"We went 20 months to $100 million in ARR, and then just 10 months to $200 million."

On a recent episode of the 20VC podcast, ElevenLabs co-founder Matty Staniszewski sat down with Harry Stebbings for a wide-ranging discussion on the company’s meteoric rise, its strategy for building a defensible moat against tech giants, and why building a global AI leader from Europe is no longer a contrarian bet.

A “Meteoric” Growth Curve

Staniszewski revealed the stunning velocity of ElevenLabs’ revenue growth, confirming the company has crossed a major milestone. “We crossed 200 million now,” he stated. He detailed the acceleration: “We did 20 months to 100 [million] and then 10 months to 200.” For context, he noted the company ended 2023 with an ARR of just $35 million. This trajectory positions ElevenLabs as one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world.

From Bad Movie Dubbing to a Foundational AI Platform

The initial spark for the company came from a shared frustration with the low quality of movie dubbing in their native Poland. “It’s a terrible experience,” Staniszewski recalled. However, they quickly realized that existing technology was not good enough to solve the problem elegantly. This led to a crucial pivot. “To actually fix it, let’s take a step back and fix one of those components and make it great.” This commitment to building their own foundational models, rather than leveraging existing ones, became a core part of their strategy and a key differentiator.

Building a Moat Against the Giants

When asked the inevitable question—“Why won’t OpenAI just do this?”—Staniszewski outlined a multi-layered defense based on focus, talent, and product execution.

• Unwavering Focus. “We took this bet that we want to really own and win in the voice AI research and product space. All our work is directly tied to voice.”
• Elite, Scarce Talent. He argued that the pool of world-class voice researchers is incredibly small. “The number of researchers in the world working on voice and being exceptional is super small, probably like 50 to 100 people…P [his co-founder] was able to assemble one of the best teams in the space.”
• Superior Product Layer. Beyond the core models, the platform itself is a moat. “If you’re building a voice agent…you need to bring knowledge base integrations, functions, you need to then deploy, test, evaluate, monitor…I think OpenAI is not investing as much time. They could, but they aren’t.”

The Case for Building from Europe

Staniszewski’s most contrarian belief is one he is actively disproving: “That you can build a company from Europe at the global scale.” He pushed back against stereotypes, arguing the talent is world-class and hungry for ambitious projects. The key, he said, is a global mindset from day one. “You want to be able to build from Europe but not build only for Europe. You still want the global aspiration.”

The Future is Spoken: Enterprise Voice Agents

Looking ahead, Staniszewski sees the company’s largest opportunity in its enterprise-focused conversational agent platform. Their largest contracts, around $2 million each, are already in the call center and customer support space. “I think it’s going to, if we play it right, be a multi-billion dollar revenue-generating business just from creating voice agents,” he projected, signaling a future where voice becomes the primary interface for technology around us.