Nothing Left Unsaid #72 - Mati Staniszewski: Building ElevenLabs into a $3 Billion AI Company
9 snips
Jul 16, 2025 
Mati Staniszewski, Co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, is transforming voice technology with innovations in accessibility for those with speech loss. He shares the inspiring journey of growing a startup to a $3 billion valuation and the profound impact of their AI on storytelling and content creation. Mati discusses breakthroughs like real-time voice technology and collaboration with Epic Games to bring iconic voices into gaming. He envisions a future where voice agents negotiate for us and break down language barriers—all while emphasizing genuine human connection.
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From Polish Dubs To A Global Voice Startup
- Mati and Piotr founded ElevenLabs to fix poor Polish movie dubs and broadened the idea to narration, voiceovers, and agents.
- They left stable jobs in early 2022 and split salaries to launch the company full time.
Build Research And Product Together
- Do build both research and product in parallel: research to hit quality and product to make it accessible.
- Combine model advances with a usable interface to scale adoption.
Small Wins That Validated The Tech
- Early milestones were an AI model laughing and a model matching Mati's accent, signaling research progress.
- An indie author pasted an entire book into the tiny alpha box and launched a bestselling audiobook, proving product-market fit.
