20VC: ElevenLabs Hits $200M ARR: The Untold Story of Europe's Fastest Growing AI Startup | The Real Cost of AI from Talent to Data Centres | How US VCs are in a Different League to Europeans | The Future of Foundation Models with Mati Staniszewski

20VC: ElevenLabs Hits $200M ARR: The Untold Story of Europe's Fastest Growing AI Startup | The Real Cost of AI from Talent to Data Centres | How US VCs are in a Different League to Europeans | The Future of Foundation Models with Mati Staniszewski

Author: Harry Stebbings September 8, 2025 Duration: 1:14:06

Mati Staniszewski is the Co-Founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the world's leading AI voice platform. Since launching in 2022, ElevenLabs has raised over $350M, most recently at a $3.3BN valuation, making it one of Europe's fastest AI unicorns. The company counts Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Sequoia Capital among its backers. Today, Mati announces that the company has hit a staggering $200M ARR. ElevenLabs took 20 months to hit $100M ARR. 10 months to hit $200M ARR. Can they do $300M in 5 months…

AGENDA: 

[00:00] $100M in 20 Months?! ElevenLabs Untold Growth Story

[12:20] Are AI Models Already Plateauing—or Just Getting Started?

[14:00] Why OpenAI Can't Beat ElevenLabs 

[17:30] The Talent Wars: How Do You Retain World-Class AI Researchers?

[23:10] PR vs Product: Why Most Startups Botch Their Launch

[36:00] Are U.S. VCs Playing a Different Game Than Europe?

[44:00] The Real Cost of AI: Why ElevenLabs Built Its Own Data Centers

[59:00] Voice Agents = Multi-Billion Dollar Business of the Future?

[01:05:00] Buy OpenAI or Anthropic? Which Foundation Model Wins?

[01:09:30] Europe: Strengths, Weaknesses and What Needs to be Done

 


Hosted by Harry Stebbings, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) pulls back the curtain on the high-stakes worlds of venture capital and startup building. Each episode is a compact, twenty-minute dive into the minds shaping the future of technology. You’ll hear candid conversations with legendary investors, the very individuals who fund and guide the next generation of companies, featuring voices like Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Beyond the capital, this podcast dedicates time to the founders themselves. Weekly, Stebbings sits down with transformative entrepreneurs such as Spotify's Daniel Ek, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman, unpacking the real journeys behind their iconic companies. The format is direct and focused, cutting straight to the core insights on funding strategies, pitch dynamics, and the personal philosophies that drive success. Tuning into this podcast means gaining an unfiltered perspective from both sides of the table, all delivered in a concise and accessible style that fits into your day.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Podcast Episodes
20VC: Cohere's Chief AI Officer on Why Scaling Laws Will Continue | Whether You Can Buy Success in AI with Talent Acquisitions | The Future of Synthetic Data & What It Means for Models | Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015 with Joelle Pineau [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:34
Joelle Pineau is the Chief AI Officer at Cohere, where she leads research on advancing large language models and practical AI systems. Before joining Cohere, she was VP of AI Research at Meta, where she founded and led M…
20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on The Winners and Losers in AI | The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead? | The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses | How to Analyse Margins and Growth Rates in a World of AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:14:23
David Cahn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and one of the world's leading AI investors. At Sequoia David has led investments in Clay, Juicebox, Sesame, Kela, Stark, etc.. Before Sequoia, David was a General Partner @ Coa…
20Growth: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine: ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) 101 | The Rise of User Generated Content and How to Use It | TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality | Hiring for Growth: When and Who with Sandy Diao [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:18
Sandy Diao is one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy has scaled products to over 200M+ users and led growth teams at Descript, Meta and Pinterest. She is also a prolific writer all on things…
20VC: Why VC Today is Worse Than 2021 | Why Vertical SaaS is a Bad Investment Today | Why We Are Deluding Ourselves on Growth Expectations | Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation | Benchmark Adds Their Newest General Partner [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:58
AGENDA: 04:50 Benchmark's New Partner: Everett Randall 10:19 Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation: Another Loss for Public Markets? 28:39 Why Today is as Bad as the Hype of COVID in 2021 32:10 Why Vertical SaaS is a…
20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:23
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Deel, the $17BN global payroll juggernaut that just last week announced their latest $300M fundraise led by Ribbit, a16z and Coatue. Deel has been on the most insane journey, they…
20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:49
Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Fi…
20VC: Atlassian CEO on Why Everything is Overvalued & Are We in an AI Bubble | Do Margins Matter & Does Defensibility Exist in an AI World | Is Per Seat Pricing Dead & The Future of Vibe Coding with Mike Cannon-Brookes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:16
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers gl…