The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:00:00 · Carles Reina
[00:00:00] S0: We ask everyone to bring 20 times their base salary. That's your quota, right? So if I pay you 100 ks a year, your quota is $2,000,000 If you don't achieve your quota, then you're gonna be out, right? And we're ruthless on that end. When I see my sales team in the office multiple days, I start getting worried. Because, like, if you're a salesperson, you need to be on the road. When you join ElevenLabs, you need to have signed your first contract within the first two weeks. Salespeople need to be on their toes all the time, and they need to be told.
00:00:27 · Harry Stebbings
[00:00:27] S1: This is 20 Sales with me, Harry Stebbings. Now stay, we have the best 20 Sales episode that we have ever done. Carles Reina is the VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, where he has scaled the revenue org to over 330,000,000 in just three years. He's also a phenomenal investor with investments in the likes of Revolut, Happy Robot, Nothing, and More. This was probably one of the most granular but also insightful sales episodes we've done. Carles does not pull any punches. Get your notebooks out. This was one of my favorites to record. But before we dive into the show today, a quick shout out to a company I've been genuinely blown away by and have been tracking closely, Rox. I've been watching this team closely and the speed they're operating at and the level of applied AI talent they've assembled, it's honestly remarkable. Rox is pioneering revenue agents for the global 2,000, plugged into your data warehouse and CRM, and delivering board level ROI in just ninety days. These sales and revenue agents handle the end to end sales process for large enterprises from research prep to deal risk, outreach, and opportunity management. So sellers spend more time with customers and less time in tools. This isn't another productivity app. Christ, we've all had enough of those. Rocks gives reps a single interface on top of their GTM stack powered by a knowledge graph across your internal and external data. So if you wanna boost AE productivity, increase revenue per rep, and consolidate your stack, try Rox at rox.com slash sign up. And speaking of great companies, we have to talk about Monaco. For years, I've watched some of the best founders and early go to market teams struggle with sales. Too many CRMs, too many point solutions, too much manual work. Well, that changes with Monaco. Monaco replaces your legacy CRM and fragmented sales stack with a single AI native platform. Monaco's agents automatically build and score your entire TAM, layer in real time signals, create and run out outbound sequences, schedule calls, and record and transcribe meetings. Your pipeline practically manages itself. Monaco creates reminders, drafts follow-up emails for you, and keeps deals moving forward. So means more meetings, higher conversion rates, and faster revenue growth.
00:02:45 · Harry Stebbings
If you're an early stage startup, tired of duct taping sales tools together, and looking to grow revenue faster, check out Monaco at monaco.com. While Monaco runs your sales pipeline, Framer runs your website. A website should help your business grow, not slow it down. If updates to your .com feel harder than they should, Framer is the shortcut you've been looking Framer is an enterprise grade, no code website builder that works like your team's favorite design tool and is used by companies like Perplexity, Miro, Mixpanel to move faster. Designers and marketers can fully own the site with real time collaboration, a robust CMS built for SEO, and advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing. So you're not just shipping pages, but you're maximizing what works. And when you're ready to ship, changes go live in seconds with one click. Publish without relying on engineering. Plus, Framer is built for scale with premium hosting, enterprise grade security, and 99.99% uptime SLAs. Whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com. Framer has programs for startups, scale ups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site fast. Learn how you can get more out of your .com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/20vc for 30% off. 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/20vc for 30% off. Framer.com/20vc. Rules and restrictions may apply. You have now arrived at your destination. Carles, it is fantastic to have you on the show, dude. I've heard so many good things, mostly from Matti, but thank you so much for joining me today, man.
00:04:26 · Carles Reina, Harry Stebbings
[00:04:26] S0: Thank you so much for having me here. It's fantastic. [00:04:28] S1: Dude, I wanna start with, you were VP of product back in the early days, and now in the sales world, that is a big transition. How do you think about moving from product to sales, and what have been your biggest lessons when you reflect on that? [00:04:43] S0: I've actually done everything. I've done like, I was VP of Operations for another AI company. Like, we built it from zero to like a unicorn. Then I moved to product, and then ended up like moving to sales, and then sales again. So I've done the full, like, all of the different kind of roles that you could do except engineering. [00:05:00] S1: When did you realize you loved sales? [00:05:02] S0: I think when I was doing operations, I kinda was seeing all of the guys doing sales, I was like, Shit, I can do this much better. And that's the moment I started thinking, I wanna do sales. Wanna do sales. So I started getting closer to customers, and then I realized that is my area. But when you work in a startup in the early days, nothing really matters. The only thing that you care about is how do you get to the next milestone. Right? So whether you do ops, product, like sales, everything is kinda enmesh in reality. [00:05:27] S1: Was there a moment there where you're like, this is what I'm destined to do. Like, I'm a sales leader. Yeah.
00:05:27 · Harry Stebbings, Carles Reina
[00:05:27] S1: Was there a moment there where you're like, this is what I'm destined to do. Like, I'm a sales leader. Yeah. [00:05:33] S0: So when like, there was a company that came out of EF called Sonantic that was doing AI voices back in the early days. So I ended up building the entire go to market site for them. And that's when I realized like, okay, this is what I want to be doing going forward. But then one of my friends, like Felipe from Job and Talent, called me one day saying, Hey, I want to rebuild the entire product stack. Would you join me? There's going be a very good challenge. I was like, Okay, fine, let's do it. And then that's when I changed. But I realized, product, I love it. I did it for a year and a half. Was It fantastic. Like, I built the entire product that, like, now they've pivoted to that product and it's doing super well. But I realized, like, I wanna be talking to customers all the time. I wanna actually sell them. Like, the rush that you get when you close a deal is insane. It's insane. And and I absolutely love it. [00:06:18] S1: Tell me, how did you first come to meet Matti? Because you invested as well. You're the, like, first round investor.
00:06:18 · Harry Stebbings, Carles Reina
[00:06:18] S1: Tell me, how did you first come to meet Matti? Because you invested as well. You're the, like, first round investor. [00:06:24] S0: Yes. At 5,000,000 valuation, pre seed. So I met Matti through a common friend, Paolo. We used to work together at Tractable AI back in the day. He messaged me one day being like, Hey, have this friend. We used to work together at BlackRock. He's thinking something about AI voices and so on. I have no idea, but you've been in that space. Do you want to talk to him? I was like, Absolutely. And then that's when I met Matti, and within thirty minutes of the first conversation, I was like, I'm all in. How much money do you want? And I will introduce you to my friends. And that was pretty much it. [00:06:54] S1: How much did you put in? [00:06:55] S0: I put in 20 k. 20 k? [00:06:58] S1: Yes. Have you kept it all? [00:06:59] S0: I sort of a tiny, tiny portion through one of the secondaries, but it's that tiny portion. [00:07:05] S1: What is 20 k worth now? [00:07:07] S0: It's probably like... It's it's like 800 k in returns. So that's probably like, what, $616,000,000, something like that? Not bad. Oh. But you've done much better. So... No. I haven't [00:07:19] S1: had that multiple. I haven't had that multiple. That is fucking phenomenal. [00:07:23] S0: It's good. But, like, it's it's it's been good. [00:07:25] S1: When was that moment when you're like, holy shit. I've just gotta join this rocket ship?