Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan Scaling AI Rocketships: ElevenLabs’ Mati Staniszewski & Lovable’s Anton Osika
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Dec 11, 2025 In a captivating conversation, Mati, CEO of ElevenLabs, and Anton, founder of Lovable, share insights on building hypergrowth startups in Europe. They tackle the challenges of managing co-founder relationships and transitioning from founder to CEO roles. Themes include the need for effective delegation, hiring strategies, and adapting to rapid changes in AI. They highlight Europe's unique advantages like talent and cost while debating work culture intensity. Both offer practical advice for aspiring founders, emphasizing problem obsession and careful co-founder selection.
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Mati’s Pre-Startup Trajectory
- Mati recounts studying mathematics, working at BlackRock and Palantir, which taught him building products with customers.
- Those roles shaped his ability to spot voice as the right timing and problem to solve.
Anton’s Path From CERN To Lovable
- Anton describes CERN, Stockholm AI, YC startup and connecting smart engineers who later built big companies.
- Those experiences led him to found Lovable to let non-developers build AI products.
CEO: Learn Enough To Hire Well
- CEOs must quickly learn unfamiliar domains (legal, finance, GTM) enough to hire and assess leaders.
- Balancing founder-mode detail work with delegation is a continual learning process.