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Russian (RU) Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 8:46 AM 4 min read
Mati Staniszewski still personally interviews every hire alongside his co-founder, Piotr Dąbkowski, even as ElevenLabs scales up to 400 employees, he said on the “20VC with Harry Stebbings” podcast published Sept. 7. This hands-on approach, according to Staniszewski, has helped the company outperform tech giants like OpenAI in voice AI benchmarks while securing multimillion-dollar contracts.
Staniszewski built Europe’s fastest-growing artificial intelligence company while maintaining a hands-on hiring practice that defies Silicon Valley orthodoxy. The ElevenLabs CEO crossed $200 million in annual revenue with just 250 employees organized into 20 micro-teams of five to 10 people each, according to Staniszewski.
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The Polish entrepreneur told Stebbings he took 20 months to reach $100 million in revenue, then accelerated to $200 million in just 10 additional months. The voice cloning startup expects to surpass $300 million by year-end while maintaining its unconventional team structure, according to the interview.
The ElevenLabs CEO plans to keep interviewing hires even as the company grows to 1,000 employees, viewing this practice as essential quality control for company culture. Staniszewski acknowledged the primary constraint involves hiring velocity rather than his willingness to interview candidates.
ElevenLabs originated from Staniszewski’s frustration with Poland’s "terrible" movie dubbing system, where one monotone narrator voices every character regardless of gender or emotion.
The problem sparked an idea during a hack weekend project in early 2021 when Staniszewski and Dąbkowski, an ex-Google engineer and Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) strategist, experimented with audio technology.
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“All movies are still dubbed where you have all the voices from the original, whether it’s a male or female voice narrated with one single character,” Staniszewski said. “So you have one voice narrating all the characters in a flat, non-emotional way. So it’s like an audiobook reading of a movie.”
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