00:55:34 · David Senra, Mati Staniszewski
[00:55:34] S0: No. I'm being serious. [00:55:36] S1: Taking the risk of not starting something, wasn't a common conversation ever happening. I had a lack of having an incredible family that gave me opportunity to study abroad and then that opened your eyes of like, okay, now you can work with some of the great companies. Then when you work with those great companies, they realize you can actually do things. Palantir was great for that for sure, where it's like, you can actually go and work with the customer, try to figure out the problem. That seemed very risky to me, but you can do that. So kind of step by step that opened the eyes of like, okay, maybe this is a path, maybe it is possible to start your own thing. [00:56:15] S0: The time you had that realization to the time you started ElevenLabs, what was the? [00:56:18] S1: So then as you kind of- Was it [00:56:20] S0: a year, two years? Like, what was it? [00:56:22] S1: So over my time at Palantir, my co founder is Piotr Dąbkowski, at Google, we would start doing a hack weekend projects together. So through the years, we tried to explore new technology and build together. I think a few years prior, we knew that we would love to work on something together, but you want to work something about that you like, you think it's a true problem and you're obsessed about. That came to us in 2021. So a few years, two years, two, three years. [00:56:48] S0: How many acquisition offers have you had? [00:56:51] S1: Like concrete ones, three or four. [00:56:53] S0: When's the last one?
00:56:53 · David Senra, Mati Staniszewski
[00:56:53] S0: When's the last one? [00:56:55] S1: Last one was last year, like June last year. [00:56:58] S0: You're gonna sell? No. The reason I ask you... [00:57:01] S1: AI is changing the world. We can build the frontier of that change. We are going all in. Mean, don't [00:57:10] S0: passionately pay attention to your VCs, dude. Incentives are different than yours. The reason I ask you is there's two reasons this came to mind. Some of this is like all intuition, you can't even describe this. But Evan Spiegel sat in that exact same chair that you're in. People gave me shit. They're like, Why do want to interview Evan? Look at his market cap. I like, I don't give a shit about his market cap. I don't look at companies that way. Obsessed with products. And like that dude has soul in the game. Like, and I hope he wins. I have no idea. Like, I I I don't know anything about, you know, just I don't use it. Like Snapchat, specs, anything, whatever it is. It's just like, he is differentiated. I did... There's just something about him that I like that I, like, just want him to work out well. Right? And so that... And I'm getting the same exact vibe. Was like, man, I want Mati to, like, win. I want him to succeed. There's just something very likable about you. And then the second reason is because, obviously, Scott Wu, he's he's coming on the show, like, every few months because I I really like Scott a lot. I'm just because he's genius. [00:58:03] S1: He's so so good as well.
00:58:03 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[00:58:03] S1: He's so so good as well. [00:58:04] S0: Well, yeah. But he's articulate and brilliant and optimistic, but everybody is running at that dude right now. Everybody, the amount of people that want to buy his company. This is something we talked about. I hope he holds out because I would like to see a lot more people just be like, No, I'm like in this forever. It's not just to get a big bag of money. Like go listen to Travis from Uber. You know, made billions and billions of dollars from Uber. And he's just like, That did not make me happy. I need something to work on. And see, that's why that's your question because I asked Scott that too. He's just like, well, there are obviously a ton of people trying to either get him or his entire company and all his talent. And he's just so far said, no, I'm not selling. [00:58:49] S1: Love Scott. I think they should build independent company too. Think they have an opportunity to be one of the hyper AIs of the future or however you call the hyper clouds of the future. I think he can do it. Have an incredible team and I think we can do it too. I think it's, you know, I really mean it. I think the opportunity that currently exists for entrepreneurs with the wider shift, the things haven't been written. It's such a good time to build I something think shows like [00:59:24] S0: this are really important because most of the podcasts are made by VCs. It's just like the content that entrepreneurs... [00:59:29] S1: It's The content that entrepreneurs It's self serving in many ways, I feel.
00:59:29 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[00:59:29] S1: It's The content that entrepreneurs It's self serving in many ways, I feel. [00:59:32] S0: Well, the content entrepreneurs are consuming are created by VCs. This is this is a weird thing [00:59:35] S1: to me. Yeah. [00:59:36] S0: And what I would say is just like the amount of fucking founders that I've talked to that have sold their company are like, shit. Like, it's like, I had something. It was going really well. They gave me a bunch of money. Now they tell me what to do. Was like, what did you think the money was for? Like, no one's just gonna give you a bunch of money and then you still retain the independence to do whatever you want. And then it's in all these freaking biographies from Ted Turner to like, there's just a million people that talk about it after the fact. And they got huge bags, billions and billions of bags. Like, I'd give the billions back if I could just have my company back. And listen, man, I think you're smart and driven, but highly likely, like ElevenLabs is probably the best idea you will ever have in your life. And you're how old? [01:00:13] S1: 31. [01:00:14] S0: Okay. So you're gonna sell your best idea at 31? You got four decades ahead of you. Maybe five. Yeah, but that's Hold on. And you're gonna work on your second, third, fourth, fifth best idea? Dude, the money's not worth it. It's not worth it. You're gonna get the money anyways. [01:00:26] S1: Well, you're convincing me. Somebody I'm already convinced of.
01:00:26 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[01:00:26] S1: Well, you're convincing me. Somebody I'm already convinced of. [01:00:29] S0: I know. But they all say this shit. The founders all say this, and it's, like, really hard when they're just like, dude, I'm a drop 50,000,000,000 on you. Like, it just... Numbers are getting crazy. So I understand why people do it. I'm not knocking them. I'm just saying I would like... I I... I'm very interested in entrepreneurs that there's no price. Like, again, I've repeated this over and over again. It's super important to understand. It's everybody's like, oh, if you love what you do, you do it for free. No, there's another level. If you love what you do, they couldn't pay you to stop. How much money would you have to give Steve Jobs and say, I'll give you 2,000,000,000,000, Steve, but you can't work on Apple. He'd say, go fuck yourself. There's not a dollar amount in the world that could stop him from doing that, and the world is better because he didn't stop doing it.
01:01:07 · Mati Staniszewski, David Senra
[01:01:07] S1: I'm with you there. Agree. Many people, I think, will say it. In our case, we had a lack of having acquisition offers which we turned on and that was not an option. Any of those acquisitions would, it's not 2,000,000,000,000, but they would have made life easy, of course. Think that in itself should never be an interesting proposition. Like you said, we do appreciate this is likely the best idea, the best timing to have that of lack of when it's all happened is such an incredible coincidence. I don't know how the world will look like in five to ten years. How will the universal high income piece and conversation come in? How the wider society will adopt the technology? How will you actually provide them? Like all of those questions are out there and I think they will be a big part. So of course the best thing that I think we can do for the world and for us is just to continue building. [01:02:06] S0: Did you read Scott Wu's piece in Colossus, the Colossus magazine? No. That's done by my friend Patrick? Yes. I'll text it to you right when we're done. You can put in 11. [01:02:16] S1: I'll listen to it on the way.