Venture with Grace
00:44:58 · Ashley Kramer
[00:44:58] S1: I think you sort of put the lead at the end there, which is like, you wanna be focused on the outcomes that they're looking to achieve. And the way I always look at it, whether it's the largest enterprise in the world or a mid market company that might become the next largest enterprise in the world because they all have that potential is not trying to boil the ocean. It's okay to have a North Star of like where you wanna take this transformation, but being able to focus on a single use case or workflow that can be truly transformational, partnering together on that. And sometimes we do it alone and direct with our team and our FTEs. Sometimes there's GSIs that already have established the relationship. And so we go in together with them because they know, okay, this is a great opportunity for ElevenLabs to come in and help this customer get to the next level from where they are. Sometimes it's being part of other solutions like value added resellers and allowing them to take our world class research and models and build specifically on top of that. And so the approach from my mind has always been an all, make sure, I mean, my main goal as CRO of ElevenLabs is to make sure that every business in the world can realize the value of what we bring when it comes to the interaction layer and conversational AI. And I'm not ignorant to the fact that I can't hire a 100,000 salespeople And there's a lot of other connections that exist between the different partners that we work with. And so we take an all approach and we wanna partner, we wanna go direct and we wanna be part of distribution models as well.
00:46:42 · Grace Gong
[00:46:42] S0: I love that. So I wanna touch upon the personal development side a little bit more, since I feel like you have becoming... You are a senior leader of your company. How do you think about ensembling the team, but also investing your time into... I wouldn't say training, but also put together the right team as well. So I guess, first of all, I think you also mentioned this in a different podcast, every three to four years you may switch to a new different position for new challenges. And then you would talk to the employee about, Hey, what is your goal? And then here's my goal as well. Let's help each other achieve the goals. So when you're thinking about planning out your own career journey, first of all, how do you understand what's your superpower since you have a lot of superpowers as you have worked at multiple different roles. So how do you think about what's your unfair advantage? And then what would you say is the active thing that you do when you're selecting the next company to join?
00:47:52 · Ashley Kramer
[00:47:52] S1: So for me, I think, I wouldn't call it a superpower, but it's kind of been just my mantra is like, very rarely say no to opportunities, particularly like within organizations, that's how I ended up with four C level titles at GitLab, is I'm always up for the unique challenge, but when you're holding roles like CMO and CTO at the same time, you've gotta make sure you have an incredible team around you. And I did have that benefit there, I have that benefit here. So for me, it's kind of funny, I was just thinking about this over the weekend. I think the most lessons I've learned is actually from leaders that I look at and think like, well, I never want to make somebody feel that way again, right? Like I never want somebody to come out of a meeting feeling like that. And so I've even had moments at this company where I'm trying to get to know the team, I move fast, I'm pretty direct, and I think that's for somebody that's not for others, but I find myself slowing down and pausing and saying like, okay, the intent behind the why behind why I'm asking this question is I'm a constant learner, and, you know, I've held all of these different roles because I never say no, but I also realize that you have to understand all of the people around you and they're not all just like you. We're not cookie cutters for a reason. And we all bring unique things to the table when it comes to skill sets, when it comes to just how we operate, how we feel, our emotions. And so the majority of time that I invest, of course, need to make sure I'm there to support the team and what they need and how they operate and how we're going to market and serving customers, but also how they feel when they go home at the end of the day. Because the one thing I'll say about the majority of companies that I've been with, and particularly for ElevenLabs is people come to this company because of the mission and the culture. There's low ego, everybody's extremely hardworking and we're in it for the good of the business as a whole, not for us individually, not for just our team, but for the good of how can we get this great technology, these great models and this great AgenTek platform to the world.
00:50:10 · Ashley Kramer
And I think too often leaders, and again, this is the learnings I've had from the past where I felt this way, which is do I make sure this is an environment that people continue thriving, feel good about their work, even when it's not the best of days? And even when it's not, I've certainly had situations where I'm like, boy, that was not my best work, but I need somebody to help bring me along and get me over that slump or whatever it is. And so that's how I try to stay true as a leader. I'm positive I'm not perfect. I try to call myself on it, I try to be the first one to call myself on it, but that's kind of a lead by example. And that's another thing I would say that the founders have done a really amazing job of at this company is just from the top down, having that very low ego, always learning and listening, but extremely hardworking and on an extremely important mission together. I love that.
00:51:08 · Grace Gong
[00:51:08] S0: I guess when you're thinking about your own day to day, so you mentioned about you would do a lot of thinking during the weekends. What's your... I guess, how do you think about what is the biggest things that you have to accomplish that week? How do you kind of mentally scheduling out your own personal milestone as well? Because sometimes it's really difficult to actually create some sort of KPI for yourself, especially at a place that ElevenLabs, which grows really fast. Maybe after a month or so, you already hit the goal that you set a few weeks ago. How do you reset yourself on, Oh, what is our new mission? Obviously, I guess, what would be... What is the, you mentioned about the culture's low ego, how do people really collaborate with each other as well to achieving these of
00:52:06 · Ashley Kramer
[00:52:06] S1: Yes, I think for me, particularly, like I'm only a little over a month in this role. And so like the number one most important thing for me was understanding what are the business priorities, right? Like what from our founders and from the business, the board, the executive team, where do we wanna be in a quarter? Where do we wanna be in a year? I think in AI, it's pretty hard to go beyond like a year. I got asked on stage once where we're gonna be with AI in five years. And I laughed and said, If anybody answers that for you, they're wrong. You've got a question that... Nobody knows this. But you can look out a year, you can look out a quarter and understanding, okay, these are the goals that we have as a business and as a company to better serve our customers, then I back into them. And so, being new in the role, it was a lot of like understanding where the team is and where they think our priorities need to be. I just asked all of them in a survey directly, Give me advice, what should I focus on? And then of course I used AI to collaborate and all the I got my nice bar chart of what everybody thinks. And so that gives me like internal intent and signal. Then there's the data analysis. It's easy for me to look at our revenue and know where we are tracking to target, but you have to really dig deep to understand where the growth is coming from. And if there are any issues, where that's coming from and which different parts of the world are performing and which different verticals. And so there's the data exercise of it. And then there's, we've talked about this a lot, but the customer side of it too, like how are they feeling as far as us being a partner? And then I bring that all together. I actually, it's a timely time to, or it's timely for this question on, I think it was yesterday or maybe it was on Friday, I sent out the Q4 revenue strategy to the team and it had three top level things that we're gonna focus on together, I, and then three KRs under each. I was the owner of several of them. This is experiment. So for some of them, I think they're important enough, I'll roll up my sleeves, I'll take them on as the KR owner. I was informed by those based on all three of those, and of course, Mati and his company goals, and we'll track progress against those.