The Story Behind ElevenLabs | Interview with CEO Mati Staniszewski

Summary

The video is an a16z interview with ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski about the company's origin, product philosophy, hiring culture, and vision for voice as a future computer interface. It covers the founders' Polish background, early weekend-project roots, rapid user and employee growth, and the company's goal to build AI audio models that can handle voice, sound effects, music, and emotional communication.

• ElevenLabs began as a weekend project by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski after seeing poor dubbing in Poland.
• The company launched in January and grew from a few thousand interested users to hundreds of thousands.
• Mati says ElevenLabs combines AI research with product feedback so models and customer use cases improve together.
• The team is remote-first, flat, and title-less, hiring for proof of excellence and cultural fit.
• ElevenLabs aims to unify audio generation across voice, sound effects, and music.
• Mati argues voice will become a fundamental computer interface because audio is fast, information-rich, and emotional.
• The company has over 300 employees across 11 cities and is described as doubling roughly every six months.
• No public securities or tickers are discussed in the interview.