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The SaaS Revolution Show
Inside ElevenLabs GTM: Speed, culture, and growth
00:20:06
In this episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, recorded live at SaaStock Europe, Jonathan Chemouny (GTM Europe, ElevenLabs) and Alex Theuma (Founder & CEO, SaaStock) take you behind the scenes of one of the world’s fastest-growing AI startups. You’ll hear how ElevenLabs builds go-to-market like a startup within a startup: - Why moving fast is their key differentiator - Their mindset and approach to experimentation and pipeline growth - How removing “distractions” like job titles fosters team alignment - Why assembling a high-performing team begins with the hiring process - What’s working in their current GTM motion and how they use their own tech to drive it - Jonathan’s personal AI stack and what’s next for ElevenLabs’ GTM engine 🔗 Guest Links: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chemouny Website – https://elevenlabs.io/
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- [00:01]
A
The biggest difference is everything we do, we move extremely fast. And sometimes it's not perfect and we know that, but we move super fast. And the speed, the speed is so important at the moment.
- [00:13]
B
Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show, a podcast by SAS Doc. Here we interview SaaS founders from around the world who've been there and done that. They share the ins and outs of how they built their businesses, their operations, their path to securing investment and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your wellbeing and navigate the complexities of this ever changing industry. I'm your host, Alex Steamer, and together we'll explore the good, the bad and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. All right, I'm Alex Ziemer, CEO, founder of SaaS stock. I'm here live at SASOC Europe, joined by Jean Chamouni, who's GTM at ElevenLabs. John, I thought this was your first stock, but it's not. You've been here a few times with some different companies.
- [01:03]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, hi, Alex. And yes, no, it's not my first talk. I've been here quite some times actually. I came here with three different companies, Intercom, Lattice and now eleven Labs. So I know pretty well SAS talk, as I told you, it's for me, it's an iconic event. I'm from Dublin, I'm French obviously, but live in Dublin. And yeah, love this event.
- [01:23]
B
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming. Obviously we have some of the 11 labs team here as well. I know you've been participating in the new program and meetup and how the meetings gone for you.
- [01:33]
A
Love that, love the energy. It's 15 minutes, so straight to the point. We meet great people and yes, so far, excellent.
- [01:40]
B
So I said before we were recording, your colleague Stan, who I believe hired you at Intercom, is now working together with you at ElevenLabs. You know, he gave some high acclaim in terms of the things that you're doing, you know, specifically obviously in gtm, around AI and this kind of like new playbook. So this is obviously like really where I want to pick your brains or just let you speak and you know, tell me in the audience in terms of what you're doing. I think like Most people know ElevenLabs, but this is like a big assumption. But you guys are in the news like a lot and certainly in the social media feeds. I just hit 200 million ARR. There's a very quick jump from 100 to 200 and obviously some of the things that you're doing and the company are doing, you know, are leading to that. Maybe just a quick, you know, sentence in terms of what 11 labs is, what it does for those that don't know. And then we make maybe can jump into this new AI playbook and the things that you're doing, experimenting with.
- [02:39]
A
Yeah, for sure. So 11 labs, if you, if you, if you're not familiar with the company, if I would have to explain super easily. It's the voice of technology. What we want to do is to bring the world knowledge, the best stories and all the experience with AI, with audio AI. Give you one example, we work with influencer on YouTube. They use our technology to develop their channel. But we also work with bigger company like D Telecom to create a new immersive experience. Can be for customer support, it can be for sales with the agent. But also we work with companies using us for dubbing. We work with companies using us for voiceover for sfx. And also recently we launched a new model for music.
- [03:27]
B
I don't know if you managed to catch the Nathan Latker talk yesterday, but I did mention that you guys just hit or passed 200 million but he showed this kind of graph of your, your ARR and I don't know, it was like this and that that journey certainly to 200 million really exploded very quickly. I don't know what the time has been between 100 to 200.
- [03:47]
A
I think it was 10 months.
- [03:48]
B
10 months, okay. But it's a very rapid growth and what, what we're seeing, the AI native companies are growing, many of them are growing much faster than the classical SaaS that took some of the examples. In fact today I think Sam Jacobs were pavilion showed like Slack, you know, was at one point the fastest growing SaaS company but it took them 24 months to get to 50.50Million ARR. You guys are crushing it at the moment. You have this, you know, this new AI playbook. What are the things that you're doing to really help with this explosive crazy growth?
- [04:21]
A
Yeah. So I think, I mean the numbers are super amazing. I was super proud yesterday when I was attending to the, to the, the presentation of, of Net and Latke. It was, it was great to see, to see that he mentioned 11 labs. I think it's multiple things explaining that the first thing is the team behind ElevenLabs and the models that our research team developed just amazing models to clone the voice to create text to speech, speech to text. I think the team behind is just amazing. But having a great technology is not just good enough. What you need also is having the right team behind. And so of course the GTM team. But I would say at 11 labs it's all the people working at 11 labs that are really amazing. It's the way we recruit as well. It's a part and it's one of the components of the success of ElevenLabs. We raise a bar in the way we work with the people. It's also I think part of the culture of 11 labs. You know, we don't have any job titles. So people are really surprised when I'm working with my gtm, you know, function. They don't understand what is gtm. And this is the thing is we are all part of one single thing is developing 11 labs and providing great value to our customers. So this is this mindset also that explains why we're moving so fast. There is a high intensity because we're all super excited about what we build. And just to be more specific in terms of GTM also the way we work and this is what we discussed in intro. We don't try to duplicate the old playbook but we try not to invent the wheel but. But we try to move super fast on how we work and we're coming with new ideas. We try to innovate all the times. 11 labs for example, me, I created the sales development labs at 11 labs where basically try to innovate with new way to get pipeline.
- [06:08]
B
What was. So you don't really have. It's kind of like a flatter org. A lot of you, you're GTM leads. What was your title before in your previous job to now going to GCM lead. Was there any like also like apprehension for you? Like I was this and now I'm just going to be a GCM lead. How that impacts my career?
- [06:30]
A
Yeah, it's a really good question. So before, before joining eleven Labs I was a head of sales for international at Atlantis. And actually I would say that the job title is. Is a distraction for you. If you are only joining 11 labs because of a job title, a fancy job title, okay, I'm senior director or blah blah blah. You are missing the point. It's not about that. We are looking for people who want to build with us and it makes a difference on the results that you will get from them. And that's why you are all GTM in the sales organization. Stan is GTM and gtm any SDR is gtm. We're all GTM and that's Great because the way we interact, you know, you don't think twice when you want to slack. For example, someone who in a normal company will be a VP for example and think it makes a difference. And also when you prospect because people, they don't know who you really are with the GTM they reply to your emails. So it's good tip.
- [07:21]
B
You mentioned the sales development lab and I want to dig into that. But like yourself, Stan, or the GTM leads, are you working on like specific ideas and projects? Like individually, is there teamwork around specific projects? How does that work with all these gtm?
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, totally. So just to give you also an idea, some context about that, we Stan, for example, was a founder. I was a founder myself. It's part of the DNA of the people joining us. They work for early stage startup or they founded a company. And the thing is you have to see us like a startup within the startup. And to give you a real example, I developed the AISDR at 11 labs. Basically I identified that yeah, we can be better, we can be more efficient on the way we manage the inbound leads. So I created with the 11 labs agents, I created an agent that can help me to qualify in real time. So it was one of my projects came with that worked with some people in the team and I created this and we have great results.
- [08:21]
B
Would it be. Did you look when you were creating this to see if there is actually anything in the market that you could just buy this off the shelf rather than building it?
- [08:28]
A
I'm very lucky because we have the best technology on the market when it's about the voice. So I always try to to use our own technology. Give you another example, when we launched 11v3, which is the most realistic model on the market, I started to play with it and to send audio message with this model with a clone of my voice to my leads. And the message was hey, Alex wanted to invite you to a demo, but actually you are already experiencing the demo because this is a clone of my voice. So every time I try to show the value of our products, when I prospect someone, so the kind of thing that we do, do you think then.
- [09:06]
B
This is a big part of the or key to the success around the GTM 11 labs that you are, let's say dog fooding and that many other companies should be doing the same with their products. Certainly, if they can, if they can.
- [09:20]
A
For example me in the past at Lattice it was more complicated, you know, to do that. So if you can, of course you have to do it when I worked at Intercomsis, what we were doing as well, using our own technology just to prospect. I think what is important is to be so easy to recruit people from great companies that we all know super successful in SaaS and just say, okay, just apply the playbook. You are successful when you work for this company. Just do the same. But it doesn't work. And in this new world of AI, it doesn't work at all. So I'm not saying that we have to reinvent the wheel, but I'm saying that we, we have to try new things. You probably remember a couple of years ago, five years ago, we were always a Starbucks cup with your name, you know, on it. It's over. You do that, it doesn't work anymore. So we have to find new ways. And we know that it's not going to last forever. To be honest, it's four, six months most of the time. And then you have to find new ideas. And this is something that I asked to my team. I organized an off site recently in Vasso with all of them and I told them bring me ideas that on the papers are a little bit crazy. You know, I want that. And yes, I know that some of them are not going to work, but that's fine. I want to try new things. And it's also a way to, you know, it's extremely saturated at the moment. I'm sure you, you receive so many phone calls, outbound calls and emails and you don't read that.
- [10:37]
B
Yeah.
- [10:37]
A
So how we can be innovative with that, using new channels, using new types of message, but also connecting with you personally, I think the time where we were behind the screen, I think it's over. And Sastock is a good example, is meeting our leads face to face makes a difference. So this is what we do at 11am it definitely makes a difference.
- [10:59]
B
So you shared there, obviously. And I've heard this a lot this year in the era of AI, it's becoming more important to meet people in person. It's a channel that's I guess kind of working for you and I think many other companies. What other maybe. What are some, maybe new or surprising channels that are kind of working well for you guys.
- [11:20]
A
So what I'm going to share with you depends a lot of your market. Of course, if you are listening us in Germany, it would be very different or in the US but for example, WhatsApp in some countries in Europe works incredibly well. If people don't reply to the phone, they will reply on WhatsApp, which is great. So WhatsApp SMS works really well. Something that we do also is audio message using our own technology of text to speech. So I will be able to Send messages on LinkedIn with variables of your name using my clone voice. Something that works really well.
- [11:56]
B
Are you seeing any? So like we're obviously doing a podcast. I know that you have the ability to translate podcasts and we were talking about that and it'd be interesting to see if we adapt this podcast to the. Well because we have a global audience right in into other languages and understand the complexity or not around doing that. Are you seeing podcasts out there which are just kind of clones of the podcast host, which is just like agents talking to agents. Is that there yet? Do you think this is going to take on maybe.
- [12:31]
A
I mean every day I discover new use cases, you know, but just on the point about translating your podcast something in terms of accessibility, 80% of the world don't speak English. So meaning that you, if you want to increase your reach, just translating your podcast will be a great start. Already.
- [12:47]
B
Is it easy to do?
- [12:49]
A
It's quite easy to do. It's just a couple of clicks and, and you can do it.
- [12:53]
B
Okay, there we go. I have to speak to Chloe.
- [12:56]
A
That's it.
- [12:58]
B
So one of the things in terms of like what we, we spoke about or you talked about that let's say in terms of the dog fooding side of things that obviously you have the capability to do this and not, not every company is going to be able to necessarily do that around the, the structure. And again maybe getting back to like the, everybody having like the GTM sort of title. Do you think this will translate well to a lot of like AI native companies or SaaS, companies that are going to AI first to rethink their organizations in this way or do you think it's quite specific to certain organizations and their culture?
- [13:39]
A
It's something that I see very often if you discuss with people at let's say OpenAI on Tropik, the old GTM for example sales team. So I think there is this new era of no job titles. Let's just focus on our business and grow the company. And you know, the past where it was, okay, I'm sdr, then I will be account executive, then senior account executive. It's over I think.
- [14:05]
B
And you, you mentioned Obviously you use 11 labs to in the sales development labs and some other use cases. What are non 11 labs AI tools that you're using in your GTM?
- [14:19]
A
So many. So many. But one that I really love and I hear this one all the time on your podcast and everywhere is granular AI Granular. And just for example for the meetings here I was with my iPhone using Granular. It works really well. So really love Granular. Of course, like everybody, we use a lot chat GPT for personalization, preparation of meetings and you know, it's something that we use a lot. And then I would say AI is almost everywhere when you are using, I don't know, Gong or other tools. AI is everywhere. But yeah, I would say the number one tool for me at the moment as we speak, it's definitely granola.
- [14:55]
B
Yeah, we, we use Fathom. But actually I, I don't know, I haven't looked into it. We, I'm only using Fathom to like record our video meetings. But I did hear obviously on the podcast when I was speaking to a CEO that actually beyond video meetings, you can record meetings and have the same sort of use case. So I need to kind of look into whether we can do that for Fathom. I'm sure it's possible. I'm sure it's very possible. Like with what I've heard a lot and not only just at sasoc sort of Europe this year, but throughout the year is the. That distribution is. It's becoming harder but it's the key thing that a lot of people are trying to crack. Right. So in your guys case, obviously you've got the GTM structure, you've got all the projects that you're doing, the things to kind of help grow the business. Is there anything that you're doing would say like more classically like content marketing and distribution. That again it just proves, proven that it works. It doesn't have to be that.
- [16:01]
A
But yeah, no, we do. As I told you, we don't reinvent the wheel and we do what every companies are doing. I think the biggest difference is everything we do, we move extremely fast. And sometimes it's not perfect and we know that, but we move super fast. And the speed, the speed is so important at the moment. We are in a world where everything should be instant and immediate. So everything that we do, we try to move super fast.
- [16:29]
B
How does the CEO Matti or just the company instill this urgency, the speed in everyone? Does it come through just at that point of hiring, making sure that you're just hiring the right people but to install the rhythm, because I'm sure many companies struggle collectively as a whole just to kind of keep that speed up, to get everybody moving at a certain pace. And it's tough. But how do you Guys do it.
- [16:58]
A
Yeah, two things. I mean the way I see it is the people that we recruit. As I told you, founders are used to this fast paced environment. This is the first thing. Second thing is we are all passionate about the mission of A11 Labs. We are the voice of the technology and because we worked like a small startup within the startup, we move super fast. There is no need of 5 approval when you want to do something. We move fast and it makes a difference. Small teams, multiple teams, but small teams all the time.
- [17:27]
B
What do you think for let's say SaaS, companies that are moving to AI first, their biggest challenge around GTM is going to be, let's say over the next 12 months. What could be the biggest challenge? What is something that they really need to be doing?
- [17:46]
A
I think it's, it's a lot about the recruitment, recruiting the right talents. Something that we do at 11 that for me explain also the success of the GTM team is we don't recruit. For example, you know many companies in Dublin, they only recruit in Dublin. We are a remote company and if there is a great talent, let's say in Barcelona, that's, that's not a problem at all. We will recruit this talent in Barcelona and it helps also having very, you know, a team that is very diverse but also finding the best talent where they are. I think it's super important. And one of my recommendations, if you want to create this kind of team, it's having remote company helps a lot. At least at 11 lab it works really well.
- [18:27]
B
Awesome. What is the next project that you've got? So you've done sales, development labs. What, what's the next thing that you're kind of working on that you're able to kind of share that you're excited about?
- [18:40]
A
Personally I'm super excited about AI gtm. So how we can go deeper into this AI motion. The thing is not to replace human, don't get me wrong. The thing is really how we can amplify the reps. So we are doing it with sdr but when you think about it, it could work also with the account executive, could work also with the csm. And I'm super excited about that because it can help us moving faster. And every time when we do that, you understand with dog footing is also we are selling 11 labs in some way. So I'm very excited about that. I think the next six months it will be all about the IGTM just for the organization and just in terms of 11 labs, yes, we have many surprises for you. For sure.
- [19:20]
B
Okay, well, I look forward to the surprises. I'm also going to be speaking to Chloe about translating this podcast, maybe even this episode, into many other languages. Thank you so much John for joining us on the podcast today, being@SAS.Europe once again. Really appreciate it.
- [19:38]
A
Thank you. Alex, thank you.
- [19:42]
B
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