nature. I think it's a mix of a, having high ownership. Everyone that is, like, joining has massively high ownership and has an extreme drive. So we work crazy hours. We really are experimenting a lot until things work. And I think that mixed with, like, a good synchronization between every different department gets people aligned, and this alignment is what kind of, like, allowed for this growth. [00:15:17] S0: And how do you how do you align yourselves? I know there's been a lot made of the fact that you guys are pretty much a fully remote team. I know you have hubs in different locations, but how do you create that alignment remotely?
00:15:17 · Tris Tusa, Oscar Lanzendorf
[00:15:17] S0: And how do you how do you align yourselves? I know there's been a lot made of the fact that you guys are pretty much a fully remote team. I know you have hubs in different locations, but how do you create that alignment remotely? [00:15:29] S1: Yeah. We reflect that on every single hire that we do. So we have an extremely high bar. We recently, like, I think we shared this. It's harder to get into Harvard Yeah. Except by YC than to get a job at ElevenLabs. And why do we do that actually? Because we believe that, you know, adding not so good players into the equation is gonna dilute our team immediately. And everyone that is joining is at the highest level possible and wants to be even better. Yeah. So everyone in the team wants to be a bar raiser amongst bar raisers by default. This is one thing. The second thing is ownership. You don't need to tell people to wake up early or to do a certain thing when you know that, listen, you got your KPIs. You have to just deliver on time. You don't have to tell them like things, you know, they will do it, they will figure it out. And this is amazing. I mean, really a company that is built with the people around it, because there's so many like builders within us, they're very founder driven or very operational. They just improve the processes. So if you really invest a lot into the hiring moment and you don't hire everyone and you're just very selective, you're gonna bring in people that are gonna build the company for you. [00:16:35] S0: What are the big goals for ElevenLabs over the next five to ten years?
00:16:35 · Tris Tusa, Oscar Lanzendorf
[00:16:35] S0: What are the big goals for ElevenLabs over the next five to ten years? [00:16:41] S1: It's very simple. We wanna be either directly or indirectly be put into the hands of everyone in the world, be it through our own products or be it indirectly through another product that someone is using. [00:16:52] S0: And it's so interesting because actually, when we... About a couple of minutes ago, we were talking about, like, the use cases and and actually the quite unsexy thing of, you know, assistant basically for voice agents. But what I think you'd got... Guys have done really cleverly is have the sexy people like Matthew McConaughey, who has one of the most famous voices in the [00:17:12] S1: whole world, to create ElevenLabs into this sort of, like, beautiful thing. Who was behind Matthew McConaughey, and how did that come about? So Matthew McConaughey was an... Was actually an early investor. We just recently disclosed this. It's it's the network that ElevenLabs basically brings with us, and it's the amazing technology. And I think if you have a great technology and you have a good network, people will automatically wanna be talking to you. We have a very strong partnerships team behind this as well, and obviously very charismatic founders that are very good at, you know, pitching the product and building that relationship. So it's a mix of both. And you know how it is in life and in the startup world when you're doing something great, doors just automatically open.
00:17:12 · Oscar Lanzendorf, Tris Tusa
[00:17:12] S1: whole world, to create ElevenLabs into this sort of, like, beautiful thing. Who was behind Matthew McConaughey, and how did that come about? So Matthew McConaughey was an... Was actually an early investor. We just recently disclosed this. It's it's the network that ElevenLabs basically brings with us, and it's the amazing technology. And I think if you have a great technology and you have a good network, people will automatically wanna be talking to you. We have a very strong partnerships team behind this as well, and obviously very charismatic founders that are very good at, you know, pitching the product and building that relationship. So it's a mix of both. And you know how it is in life and in the startup world when you're doing something great, doors just automatically open. [00:17:53] S0: If you had to choose one other voice globally to have like Matthew McConaughey as part of ElevenLabs, who would you choose? [00:18:02] S1: Me, personally? You have a [00:18:03] S0: great voice as well. [00:18:04] S1: Thank you. It's available on ElevenLabs, actually. [00:18:07] S0: Is it? [00:18:08] S1: Yeah. It is. It is. It's it's called Oscar. [00:18:10] S0: Yeah. You you personally, though. Who would who would you choose? [00:18:13] S1: I would probably choose Christian Bale, but in the Batman voice. Yes. Yes. Because complimentary also to Michael to Michael Caine. You know? So... Yeah.
00:18:13 · Oscar Lanzendorf, Tris Tusa, S2
[00:18:13] S1: I would probably choose Christian Bale, but in the Batman voice. Yes. Yes. Because complimentary also to Michael to Michael Caine. You know? So... Yeah. [00:18:24] S0: And and and how does it feel for you guys, obviously, another European company who's making waves in the AI space? Is that something that's at the heart of the company? I know, obviously, your founders are from Poland, very old school friends. How does that root itself throughout the culture? [00:18:40] S1: Well, obviously, we're very proud to be such a successful company in that space and coming from Europe. And I think... Yeah. No. It's a thing we're very bullish about. We we we like that very much, and we wanna be one of the names when you think about startups and unicorns coming from Europe, and we hope that we inspire the ecosystem with that. [00:18:58] S2: I I really, really hope that we've sorted ourselves out enough whereby when you IPO, you do it here. But, obviously, we can't get into that. Yeah. So I think one thing that I wanted to know about you specifically was, obviously, we just touched on the fact that it's incredibly difficult to get a job at ElevenLabs. What what was your motivation for joining, and what was the process like when trying to get a job there?
00:19:24 · Oscar Lanzendorf, Tris Tusa
[00:19:24] S1: Yep. I So was making a switch. Basically, I was more in the VC side of things. And I personally was like, alright. I either wanna found a company or I wanna join a company that is super great. You know? And I was speaking with a couple of startups, and I remember one of them that was very well backed by good and reputable VCs was telling me Oscar, I think your skills are very good. You're just not a good fit for it what we are doing. And I was thinking to myself, you're absolutely spot on. I have no association with your product at all. And I wouldn't have even been happy if I would have gotten a term sheet. And I was like reevaluating and I was like thinking, all right, what was the most happiest time in my life? It was when I was a founder, I founded myself basically like an ephemeral voice messaging service like Snapchat, but for voice. That was super interesting. I loved creating music. I think music is such an interesting space. I loved hearing books rather than reading books. And I always like to communicate. And then I was like, wow, what company is doing AI audio? ElevenLabs is doing that. I need to get into ElevenLabs. Yeah. And that was then like, the the moment where I was like, alright, this is the only company I'm gonna apply and I wanna get into it. And, yeah, here we are. [00:20:28] S0: So... And what did that application process look like from the point that you sent them your CV or connected with someone?