(96) ElevenLabs CEO/Co-Founder, Mati Staniszewski:The Untold Story of Europe’s Fastest Growing AI Startup - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whVdDLtkiKs

Transcript: (00:00) So we crossed 200 million now. WA 20 months to 100 and then 10 months to 200. Today we have one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world 11 Labs and I'm so thrilled to welcome their co-founder Matty to the hot seat today. Preed was tough. Preed was hard. I think we spoke with a good amount of double digit investors between 30 to 50. (00:24) How much did you raise in the preede? We raised 2 million. Do you remember the price? 9 million. For us even from investor from product perspective is like especially now the speed of execution speed of investing is is the only thing you have. Our biggest contract is around 2 million and they are mostly in a call center customer support personal assistance base. (00:43) What do you believe that most around you disbelieve that you can build a company from Europe at the global scale? How do you answer the question why won't open AI just do this? They definitely will, but I think they, you know, they they lack the ready to go. [Music] Matthew, dude, I cannot wait for this. I've wanted to do this one for a while. So, thank you so much for joining me today. (01:10) Hari, thanks for having me. After working on a number of projects together, I'm so happy we can finally speak. Dude, I am so thrilled we could do this. Now I spoke to so many people beforehand and I have to say Luke was phenomenal on your team in prepping me so much but I do want to start a little bit with the origins pre you grew up in Poland and this was Luke's. (01:29) How did growing up in Poland impact your mindset towards the world and company building first? You know in Poland the it's a it's a very different much smaller world. So it's um for for growing up I was in a very lucky position where I was in suburbs of Warso then went to high school in Warso then kind of started seeing more of that world which um which was of course incredible because that kind of opens your eyes of like what's possible that there's so much world beyond what you've seen the smaller cities and I think in a similar way as you think about building 11 laps now (01:59) it's it's u the scale of what what we don't know is still ahead of us and this is like what's exciting that we know that if we climb those those the additional hills, the additional mountains, they will see increasingly more um and I think the second thing was in um I saw the transition where in in suburbs of Waros and like a public school so uh school where where you would have just any any kids that would live in the area and then in high school and where I met my co-founder you would have um a slightly different crowd like (02:32) a a crowd of of people that would win competitions uh need to go through a few steps together and and suddenly that like kind of density of talent was the most motivating factor to like explore more, learn more and do more which now we are trying to of course replicate that at 11 Labs where and any other company I'm sure too it's like you try to keep that density as high as possible because at the end of the day that's what's most motivating being part of this incredible set of people. I was most inspired or given hunger cuz my dad (03:01) always said like when we went into Chelsea like oh it's it's a better life here and like this is where people who've won live and I didn't live there and I wanted to [ __ ] live there and it fed me with this like insane hunger. Where did your insane hunger come from in those early days? the early days. (03:20) I mean definitely it was you know the combination of family my older brother kind of trailblazed going abroad to study then motivated us to like you need to do the same this is really helpful and then the second it was really this community of people in high school meeting my co-founder um was extremely smart meeting some of our close friends uh and like kind of going through this cycle of motivating each other it's like yes we want to study at the best university. Yes, we want to go deeper and crush this exam and um and I think this was huge huge element for for for (03:56) all of us just just just just going after it and knowing that maybe it's possible. Um at the time at the time everything felt distant and it's still you know many of the things do but uh but I think without that the kind of motivation through the people would would be not possible. And speaking of the motivation through the people you have a very special relationship with your co-founder Petra. (04:15) Yes. Yeah. So I have to ask then you come together. How does the idea for 11 Labs come to be? Was it truly inspired by bad movie dubbing? There was two things that coincided for us starting 11 Labs. One was through the years prior he worked at Google. I worked at Palanteer. We would meet for a hack weekend project together. So we would try to explore a new technology. (04:39) One was in a recommendation space. one during the crypto height we built a crypto risk analyzer which wasn't very easy and didn't work very well and then and then once we did the project in audio which was the idea was can it analyze how you speak and gives you tips on how to improve speaking um and that kind of opened our eyes what's possible in the technology space there and then fast forward later that year so we did the hack weekend project in early 2021 in late 2021 the moment hit from Poland which is wow all movies are still dubbed (05:10) where you have all the voices from the original whether it's male or female voice narrated with one single character. So you have one voice narrating all the characters in a flat no emotional way. So it's like a audiobook reading of a movie. It's a as you can imagine a terrible experience and something that we knew combining the experience from working on audio and now knowing this is a problem that okay this will change few years from now as you as you as you imagine that kind of advancement all the voices will have (05:41) original emotions inonation sound incredible and that kind of kickstarted this idea and of course then it expanded to okay we need to fix the research layer to actually make it happen. Um then we started with a lot of our creative platform work around 11 labs and then expanded to agentic platform work of how now the interaction is shifting where voice is this big interface for the technology around us. (06:06) So while you know it was very dubbing specific originally kind of expanded through to everything voice today. I mean it must be the most boring movie experience having one single voice for everything. It's terrible. It's terrible. So what do you do when you land on the idea then in terms of your next steps? you move into the research layer and determine whether it's possible to actually do this. (06:27) The way we've approached this was we um we first try to like do two things in parallel. My co-founder was okay can we use existing technology stitch it together and create a dub of a movie in a better way and it quickly transpired that you get a good effect but it wasn't brilliant. (06:45) So to actually fix it let's take a step back and fix one of those components and make it great. At the same time when he was doing research, my mission was, does anybody actually want that dubbing product? So, I was emailing all the YouTubers uh uh um getting the the the emails, scraping them, and trying to message them, hey, if we had a dubbing product to make your movies available in all languages, would you be interested in that? And um there was a not there's like roughly it was like 15% reply rate initially from the the first batches that we sent. All were personalized. Um I mean we sent thousands of them but the the interest (07:21) was like lackluster. All of them were like oh I don't fully believe this is possible. Can you send us a sample? It would be great but how will I operationalize this? YouTube doesn't support it. So it's like it was somewhat of an excitement but not like a burning problem. I need to solve it. But then the second thing happened. (07:39) So we started sending the samples. uh we started speaking more with the the the YouTubers and it quickly came that what they actually want help with is much simpler. They want to postproduce and correct if somebody said something incorrectly. They they want to understand how the script will sound before they need to produce it. (07:57) They might not want to speak at all and they want to voice over over the movie. So a super simple problem which didn't include anything with language engineing. And um and of course Michael Vander as he dived into the the the the research re realized and he's an incredibly smart researcher that you can actually build completely new textto-spech model which will be a lot more emotional inative that um that will make that narration a lot better. (08:20) So let's put a dubbing problem aside and as we see there's this huge other problem with with a lot of the creators. let's solve this problem first and bring that research just on the text to speech layer and then you know kind of as usual as we dive and that's only possible by creating your own models. (08:38) There was we yeah quick answer is yes the all the models at the time just you could tell immediately it's like uncanny valley not very good you cannot replicate voices dude how should I know as an investor again I use this show just to get better as an investor how should I know as an investor whether a problem needs its own model or whether you can just leverage alternative existing models wow I think the answer will definitely change now to like 2022 so that was the year where nobody yet like kind of was thinking about AI this was kind of downfall of metaverse crypto days. So you were you were still the (09:11) attention to to the models was was was like known in the public eye. You know CHPD happened beginning of 2023. That's where it kind of all started spiking across. So at the time um at the time you didn't really have a choice like you you you could you you uh you could kind of you knew um as a user as an investor that what existed out in the market just wasn't very good. (09:38) Um and then there's more of a question will this team be able to solve and create something better? If you were creating 11 labs today, what would you do architecturally differently given the architecture that we have today? I think still a current question is to what extent you uh you continue on that kind of single modality space where at a time it was mostly you train a dedicated model for speech or dedicated model for image, video etc. (10:01) uh over what is now more of a theme where you kind of train a more of a multimodel approach where you combine a reasoning and speech together to create even better speech experience. So that's our most recent generation is effectively that the 11 v3. (10:19) If we if we had that then I think we would have probably skipped few steps and our experience would have been even even better. So off tangent but I'm just concerned about bluntly the plateauing progression of models and you know GPT5 was the embodiment of that. you move from like incredible feature descriptions to a description on cost and when you have a description on cost and efficiency it's like oh we've we've hit that right do you agree and are we in an element of incrementalism and plateauing in voice I think the the so it's you know there's a little bit of like it depends it depends on the use case but to make it more concrete there are use cases like narration in narration we (10:53) think it's plateauing you the the new model generations will not make narration of an audio look drastically different. It will still be it will be still um in a similar quality but I think in general the point is right where if you just do research eventually it will commoditize and eventually that advantage you can deliver from research isn't enough so you really need to build product and as you think about 11 we combine both together. (11:17) Do you think we're at a stage where scaling laws no longer equal an equivalent level of progression? Well, it's in a in a in a in a in a biased way. I feel like the progression is is is, you know, still like just scratching the surface where it's it's just just the moment of like still um seeing that escape curve of of of AI getting adopted everywhere is just getting started while scaling does continue in the same way. (11:42) So I do think the but there's a difference there between adoption and development. So I agree with you there in terms of the adoption but actually the development progression. Got it. I think you know it's probably different answer on LLM space and different answer in the in the voice space. (12:01) I think in voice space you are still you you are still in like not you it's still not slower rate. Um and then there's an interesting variation of like as they all combine what does that mean for the world like it's slightly deeper understanding of everything around you. Um but I think in voice you still will see pretty pretty pretty quick curve on the lamps. I agree it's probably a little bit flattening to to some extent. I spoke to Andrew Reed before the show. (12:26) I had a great chat to him last night and he said um ask him about like why can't Open AI do it and I remember chatting to Kieran about this. Kieran obviously being my partner uh and there was two reasons why you know we didn't work together. One is that small check which you very kindly offered. (12:44) Um, and the other was like, no offense, it was super freaking early and it was like, why wouldn't Open AI do this? That, no offense, two very young guys in London are doing. Like, how is this not going to be done by them? How do you answer the question, well, duh, why won't Open AI just do this? They definitely will do do something, but I think they, you know, they they lack the the the genius that uh that that that that I'm happy my co-founder and a team has. (13:11) But I think the true true true longer answer is one is focus. You really I think in the early days especially you know when we spoke then there was just so many different things you could do in AI space and I think we took this bet that we want to really own and win in the voice AI research and product space all our our work is is is directly tied to to to to voice. (13:37) Then the second thing is I actually think the number of researchers in the world working on voice and being exceptional is super small probably like 50 to 100 people at like this top level and um and and P and um and and the people around him were able so P was able to assemble one of the best teams in the space. I think we have five to 10 people that are in the top in the top 100 like there it's like a mighty team which which I'm kind of time and time again surprised how incredible they are. (14:04) Uh and to make it specific, I mean text to speech was one that kind of have blown everything out of the water. Then speech to text is beating OpenAI, Gemini on benchmarks. Now music, which is again something that no big company has has yet been able to crack or do um so it's a it's a it's an incredibly mighty team. Um and then even if I think if open AAI does you know actually do something on research and I think they are trying then that product layer is where where you really need that that big advantage of if you are in a creative space if you do narration if (14:34) you do voiceover if you're a dab you go through so many additional steps to really make it perfect we do that well if you're building a voice agent or conversational agent you need to bring knowledge base integrations functions you need to then deploy test evaluate monitor all of these pieces are coming together in a platform and I think open AI is you not not investing as much time. (14:55) They could but they but they but they but they aren't. So combination of mighty research team, speed of execution and then actually focusing on on the use case in a in a I think in a deeper way. You mentioned that kind of the mighty team. Those people are very valuable people and an open AI or an anthropic or a meta would pay a lot of money it would seem for people like that. (15:19) Do you worry about the war for talent and how do you think about retaining talent when there's hundreds of millions of dollars going across the table for them? I think the talent especially on the research side is is is is is is incre the impact that those people can create is is is out of out of the scale across any of those companies especially in the early days. (15:37) Of course to some extent as you as I think about meta and others they are of course paying for the knowhow as much as they are paying for the rotalent too where getting those early people gets you um some insight into the models and architecture that you can then bring across and accelerate. So in the early days it's it's it's more valuable than late. (15:56) Um but uh but I think in our case the the reason I think it's it's still valuable is one the upset for 11's just getting started. So I hope we'll be able to compete with any of those companies in the in the future at at at at the same scale. Two is um what you you do have which which I think is important as I think about any of those companies is like how close you are from developing research to actually deploying research. (16:18) And at 11 Labs, if you are actually creating new models, they get to production are some of the most important things that our products work on almost immediately. So the gap is super quick. Um well, you know, bigger companies, you go through the usual corporate red tape to to get any of that that work done. (16:36) And then three, um I think we we we now have like a a very small and mighty team that can learn from each other and and and move pretty quickly. I don't think there's a guarantee you get that in in some of the other companies. I think they are optimizing for a lot of people but not necessarily the right people. We're going to go to team size later. I do want to stick with some chronology. (16:54) So many questions that I want to ask you but some chronologies. We mentioned that kind of the V1 and building to beta and I think it was uh where was it uh 2023 that you raised the preede Jan 23. Um how did the fund raise process go? You're two young guys saying hey we're going to do this. How did the preede fund raise go? Preed was tough. Preed was hard. (17:21) We it was you know similar question that you asked was like how will we fix research the second question which was very interesting. We think the market is very small for what you are solving which at the time was like you know it's like a combination of AI voice like no nobody was thinking about that. So, so that was that was that was surprising to us which we were very disagreeable and third it was defensibility will it actually be better than what incubans from the the AMG companies will actually solve or or like how will you out compete on long term. So these are the three. So it was tough. I think we spoke with with a good (17:51) amount of of double digit um investors and uh double digits of investors and they said no. Yeah. It was like wi with between 30 to 50 and it was double double double hard at the time because we we early 2022 we got an offer from one of the accelerators in US not YC and uh and we were thinking like should we take it or not and we decided no we are rejecting we think we can create something something something um more valuable and we don't need that help at the time so decided to go independent and this triggered this more (18:26) stressful time where suddenly now you need to raise money we started spending a little bit more on GPUs. We hired the first few people. It's like all of that was going from our savings from which we are lucky to have from from Google and Palanteer. But I was like, okay, now it's now it's actually getting a little bit more risky and we want to double down. We want to invest even more. (18:43) So, we need money and um and yeah, it was it was uh How much did you raise in the preede? We raised 2 million. 2 million. Do you remember the price? 9 million. It was 9 million post. 9 million post. the amount the amount was exactly 11% of the the equity that that that the first investor was buying and then the other ones were layered in. So it's like just over a million. (19:08) It was a it was a a and this was 2023. That was 2022. This was not No, but dude, I'm so used to like stories like this on the show where it's like HubSpot and you're like when was it? Oh, 2006 or 2008 or 9 or whatever. But this was [ __ ] recently. Oh yeah. (19:28) I yeah it was only only four years ago which which uh I mean it was so you know in the end we found we had credo concept colleague concept here here in UK credo from Z we had um one of of friends um of from Oxford Peter Chaban who invested was a co-founder of of polka dot which is the cryptocurrency so we had like a good set of early believers but to get there it took us it took us a bit a bit a bit longer so you raised the 2 million then what happens then you start building out the team you start investing in GPUs just exactly that the the the main reason the main reason we race was to accelerate what we would (20:01) what we would want to do first one was building a small data center so we built one and back then it was I think in Poland that we we invested few and then quickly after moved and started buying some in US uh and then team we started hiring not many but it felt like a lot at the time it was like additional two people I think it Don't go too far there. (20:29) Massie, um, did you, cuz you kind of did the pre seed race and the beta launch at the same time. Did you have product market fit on the beta launch? Were there early signs that it was working? Oh, yeah. That's a Okay. So, got got the the good um good timeline piece there where we actually raised the round in mid like Q3 of 2022, but we announced it in Q1 of 2023. (20:56) And the reason we do that and we do that all the time is that we don't want to announce a round just for the sake of announcing a round. Our philosophy was always the round should have another purpose which is bring the product out and and help you get the product into the users. Um celebrate a set of customers to show that you are arrived in a specific sector. Uh bring a new research model into play. (21:15) So every round that we would do would always tie into a product announcement. So we actually held in hold on for announcement for a few months until we had our beta release and then we triggered which was January 2023. Um but your to your question initially when we worked on dubbing and and that first early days and we were like emailing we didn't have product product market fit. (21:34) It was like very clear that you know people were slow to reply then we sent samples they weren't engaging. So we so we didn't through the 2022 period and then when we shifted from dabbing into narration voiceovers then the product market signal started to hit maybe it's there we we had a first um and I I remember this thing three things that happened first we did a blog post around the first AI that can laugh and we sent samples that got picked up by newsletters and people were like wow this is incredible the next day we had like thousand people on our waiting list then the Second thing happened. We (22:09) invited the first uh 100 or so users to to 11 Labs to test it out. And we had this audiobook author who uh who joined the platform. Our platform is like this small text box where you can type and text tweet length and narrate it and he would copy paste his entire book 500 times download it stitch it together. (22:32) Then he released it. He released it on the platform. At the time AI was banned. it passed through as a human content and um and then it started getting reviews that it's great and then he came back saying I want my other uh uh uh book author friends to do it too. (22:51) So I was like okay we are on to something and then uh and then we launched in January 2023 publicly. We knew we started getting more of that signal that creators, narrators love love the work and to be honest I think from that moment on onwards we saw like a clear momentum and then there was like you know more events after the media picked it up then more creators picked it up but the moment of release we knew that it's valuable uh and then maybe last thing on that it's like the the product market fit concept was you know it's um for us we never like fully I think know what this actually means where we we (23:21) knew users just loved our product uh at the time but uh but I wouldn't call it at the time we had product market fit as we were thinking of like okay how do we make sure it's providing value for the next 5 to 10 years then we'll decide this will be like something where we would call okay this is clear product market fit we think this is like self- sustaining for as long as we as we go into the future so we wouldn't go by that definition I think we are now closer to that but we are still like you know still still know we can create so much more value so many things I want to unpack there you said about kind the the timing of (23:52) your announcements and aligning it to actually kind of material on news items. Do you have any big lessons on announcements, how to do launches that you found particularly work well that other founders should know? So that's the first one 100% like I it's like for for us the the making announcement close to something big you want to announce from the product from the user from hiring perspective tie it with that don't I I don't think celebrating the number itself is the right way I mean in in a way it's like you're giving away the company so it's (24:26) it's it's it's like almost like what are you doing it for and you want to show as much u of that as possible so that was the first one second is I I think this is very easily to optimize for the the the and maybe I'll cover it up front depends of course on the whether you are self-s serve us and creators developers are optimizing for enterprise and sales but second thing would be you you really want to focus on how you actually get the users rather than just the media PR uh element. I I don't think the latter is actually as valuable as as (24:59) it seems to a to a first- time founder. for us. I remember when we did the beta, we were speaking and um with some of the bigger publications and one rejected us, the other one accepted us and we felt like it's a big deal. Then we did all the prep for the interview. We did the the the the actual news and then it was posted. (25:18) We holded like everything around this post that they told us the deadline for and it had no impact. I think it I mean it like probably a few more people read about us from the investor scene, but we we we we didn't really care about it at the time. We like all about users. What actually worked was working with the newsletters that were talking about AI, working with our friends from YouTube community that then posted on Discord that we are opening this up. (25:42) Our Discord community was one of the most valuable. Reddit, those people picked it up quicker than anyone else. Hacker News posting there, like all of those were immensely more valuable. And um and we since then always spend a lot more time on any of the actual forums where our users are rather than where where where they are not. (26:02) I think we grossly overestimate the importance of traditional press. Oh 100%. I remember when I was first in Tech Crunch, I was like I'm gonna be like viral. It's g everything's gonna work. Yeah. And then it happens and you're like you get like three followers and this was when it was much bigger and it's like so I completely agree with you there. The grassroots. (26:21) The other element kind of tied to that is how do you think about fundraising and this is advice to founders fundraising pre or post a launch. What is frequently happen if the launch goes well is you will get more interest And I think you'll get into it from investors, from events, from media to a large extent. (26:39) This is like the time you should really focus on getting the product and kind of all of that is like a distraction to a large extent like you know the first time we launched that that kind of happened. We started getting so much of that and I'm sure I did the mistake then of like picking up a lot of those and doing more events than than we should where like the best course of action would have been to to to just spend even more time with users and then kind of early enterprises started getting interested. (27:03) So more of enterprises but uh I think on the on the investor side I think you want to keep you want to line up investors. So you you you do you do want to tell them like okay I'm not racing now I'm going to reconsider whether we need more capital in Q3 or Q2 whatever is the time period of time uh the time period. So you want to line them up and then um and then when they when that when when you actually need the money um then is the best time to actually re-engage with them. But I would not like I I think it's a waste of time to kind of be in this like continuous fundraising mode. (27:32) Um it's it's it's it's you know distractive. You need to have conversation. It's not useful. And do you choose three that you'd like to have that you engage with in between cycles or do you not even do that? You just say hey I'm heads down on building. I'll come to you when I'm ready today. (27:51) less at the time at the time we no good question in the in the sense of we do we do have a few investors that we think would be valuable that we might not have today in the in the kind of the the space I mean I'm very happy we are we are kind of kind of working together but no that's the that's the the truth is 100% you we we through the time we would have few investors that we wouldn't try to proactively reach out but if they reached out through any of the conversations We would try to engage but the engagement there wouldn't be like hey we might be racing it would be much more of like hey can you help me with (28:27) introduction to X hey can you help me with this hiring problem and this has worked tremendously well through through the through the work where I find like the investors are are genuinely keen to help if you if you find the right person and you have a very clear problem and you don't try to like overuse their time too like you come with one two things that are concrete useful and then It's they know as well that if you are growing as a company it's good for them to show the help too. So we've done that. It's also a good litmus test to see if (28:56) they genuinely are interested in being there or if it's just platitudes of niceness. Oh yeah 100% totally agree with you before it's like kind of the second thing where you do get the interest from investors. (29:12) I think this is the best time to actually test whether they can be helpful and before you accept any term sheet any any any money it's like now can you help me with angels that you want on cup table? Do you want the introduction then? That's the best time. Any advice on angel selection for founders in the early days? The way we approach this is like so we had standard of course the venture capital to whether it was the help of their network with the brand with making sure we arrived in a specific region but um but on angels we would usually optimize for um do they have domain expertise that we don't have. That's one category. Second, can they help us (29:44) validate ourselves in specific specific circles we might not have access to? Uh so like if you are an AI founder, it may be valuable to have set of AI founders in there. So you are part of the same events, the same same same same conversations. (30:02) Um and then of course the in our case it was can we have some of the go-to market expertise where we where we didn't have we had a lot of self-s serve some volunteer experience but the salesled how can we bring that in place as well. you mentioned starting with the author suddenly it was going well and you were seeing this great ground swell and great adoption and this is kind of January to June 23 I believe and then in June 23 you raised like $19 million from Brian Kim and Andre and then Nat and Daniel from um the I can't remember what it's called NDFG or something yeah NFDG it's not Friedman Daniel Grass NFDG wonderful brilliant name um and (30:39) That was quite a shock because it wasn't a London fund, it wasn't index, it wasn't Excel. How did that round come to be? Yeah, the NFDG is is now now I feel like it's a good name, but I was pitching that on changing that to like a different name for a while. (30:57) Maybe now it's not possible anymore, but um the the so it was like the interest started around kind of March 2023. We had a lot of the investors that were in close conversation in the past like reapproach us. We effectively would would um would would would would be a little bit more in the waiting mode like let's see how we we we get through and let's optimize for the partners that we truly want. (31:19) And what we truly wanted was a combination of making sure that people in globally in SF trust and know that we have arrived like we are a company that can be trusted is building something ambitious. (31:38) Um, and then of course people that we would admire to to be able to work with that created something special and that was definitely in that in that in that category in the latter category and it was a very fun thing because he approached us. We previously does he just DM you? Like how does he just approach you? He emailed us. He emailed us but then I I met him here in London. (31:56) he flew in and um it was like a weird setup where he emailed he emailed me but it wasn't clear whether it will happen and it happened at the last time and then I see him in London in one of the hotels where he was staying and the first thing he was saying was uh which was the only investor ever to to to do that was so I tested your APIs and this thing doesn't work this works voice here wasn't good the stability wasn't very clear parameter so he was the only person that tested our APIs decided that it was actually valuable what we are doing gave me feedback on like what we should change and then told me like and I'm keen to invest uh which which uh which (32:30) of course triggered a conversation of what's the the what's the what's the vision what we are after and what's special about that is that you can tell him very little and he kind of has this beautiful ability of infilling all the context around it comparing that to any of the past experiences and kind of bringing any of those experiences that then might be relevant to you but he gets it immediately so he From the first conversation, he knew kind of exactly what we are after and challenged us with the right questions from the start and then he moved very (32:59) quickly. He was very keen um to to partner with us. We are keen to partner with him. We are trying not to show it too much but but we were and then at the same time we know that Nat was Nat and Daniel were were more more perceived as the angels while we admire them from their GitHub and summer days. that was like still like an angel category for many of the externals. (33:24) So we knew this is our chance to bring a huge investor to actually position us as a top company and that's that's we spoke with all the classic tier tier one funds and A16Z was just one of the most all the funds in London. We spoke with few funds in London. Yes. And then Brian flew to London and Brian flew to London. So Brian I mean A6Z was phenomenal. (33:48) They they they did exactly what we spoke about, which was they've shown us that they cared before they invested. They introduced us to to incredible people to some celebrities to work on the voice licensing. So, they were like on it for two weeks prior or like week prior um already to to to help out in any way they could. And then Brian flew to London um met met with us and and then we signed a preliminary time sheet which was interesting. He flew in. (34:18) We're negotiating also my phone call to to Pod to co-founders like hey what about this terms can we accept this and and P would would would give guidance of what we where is the hard line what we can do and then and then on speaker we would sign together and and um and finalize. Do you think speed really is a differentiator as an investor in winning? Oh yeah. Speed is like for us even from investor from product perspective it's like you need to especially now the speed of execution speed of investing is is the only only thing you have. This is what pisses me off. I'm happy in that world. I can move (34:47) supremely fast and invest a lot of money. But what I find more and more with founders is they want to run a road show and they want to do a 10day process meeting investors and then have another week to decide which term sheets they want to take. I'll I'm willing to give you a term sheet tonight. save 17 days. (35:05) But it's more and more common that founders actually want to run road shows. How do you think about that? Yeah, this is I'm now in a lot of a lot of great companies get built on 11 labs. So I get to be in the conversations now more frequently where they would raise money from our investors. uh like recently we had a a company raise a series A that has built a healthc care voice bot which would effectively help patients calm them through the conversations in a in in an incredible incredible way. Then there's like another company building for uh (35:39) healthcare customer support. So quite a few and now I'm in the conversations of them raising the money which is an interesting one and and and then usually it's it's clear that uh some some of some of the people don't know fully what they are actually optimizing for and it's good to to to talk for are they optimizing for the valuation? Are they optimizing for dilution? Are they optimizing for the right brand name to help them out? Is it the network of people that this brand name has? Is it the specific partner? Is it something (36:04) something different? And I think it's like pretty distributed. So when I speak usually with founders or our investors ask me to speak with the founders, it's usually that question like what is it actually that you that you care about for the thing? What do you miss? And then it's then it prospies pretty quickly whether you know they are going after just the road show is there to bump it up because they think the value that the time sheet they got is just not valuable or is it that they actually want someone else but they don't want to (36:29) they want to keep the optionality of having the first one while while running the process. Um but you know all the all the traditional simple things. I'm a romantic. I hate this idea of a road show where it's like I'm going to meet everyone and then I'm going to compare term sheets and then I'm going to decide. (36:45) It's like what happened to the partnership? The well but it's you know the truth is the other way is is true where a lot of the investors um want to give the term sheet but that is before any show of partnership. So how do you know that this is a good partner? How do you know whether they are giving you good terms? Especially you're a first-time founder, you never run this, you don't know how much you are valued. (37:05) You need to have some relative comparison and this can happen for conversations with other companies other founders or um comparing yourself to other companies in the field or running running some form of a process. Road show probably sounds pretty bad because it sounds like a lot. You probably like the way we approached fundraising was always, you know, especially in the early days like cue a few investors we really care about and first speak with maybe one or two that maybe aren't a priority so we understand whether like we are at all kind of perceived in the that the kind of the (37:37) the messaging that we want to put across makes sense. If it does, move straight to the the top ones. How do you feel about exploding term sheets? I I don't like them, but we got a few. We had a few through. Do you understand them? I do. I think I do. I at the time I didn't, but uh but I do. (38:00) It's like I mean I don't like them still, but but we I won't name the people, but uh uh but so one example was a let's say a smaller fund, and they they they they felt that if they get us the term sheet, we'll use that to bump other term sheets. very often happens and that it does happen. Um so I got it. It was like you know and and they came from the approach of like if it goes too high they won't be able to invest and they don't want to be part of that. (38:30) Um so that happened and of course being an investor being the first term sheet's the worst because you're used as the stalking horse where they then go I've got a term sheet I've got a term sheet from a great fund. They never named the fund and it's and and you get no credit for being the first and then you're just trampled on by everyone else that come. (38:47) That's what that's what I don't like founders that are trying to do that too much like that if they are trying to get you get the first time sheet to bomb the other ones I think it's a wrong approach. I think you should like it's you know okay if if it's like order of magnitude off it's probably wrong or it's like you know 5x then yes but if it's like plus minus 20% that's like a wrong optimization. (39:06) There's just so much more value that in investors partners can give than the the money itself that I think should be optimized for. You've got Andre introducing you to celebrities and you've got Matt and Daniel, two of the brightest minds in AI who are querying APIs that no one else does. Are the Americans just playing a different game to the European VCs? We love our partners. (39:25) I mean, we have and team is so so incredible the network. I mean now SEOA with Andrew is just another another level too. Iconic team also crazy help. Um NEA2 is just like bringing all US they are all US. So I think they are playing a different game. I think the you know the they are all from our experience so far a lot more keen to take the risk like you know even our conversations are always like how do we bet bigger rather than like optimize for for for for the the negatives. (39:58) Um the one check I always try to do with with P for any of the partners that we bring beyond the capital network brand is is always for the person you you partner with or the person you partner with how will they behave if it's not going well. So we usually try to get any of the back references for how um how did they behave when the company was was failing and um and all of the ones that we had are are are in and they're very positive like they actually were were really on the on the side of the founder helpful when it was not going well even more so (40:30) than when it was going well. And I was doing the same check with some of the checks with with with other companies and um maybe this is getting used to that like you know in US the kind of the set of companies that went up and down is so high but in some of the investors we we spoke in Europe that checker didn't yield the good results. (40:49) I had one with Brian Kim that didn't go well and I have to say Brian was the best. He was the lead investor in the round and he got the money back for everyone and that's rare and he really put in the work to do it well and to do it quickly. I was really impressed with him in that way. No, exactly. (41:10) It's it's um Brian Yeah, Brian was one one one on our checks came up strongly. Jennifer, too. It's like all of them. It's just crazy how Okay. $19 million in the account. Most people suddenly then go on a hiring spree and not two people hiring spree, but like a proper hiring spree. But you favor very small teams. You've said this to me before, but Luke said it to me. (41:33) Why do you favor really small teams? I think the first piece is that more people frequently doesn't fix the problem. It's like you you you you don't need that many people to do something special. That's the first thing. Second is you by keeping and as an organization today we are you know 250 people but really it's more like 20 teams uh going to market of like five to 10 people that are just executing on specific project where um where they have higher ownership. they can move extremely quickly. (42:01) They um they see the results and iterate with reality a lot quicker to improve that. And I think this just works in such a beautiful beautiful way. Of course, there are other challenges with this, but are those 20 teams organized by function or by project the a little bit depends the the the in the product by like a product um product area. (42:27) So we have a team working on our studio interface team that will be responsible for all the core experience when you log in team responsible for the entire voice agent suite and within that there's a team working on some of the more enterprise components another team working on some of the self-s serve elements. So all of the teams will be organized there on the product area and then the other parts we try to shard it pretty quickly. (42:45) So you know in the we will have a separate team for talent uh of course then the team for people and they will have a high degree of of independence where when they actually execute which which helps you mentioned 250 there it it's it's small given the size of company in many ways but it's also still 250 people when was the company culture the worst and what did you learn from that you know there was like moments where where where where I could feel this kind of tension between the gotom market research engineering Um and this like a specific story where (43:17) so I mean it's a super lucky position where we develop our models and bring them to the customers which which of course makes it very special. We frequently will show for the very first time to the world something that was not possible and is possible now in 2023 late 2023. (43:35) So we did a text to speech we then did voices so you could recreate a voice then we um then we create like a basic way for speech to text internally. We had all the components that we originally were speaking about to create dubbing and we uh we haven't done dubbing yet publicly and we gave all the components to some of our customers so they could use text to speech the voices and um and there was like a lot of you know pressure that like it's a valuable technology we can give to to our enterprise clients and um one of the enterprise clients we told them that we are planning to launch our dubbing solution combining those components later later in that it was uh it was I (44:14) think September later in that that month and um and they took the components and released dubbing two weeks before we did. And that was one of like the low moments for me, for my co-founder, for the entire team because dubbing was our story. We told that to everyone. We knew that this is the thing we want to solve first. We had all the components to be able to do it. (44:37) We're just waiting to optimize it to make it perfect. And then suddenly this this this this this um partner released it and got all the attention. So all the uh all the the media, Twitter, all the users were like, "Wow, this is the most incredible thing that has happened. How amazing that you can speak in another language and still sound the same." And you could feel the morale in the company was was was low. (45:03) People were like, you know, we spoke about this. We knew for like almost two years that this is something we want to solve and how did it happen that the customer had this and solve this first. So research engineering wasn't happy like how did they do it before with the components we gave them. (45:20) The go to market wasn't happy because like how did we sell this to the customer? Now we are like all the potential clients we could have had isn't isn't good. And of course me and P were like, hey, this was our idea. Like why why would you do any of the partnerships if all of that is like kind of given to to to to another another company? Who was the partner? I don't know if I can I can mention and to to their credit, I don't think the time like that we told them it was actually a factor. I think they were just trying to do something quick and like we we had a lot of calls with them (45:49) those those days because we were thinking like what do we do? is the contract give us flexibility to to not continue. So we spoke through with them of like hey why did you launch? I don't think it was dictated by our timeline but the timeline was very close to each other and they told us that they thought it's a good hack weekend idea. (46:07) So they gave it to their intern and they the intern has built that project and um and then it exploded but it was it it did give them like in tens of millions of revenue over over that period of time. So it was significant [ __ ] Uh what's your biggest piece of advice to a founder who has a moment like that where you just feel the air come out of the company? How do you inflate the company again after such a damaging blow? I don't think the first reaction should be that like hey everything is fine. I think you should you should like be (46:40) authentic and tell the team what you are feeling like how has this happened and actually the the the like go through like what have we done wrong and and you know that frustration was clear I don't think we I I like I I think it was valuable for us to talk through like we are angry at ourselves this is wrong and then as we move from that stage like yes we are angry what are we actually going to do about this and um and move to that second stage very quickly Uh but I think you know I I think I've done a mistake sometimes of just going to the second (47:11) stage like kind of it's not a problem let's just go through and solve it. I think it's actually super valuable to to to to talk through what what has happened. Uh but then you knew you need to you need to go into the second thing and then and then in the long term that will work out. (47:32) You know, it's it's it's then you can the relentless execution will prove itself out and and and show it to the world. And the worse if you repeat the mistake, then someone needs to feel the you know feel feel the repercussions. But if you've learned from that and haven't repeated the mistake, it's fine. Given the commoditization of a lot of technology today, do you feel speed of execution is the core differentiator between those that will win versus those that won't? Or is it quality of research, access to GPUs? How do you think about that? I think it's both. I think it's both. I think it's you know the the way we approach this in the company is we we (48:02) have research product and the ecosystem that we built um which is a combination of distribution and brand. But research for us is a head start. We are investing in research. We'll continue investing in research. We want to be the best across the voice technologies. (48:22) But all this gives to us is advantage over the competition for the next year two maybe three. How much how far ahead are you compared to the competition do you think? I think depends on the use case but six to 12 months I would say it's depending on the on the on on the space that we are in. Do you think that's a lot or not? I think that's a lot. (48:41) I think that gives us so that research piece of six to 12 months is enough for us to then do the second thing well which we do in parallel from the start is build phenomenal product experience. What percent of your revenue do you think you spend on compute? So we've built our own um data centers for for training and then for inference we we of course use some of our our great partners across um across the traditional why build your own data centers most people will just use a core weave or use Nvidia or whatever that is why build your own data centers so we did the you know we did the math in our case it was if we assume we continue training the models that the way we want to so continuously a lot of those models um then Second, for the (49:18) data transfers and as we think about continuously bringing more data, um we we we will likely on a two-year horizon break even for having our own and and and not renting. Um assuming of course, you know, you need to assume some improvement in the GPU infrastructure, but assuming that wasn't too high of an improvement, we would have we would have been um successful and we were. (49:43) I think it it kind of the ROI made sense there and and now it pays dividends because we can just do more experiments quicker and um you know this can still be wrong at some point there might be innovation that kind of breaks that equation but for for for the current time it just makes more sense more control. (50:00) A lot of investors are talking about the poor unity economics of a lot of companies that we see today whether it's your replets or your lovables or any of companies like this well any kind of application air companies period really they generally have pretty tough unit economics generally speaking. Um, do you think that is a fair criticism or do you think it is simply shortsighted given the changes we will likely see in the cost structure? Of course, the unit dynamics in most of those cases that you mentioned is pretty pretty poor, but I think the strategy is that yes, one, the models will optimize in cost and then two, they will be the (50:29) brands that customers trust and then they can actually use a lot of the signal back. And I think to 11 laps example too, we I think our unit economics is is much healthier than most of those companies. We control our research, our product and distribution, but it's still if we had a new model that we need to release ourselves, we would optimize less for for the cost structure so we can get that magic out quicker than other competitions even can think about creating their own model. But to be clear, you think the concerns (50:59) around um margin are over expelled and not justified. Well, it's a risky business where where you know like there will be a winner from some of whether it's uh I love what lovable is doing with Anton but Replet Verol are all incredible companies too um or products too that are doing some some some some great work. (51:23) I do think at least one maybe more than one will create something special. the market is so big that all of them can create something special. Um, but yes, there will be definitely a loser in that mix too and and and that company and the margins that they are carrying does just not make long-term long-term sense and probably the same for coding apps. But I think it's a cool bet. (51:42) I think it's cool not even like cool from the sense of like it's you know it's a nice uh application but it's like it's an ambitious bet that they are trying to win with the biggest companies in the world that that are trying will try or are trying with Google with Firebase um sorry uh I don't remember their name of their product but they are trying and they're lovables of the world are winning goes to your point on brand neither of us can remember Google's product name so I mean it's just interesting Anton is phenomenal market marketing (52:10) person too like the founder le way he's doing is is is amazing one thing that's also really interesting is you were very horizontal in your customer from day one which respectfully I would advise you very much not to be I think Philipe was telling me he was advising you the same be much more targeted in your ICP and have a clear mind of who that customer and user is and you were much more broad and horizontal and if you're advising founders how do you tell them when they're launching from day one whether to be horizontal versus whether to be vertically specific (52:41) I think if you're launching something very new, very different and you don't yet fully know you know like a subset of customer base but you know that there is a bigger one I think horizontal is is completely fine. Um if you know and you have domain expertise and this is the category are trying to win I think go vertical. (53:02) You say go vertical that normally when you have verticals you have kind of a maturing of uh organization you have titles. titles is something that you decided to get rid of. This is very counter traditional or structures. Why is it better to not have titles? Yeah, there there are there are some incredible companies that that that that of course did similar Stripe being one one example. But in our case, it was especially then super small team. (53:26) So we have team of five a lot of people people join and what we wanted to to to optimize for is like one the main thing that matters is the impact. you can join and you can be the most impactful person from day zero in in any of those teams. Um so the title shouldn't define what is your level of of decisions. (53:46) Second thing with the small teams that happens is that you have a lot of those small teams. Uh so if you start looking at who gets the title or not, it just becomes a distraction. Uh given that teams are uh uh like those small units that just keep keep executing. Um so that's the second thing and the third thing we wanted to like also make it very clear in that mix where and still do if you are joining 11 labs today you can transition to being a leader of any team of any function super quickly and titles felt limiting to that. We felt like people joining in and seeing the the kind of the wider set of (54:24) organization already having set of roles defined for them would make this a little bit harder and and that's not like you can have a lower tenure and be a manager of people with much longer tenure if you are the right the right person. So titles we felt were we're were we're were we're were we're taking away from that. (54:40) Well, at the same time, we have a good structure internally within the sub teams like who is the current lead of that team that will make the decision if people cannot agree on what's the right path. Um, but that person can and and and it's not it's not guaranteed that the person will remain a lead for forever and it titles in a way you you when you give a title it stays stays usually forever in any other company. (55:07) Speaking of titles and a common criticism of European tech and scaling is that we don't have these titled people who've seen scale significantly. Your VPs of sales who've seen a billion in ARR, you name it. How did you think about broaching that? Do you want to get top US talent here or do you want to grow talent here? We want to grow talent here. (55:25) We match a lot of our current talent with the advisors from our our network of US um investors and the goal is to to to grow people. We love growing people like our approach is almost like if we can we want to take a bet on the person growing rather than than bring them externally but we know that to grow you need sometimes mentorship from someone that has done it. So we try to tap in into all the people that have done it and match them to people across the organization. (55:50) Anton said on a show with me recently from Lovable that building in Europe is building on hard mode. Do you agree with that? I think it is. I think it is building on hard mode. But there is some great advantages too. What are the advantages? I think the first one is the talent here is incredible. (56:07) And I think you just you you you you just need to know how to how to get it and and the like what do people get wrong then? the like in in general there is a good subset of people that really want to work hard and create something special and they just don't have that opportunity because there's no us ambitious European companies trying to do that. (56:32) Um so the only way they can do that is work for US companies and I think now there's like you mentioned lovable uh uh uh uh I think they are showing that ambition too and there's like just so many more like aura recently in in in Sweden that that that race around we spoke about Cintesia. So there's quite a few companies that are ambitious they want to show and I think that the the the people joining want to be part of the ambitious company that is competing on a global scale. (56:55) I think that the thing that you know and maybe in the early days I was like even worried to to large extent. I think you want to be able to build from Europe but not build only for Europe and I think those two get conflated where sometimes building from Europe meant okay you are building for European ecosystem which isn't the right thing you still want the global aspiration. So even now when I think about describing 11 laps I think about us as a as as a global company. (57:19) We are a global company with we want to win in US. We want to win in Europe. We want to build in Asia. We have the best team and most of the team in Europe because the talent is is is incredible. So you think it is wrong when our American friends say, "Hey, the Europeans just don't work as hard as we do." I think No. Yeah. (57:37) Is that quick? I think you can find people that want to work harder and we've we've had it actually at some point a team where we hired some people from from from west coast of US and and our uh people where we have quite a few from central eastern Europe where like oh yeah they don't work actually that hard as as as as we do. (57:54) I mean we have we have uh such a you know to credit to the team it's like the the true missionaries that are there on the weekend um all the time and really care. they really care about the success of the company beyond just working hard. I think they they they they they they are and they they feel part of the company. Um which which uh which which is true. (58:18) So I do think you can find the people in Europe that are phenomenal. Is it bad to hire people who come because you're a glossy name? It's it's an interesting one because we you know in the early days we we didn't have much inbound. So all of that was outbound and it was easier in a way to find people that we felt were right because you didn't have to filter through the noise and now we have just so much where so many people are going because the AI buzz word or you know we now are at scale that makes sense but um but no I think it's you know it's it's (58:48) it's fine like not everybody is the risk taker at the same amount so not I'm not not in any way discarding them. What's been your biggest hiring mistake and what did you learn from it? I think the you know this is uh this is the probably a traditional one but uh as I think about kind of bringing people in and growing them into the company as like the full hiring process. (59:12) I think you hire a person you of course have very little time frequently to assess how they are but then as they are in the company you have a little bit more of the signal and then um I would have taken some decisions quicker than I would have uh with separating with people that usually it's in if you know in the first days or in if you're not unsure in the interview but let's say you are bring them giving them a chance and you are not sure in the first weeks or months you should separate straight away rather than keep giving giving the chance I think that's the the the few times I think I've done that. (59:41) What's the hardest role to hire for? Hardest researchers. Easy. When should a founder no longer be involved in every hire? Well, I hope we'll be with P involved through so we interview everyone and I hope you still do now at 250. Yes, we do. We hope to interview that as as long as possible because it's a good signal of who we bring into the company. We get to meet them. (1:00:04) But of course, we we we still think the company is like still shifting in terms of how we approaching that. One is like um now even more we are optimizing for like engineering technical skill set in all parts of the company than we would have probably like six to 12 months ago. (1:00:25) So it's even increasing in some aspects but I I hope we'll interview to like a thousand people. The the thing isn't so much hard you know when to be involved in the interview. It's it's more how many people you're trying to hire within a specific period of time. So if I try to hire thousand people in a month, it's impossible because it would be more than the time we have. (1:00:42) But if it's a in a year, how many people will you have? I think we'll have 400 by the end of the year. By the end of this year, by the end of this year and I think we That's a lot. You're almost doubling. You're adding 40% in. That's almost up in three to four months. 50 offers or so out out or like joining. (1:01:03) So 250 now roughly 30 to 50 people that are already scheduled to join. And I think we'll get additional 100 respectfully small and mighty that's not 150 in 3 to 4 months. Still small and still mighty. But the the the the you know we we we have a pretty global team now where we are trying to bring a lot of our go to market and engineering in every location we are at. So um so we think we can parallelize that building in Brazil in Japan and India and Mexico. (1:01:28) Um, so we are really going to that local new ones too where we are building small outposts everywhere and I think we can make it work. Do you care about revenue per head in the long term? Yes. Like we want to be an efficient company. I think now we are we have a very good metric for revenue per head. (1:01:44) But it's it's like a it's a it's like a you know it's a good show like are you an efficient company? But if we uh if we think there's a path for us to to to to get there over time um we would we take easily the new hires that can help us. (1:02:02) I mean you you you you know it extremely well as an investor but of course the the the one of the key metrics is retention or like how you think about NR for any of the clients. So me bringing people now helping us get the distribution before competition does might decrease my sort of um uh revenue I get. (1:02:21) But if the NR keeps growing and I don't hire more people in the next 5 years that that that metric of course will will change. Can I ask what revenue is you at now? When will this uh air or like plus minus uh two weeks? Two weeks. Two weeks. Okay. So we crossed 200 million now. Whoa. So it's a good number. That's amazing. Yeah, that is a great per 250 if you've got that now. Yeah, it's pretty good. [ __ ] a. Thanks. (1:02:47) What was it? What was the end of 23? The end of 2023, I think we were between 35 35 35 million 35 million. You went from beta launch in January to 35 we did. So we did 20 months to 100 and then um 20 months to 100 million. Yes, I think something like that. [ __ ] And then um around 10 months to 200 a bit longer 15 months maybe just crying and I write these numbers. (1:03:19) Oh it's so depressing. I mean you know I'm so happy for you and well the thing is that of course you know it goes quickly it can also go quickly down. Well but but is your revenue not relatively sticky? I think it's relatively sticky. for large enterprises is the majority. Our biggest part of the business now and we obsessing is is is building effectively conversational agent platform. Most of our like the biggest customers are building. (1:03:47) Who's your biggest customer? Not name but like size. Um our biggest contract is around 2 million and they are mostly in um call center, customer support, personal uh assistance base. All of those companies are orchestrating combination of um of the research. So speech to text alex to speech and then bringing a lot of those integrations that we now we create. (1:04:12) So that's that's like the the the on the enterprise side whether it's Cisco these are not the the contracts there but Cisco Twilio um recently working with Epic Games these are some of our biggest biggest um deployments of of of of the work. (1:04:32) And then of course on the you know on the we're in lucky position that we still have a huge self-s served distribution of creators and developers building all the time. The one I really want to ask if it's okay is okay. So get 10 months to 200 million. Yeah. What's that to 300 million then? Because you have you did 20 months to 100 10 to 200. (1:04:49) Well we we are we are you know we are ambitious company so we hope to uh can we do five months to 300? We would love to break break if it's a healthy revenue and we are creating good work. We would love to break the record. What was the price of the last round? Three. 3.3. 3.3. All rounds divisible by 11. Okay. 3.3. And then you did that when you were at 150 million in revenue. We we did that when No, lower. (1:05:14) We were We were somewhere between 100 and 120, I think. Okay. 100 to 120. But I'm just looking at that going, you did that Jan 25. We announced it Jan 205 and then we did that towards end of 2024. I'm just looking at it thinking, okay, so they're doing end of year revenues for 25 at 250 300. It's quite a cheap deal. (1:05:38) 11 12% of your revenues. Oh, like four or 12 months. Yeah. Well, it was, you know, I think the the first So, we did the round in October of 24. So we probably at 80 when we got the docs and then it was signed then you need the money we so the way we approached any of the fundraisers it's can we bring some of the bets forward in that case it was even more spend on models like expanded to multimodel can we bring our our work internationally so expand into other regions and then double down on aentic platform so start building even more of the true enterprise (1:06:21) um uh functionality whether it's the reliability you need whether it's integration with Salesforce service now SIP trunking so like investing in those those was the most important but it at the time it was 30x revenue so 30x current revenue um uh so pretty good then how do you balance between focus and executing according to plan versus being able to do more I understand the benefits of being able to do But you can probably always do more with more money. It doesn't mean it's the right thing. (1:06:55) I think that the kind of the variation of this is like can you paralyze a new effort without distracting the core work. So and that's roughly why we are trying to approach this like can we bring our our work to a new place? Can we create a new product experience without affecting the core thing that's actually important for our users? If we can then we'll likely invest bring the people and do it. (1:07:21) If it's distracting then it becomes a question of like is it is it worth the the upside when we think about kind of doing more the question that I think we forgot earlier was uh what's the biggest line of business in the future that is not a very big line or non-existent today it's it's interesting because it's on the on the relative basis I think the our agents work is is is already huge but I think it's it's just scratching the surface I think it's going to if we play it right it's like a a multi-billion dollar revenue generating business just from I mean just huge of (1:07:50) course creating voice agents and going and going deeper. So I think this one is on like on the relative and these would be voice agents that you sell to companies to manage their customer support. That's right. Gotcha. That's right. I think and then you can go deeper. You can of course expand from voice into conversational agents and by that I mean you start building omni channel solution with email integration, WhatsApp integration which is kind of that you know more classic customer support. Do you sell then to an intercom (1:08:18) and a decagon today? So the we are have a public partnership with with decagon. So we do but of course as you start going deeper it depends a little bit where decagon goes and where we go. Are you are are they going to verticalize or they will continue horizontal and go down? Well we verticalize more. (1:08:37) So there might be you know some areas where we overlap a little bit more. But today we given we are very like partner horizontal approach that uh that we we we treat all of them as good partners. Speaking of kind of good partners right now we're doing the human plus agent. (1:08:55) We're so friendly and we're we make each other better and there's a time when human plus agent just becomes agent. Do you think we are seeing a lot of resistance from employees within companies towards agents coming in? I we do but the the the way we've seen this like kind of transition happen now is where you will have more specialized humans where the agents are taking more of the manual parts that nobody really wanted to do or was effectively very easy to to um to to or very didn't require domain expertise. (1:09:30) So like a good example is like if you're taking appointment scheduling uh if you are doing a refund all of those of course assuming you have the safeguards and authentication in place are pretty easily done with with AI but then suddenly if you need to help a patient navigate the outbound flow after going from hospital or understand analysis that cannot be done with AI there's too much too much at sc at at stake and you need a deep domain expertise um so we've seen like kind of the transition where that side of of of people helping in (1:10:01) that kind of last mile is even more valuable. Well, of course, AI can help with those easier tasks across. And I think this will continue. Of course, the percentages will shift where you will have even more um automation as it goes deeper and then even more value assigned to the people doing that domain expertise because ultimately it will help automate the task at hand. (1:10:26) Well, does taking money from SEO meaningfully move the needle in a way that it doesn't from other funds? you know, like I think so so our first run was with A16Z and it did meaningfully move the needle for us like it was very clear that people uh respected you in a way that they didn't before. Yeah, I agree. (1:10:47) And then SEOA came in in series B and that kind of doubled down that perception where it's like okay A6Z and and SEOA are part of the of the of the company. It's it's like it's also very rare to have both of these investors in any of the companies. So it did help like where a lot of investors, oh sorry, a lot of clients would be respecting that and now iconic on top of that is is is just incredible mix. (1:11:05) Um and NFDG2 I think NFDG2 is like you know of course clients will usually not have that perception but uh investors do but investors do and some of our engineers or users uh really really admire and trust Nat and I do too. So he's great. You're a very strategic asset when you look at what you have and what you've built. Have you had acquisition offers? We did have acquisition offers. (1:11:32) Did you contemplate any of them? Honestly, we always will do like the basic diligence and let our investors know that it's, you know, that we had this and um and usually What was the largest one? Well, the largest one didn't have a money. So, but the the the the ones that that we went it was like an interesting conversation because we would frequently try to like go into is the strategic partnership and then they would be like oh can we do can we consider are we open to M&A activity but it would be um a (1:12:07) while back and um um yeah I prefer also not sure. Was it tempting? It it was tiny bit tempting but in a in a you know in a in a way where we um in a in the first one or two examples. So the first one was when when we were doing series A was going really well and then of course we like you know were unclear how um how how this will continue. (1:12:36) It's like a very beginning of the curve and that that the first one was like okay this is first time we ever are doing this. let's understand what what they are what they are offering. Um but we were more interested into into like seeing whether more about the process itself like how it happens rather than actually uh giving giving the company. (1:12:56) Um because all then it was clear okay they don't actually want to acquire us. This is what we understand and we need to be part of the company. So we were we were we were a flat no and since then through any of the conversation now that we know that this is even approaching this M&A you know I think it's it's it's even more so now I think we are more did you do secondary confidence we did secondary and that helps so we do almost every round we can we do secondary and a tender offer for all employees that have vested stock so they (1:13:28) can sell the stock um so so they all feel that there's actually liquidity to them to the to the to the Um, and I think it's I think it's valuable because we are betting for something huge and you want to know that you've you you can take the risk to bet on that some some some big outcome. Um, which of course you know like I think it's very easy to say financial per is not uh not important and I think it isn't but there's like this basic layer that people want to I think it is paying for child care and (1:13:56) paying for a house. No, of course. Exactly. That's what I mean. But it's like it's not the goal in itself, but you want to have like this bottom set of good life that's covered, which we are extremely lucky as a company to have and to be able to offer. (1:14:14) Um, but then like now the the kind of the aspiration is much bigger, especially now that this basic layer is covered. Um, so yeah, the thing I often think is how many great European companies of the last 20 years would have not sold had we had secondary and liquidity options available at the time cuz so many did sell because we didn't have that and it it was so meaningful. (1:14:32) I think it does it does help with like the perception where where you know there's like you can to some extent I think you can put away like any of the greediness that comes with money just by taking some of the risk risk equation away. Dude, we're going to do a quick fire round. So I'm going to say a short statement. You're going to give me an immediate thought. (1:14:50) Does that sound okay? Sounds great. So what did you believe that? Sorry. What do you believe that most around you disbelieve that you can build a company from Europe at the global scale? You don't think people still think that like you don't think we're moving the needle a little bit? I think you are helping and I think many of the people in our ecosystem are but I don't think most people people do. (1:15:10) Maybe another one which is not that specific to company building but I do think voice will be the interface to the technology around us. It will be the primary interface for a lot of technology around us which I think most people would not agree. I'm not going to let you wiggle on this one. (1:15:29) You can buy open AI at 300, Anthropic at 170 or Grock at 120. Which one do you buy and which one do you sell? Well, I don't know if I like this question. The Anton answered it. Anton Anton for context answered he'd buy Grock and he'd sell OpenAI. Okay, let's keep it at the positive. I would buy Open AI, but I love anthropic. (1:15:53) Like, you know, if I was on the coding side, I think I would I would be buying buying. Mandate cursor. No, we don't mandate. It's like you you use what you what you think is most valuable. What do most people use? Most people do use cursor. Yeah, some people use cloud code, but but but still more cursor. I think it's shifting a little bit. (1:16:13) Um I'm also like you know to your other question the the um I don't remember who was the investor but they did say that like um which which I think I I would also like as I think about that decision is I would be happily investing in a lot of the products I use and I and I do use chat GPT very often. Um, every so often I will use Entropic uh for for like testing where we are with the space but uh but I think they are investing more in coding rather than cloud the consumer and OpenAI is clearly investing a lot in Shptt the consumer solution. What have you changed your mind on most in the last 12 months? I think that we (1:16:46) and I do know it's a rapid one that's why I'm going quick answer but that we previously would not do any of the product innovation um uh if we if we knew um that we are doing any research initiative ourselves and I think now it's shifted that we will sometimes explore product with outside research even if we don't have we don't build it internally is speed of ARR growth is a [ __ ] metric. (1:17:16) Depends on time horizon but but in general yes I think speed of AR growth doesn't doesn't matter. What's your favorite consumer brand today and why the I really like eight sleep. Uh I don't know it's consumer brand but I do like eight recently as like a changed quite significantly. Um I don't know if that's the the the brand. I am a huge user of of Google Google maps and love Google maps. (1:17:43) um lovable. I really like um from consumerish um applications. You can be CEO of any company for a day. What company would you be CEO of? I would choose Google or OpenAI. I would know the knowhow of some of the incredible model. I think more Google. I would say Google Genie V3 models, incredible innovations and then at the same time just the you know the scale of operation would be interesting. Super bullish on Google. (1:18:08) People question them with the golden. Hey, you didn't give me Google in the previous question. No, the uh yeah, I would invest in 300. I would invest in Google, but that's not an option. But you're super bullish on Google even with the ads model being potentially. No, no, it's like super bullish is not definitely not super bullish, but I I think Google is uh I would still put a lot that Google has a good future and um and especially recently they are catching up in many places. (1:18:34) Um so I think they have a I think they are they are definitely in the race. I'm creating a title for you. You're going to be the president of Europe. Okay. I'm aware for all of our American listeners, Europe is not a country even though you like to collectivize it and make it one. (1:18:52) Uh, president of Europe, what would you do, one thing to make the European ecosystem have a higher chance of success? And my word goes into into law immediately. Yeah, I would proxy a lot of AI law to US law. I know this is it's it's has a huge set of repercussions but I would I would try to follow exactly how US is approaching a lot of AI related regulation and just implement the same or let like create another state in in in European Union in Europe that people can opt in that follows that law to not like make it too hard given given all the repercussions. How important is founder brand? That's (1:19:29) an interesting one because it's it's um my answer here would be I don't know because in in many ways as we thought about the 11 laps especially in early days it's like the the the people that build the company are like are the people that build the company and in some ways we they kind of could still don't know to what extent like having some people that are very much out there like let's say I'm now in this podcast takes away from that and um and and we want to make it complimentary because we you know the the the the reason we are (1:20:04) successful I think is to a large extent because we've created incredible research the engineers are just grinding and creating the best product experience go to market team is inventing new ways to combine self-s serve and sales so it's like all those parts and then supplemented by operations scaling the company from less than 100 to now 250 in in the span of seven months while keeping culture intact you know these these are like all so hard things and with hyperrowth Um I think you know the there's less time to be able to appreciate all those (1:20:34) individuals than than you would otherwise. And um and I sometimes worry by having that kind of you know too much of the founder brand kind of takes away from that. But my mind is changing a little bit. I think like maybe you can elevate that by having a a founder brand out there. (1:20:54) Final one and it may be a little bit of a thought but what's the single best piece of advice you've been given that you think to most often? Well, the I don't it's not most often. So, in in the recent times, I I like what uh what Peter Thiel said about the biggest risk is not taking the risk. Um and like kind of staying kind of like not taking a decision or staying what risk did you not take that haunts you most you know like it's it's um it's shifting because if if you ask me that I should have taken that risk. (1:21:26) So I don't I don't usually I usually hope of try to to like take a quick uh action on on top of that. But one that that is we are considering is an acquisition of another company now which is a big company and um and that company you know is in hundreds of millions of dollars. So it would be a huge risk for for for bringing them in and um we think we can do better internally. (1:21:46) So I think we want to take that risk. Matty, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for putting up with my meandering and you've been a fantastic guest. Thank you, Harry. It's a pleasure pleasure to be finally able to speak together.