Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
00:42:14 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:42:14] S2: That's a really good question. I think for me, it's an early stage role because that's where ElevenLabs is at the moment. But I think even at the mid stage company, there are always ad hoc projects or almost as if you a chief of staff is like a SWAT team. So you can throw them at a specific thing that isn't going well and they will figure it out. At Palantir before I was functioning kind of as a chief of staff and Palantir is at 3,000 people, but it's still possible like within the sub organizations to have a need for that type of role. But I do think that the growth path of someone that joins early as a chief of staff can be to a COO role? And definitely for most of the things that I am setting up at the moment, the plan is to hire someone for finance, hire someone for talent and hire someone for compliance. [00:43:06] S1: It's very similar to my days at one eight hundred GOT JUNK when I was the chief operating officer. My my first two or three years, I was probably more chief of staff because none of the business areas even existed. I had to build out every single business area. I came in as employee number 14. I left with 3,100. And then by the time I was at that third, then I was COO, but it was a very different role than the early days. It's why it's super intriguing to me. So, all right, What was it like going from a big organization like a Palantir to an Eleven? Why did you make that jump? And what did the CEO see in you that made him realize that you weren't gonna be this corporate bureaucratic, you know, research researcher?
00:43:49 · Victoria Weller
[00:43:49] S2: Yeah. The reason I wanted to leave Palantir is because I wanted a faster pace. I think out of big tech corporations, Palantir is probably the fastest. But after being there for almost four years, I feel like I had figured out the system and I kind of knew where the bar was and how to just slightly exceed it with limited, more limited speed. Yeah. And so I was looking for something that's that's just quicker and maybe even higher pressure. And I'm still at a point in my life where I want to put my career first rather than comfort first. And so I realized that an early stage startup is where I can both operate faster, but also do this thing that I love where I get thrown at something that I have no idea about and then figure it out and operationalize it. And then it's fixed quickly. And then I found ElevenLabs because the CEO is actually also a Palantirian. He had left almost a year before me to start ElevenLabs. So I knew about its inception from even before it was incorporated. I knew Matti from Palantir days and had been following ElevenLabs. And then when ElevenLabs launched in February and it was a huge success, we caught up and spoke about the needs, the operational needs of the company at that moment. And I came with some ideas for each of those. And we had a few conversations around that. And I think both that plus knowing many of the people that I worked with and speaking to them about it was what convinced him that I'm not bureaucratic corporate worker. And I think that has proven successful as well. I think one of the best consequences of it is that there's a lot of trust between the CEO and me from knowing each other from the previous workplace as well, knowing each other outside of this role. And I think that is something that really helps or accelerated the ability for the two of us to work together productively from the very beginning.
00:46:05 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:46:05] S1: That's incredible. Did I hear you right, though, that Eleven only started in February? Was that February of this year or February of last year? [00:46:12] S2: February of this year, we launched the product publicly in beta. Okay. And it was incorporated a year earlier. So the the CTO and the CEO started it in 2022 And and we're developing the model until it was released in February of this year, and then launched super successfully and now has over millions of users on the B2C side. And we exited Beta in August of this year. [00:46:41] S1: Yeah. It's a ridiculously fast start. Yes. You've raised money. I think you raised 20,000,000 and a $100,000,000 valuation. When you're when you're raising 20, it doesn't even matter if that's pre or post money valuation. It's still... It's... That's a hell of a raise. What what did the what did the investors see and and why... And how are you using the money? Then how did it change the company?
00:46:41 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:46:41] S1: Yeah. It's a ridiculously fast start. Yes. You've raised money. I think you raised 20,000,000 and a $100,000,000 valuation. When you're when you're raising 20, it doesn't even matter if that's pre or post money valuation. It's still... It's... That's a hell of a raise. What what did the what did the investors see and and why... And how are you using the money? Then how did it change the company? [00:47:03] S2: Yeah. It it it did happen super fast. In fact, there was a pre seed round when they started the company and then skipped the seed round straight to series A of this year. And I think what the investors thought, to put it bluntly, they saw the numbers. They saw how much users were loving this and how much it could uptake in just a few months. Like it was probably the fastest growing company in the world for a while of this year. And so that is already something that's convincing to the investors. But I think there's also an atmosphere shift from when ElevenLabs was first incorporated and it was maybe a little bit harder to raise money in the pre seed round to the world we are in 2023, where the potential upside of AI is so much more prevalent and something that investors are seeking out and realizing as well.
00:47:03 · Victoria Weller, Cameron Herold
[00:47:03] S2: Yeah. It it it did happen super fast. In fact, there was a pre seed round when they started the company and then skipped the seed round straight to series A of this year. And I think what the investors thought, to put it bluntly, they saw the numbers. They saw how much users were loving this and how much it could uptake in just a few months. Like it was probably the fastest growing company in the world for a while of this year. And so that is already something that's convincing to the investors. But I think there's also an atmosphere shift from when ElevenLabs was first incorporated and it was maybe a little bit harder to raise money in the pre seed round to the world we are in 2023, where the potential upside of AI is so much more prevalent and something that investors are seeking out and realizing as well. [00:47:57] S1: All right. This could go on for days because I'm so intrigued with the space with you as a leader. We've got to wrap up. I'll ask you kind of my one standard question. What advice would you give to the 21 or 22 year old Victoria? You know, maybe she's just heading off to do her or just finishing her undergraduate degree. What advice would you give yourself that you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known back then?
00:47:57 · Cameron Herold, Victoria Weller
[00:47:57] S1: All right. This could go on for days because I'm so intrigued with the space with you as a leader. We've got to wrap up. I'll ask you kind of my one standard question. What advice would you give to the 21 or 22 year old Victoria? You know, maybe she's just heading off to do her or just finishing her undergraduate degree. What advice would you give yourself that you know to be true today, but you wish you'd known back then? [00:48:21] S2: I think it would be that no one else knows better. I think often you think that, okay, I'm confronted with this question. I need to find someone that knows the answer to this question. And in the workplace, that's often like escalating to your lead and being like, we need to file our end year report with HMRC. What do we do? As like a recent example, and the answer is so frequently, I don't know. So if you start with the assumption that no one else knows better or knows the answer immediately, allows you to go and seek it out yourself and find a way to get it done yourself. And I think for me, that is one of the pieces that are like core to the way I work now and what has made me valuable to the places I work at as well is because I just go and figure out how to do the thing.