BusinessFounders Podcast
ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski discusses the founding and rapid growth of ElevenLabs, detailing how childhood frustration with Polish movie dubbing inspired the creation of frontier speech AI. He shares how his experience at Palantir shaped ElevenLabs' flat, small-team organizational structure and forward deployed engineering model. Staniszewski also explains why the company remains strictly focused on voice and audio research, the mission to preserve human voices, and why he has consistently rejected acquisition offers to build an enduring, independent AI company.
- Early ElevenLabs conversational agents flopped because their speech was unnaturally articulate; adding human disfluencies like pauses, "ums," and "uhs" caused user performance and acceptance to skyrocket. Read →
- Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski started ElevenLabs in 2021 to fix foreign movie dubbing, motivated by Poland's single-voice narration style. Read →
- ElevenLabs restricts pure research strictly to audio architecture, relying on outside LLMs and third-party tools for intelligence and knowledge retrieval. Read →
- Spotify CEO Daniel Ek warned David Senra to "stay away from the circus" of industry conferences, but ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski turned them into a core enterprise pipeline. Read →
- Mati Staniszewski organized ElevenLabs without executive titles, running autonomous units of fewer than 10 people who make direct decisions for the customer. Read →
- ElevenLabs co-founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski rejected multiple buyout offers early, choosing long-term independence over immediate financial security. Read →
- For decades, humans bent their behavior around machines by learning keyboards, screen layouts, and programming languages. Voice models reverse that relationship. Read →
BusinessTBPN
This episode delved into Midjourney's surprising expansion into medical imaging with an advanced body scanner, the intensified AI talent wars seeing key researchers and policy experts move to OpenAI, and a cultural critique with Derek Thompson on America's 'cult of self-enhancement' and the influence of his 'Abundance' thesis on politics. Discussions also included ARM Holdings CEO Renee Haas on navigating the AI chip boom and future semiconductor challenges, Rob Reed on the urgent need for DNA supply chain security, and Jake Paul of Anti-Fund sharing insights into his barbell investment strategy and unique approach to brand building and sports promotion.
- Renee Haas, CEO of ARM Holdings, describes AI as a "monster" with "unlimited" appetite for compute and memory, fueling unprecedented demand across the semiconductor industry. Read →
- Anti-Fund, led by Jake Paul and Jeff Woo, recently closed a $100 million fund to pursue a distinctive barbell investment approach. Read →
- Midjourney, the AI art company, has expanded into healthcare with "Midjourney Medical," developing advanced full-body scanners funded by its profitable, bootstrapped AI art business. Read →
- Synthetic biology, like computing, is an exponential technology, meaning capabilities once reserved for elite experts will soon be accessible to college freshmen, dramatically lowering the bar for creating biological agents. Read →
- America's relationship with health is changing: it's no longer just about wellness but has become an integral part of pop culture, driven by trends like looksmaxing, peptides, and GLP1s. Read →
BusinessFounders Podcast
David Senra interviews Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke about his unique approach to company building over 21 years. They discuss Lütke's philosophy of treating companies as engineering projects, the importance of differentiation and high-agency talent, lessons from navigating major crises like COVID-19 and an 80% stock drop, and the role of intuition, books, and AI in entrepreneurial growth. Lütke emphasizes a culture of continuous improvement, challenging orthodoxy, and a deep focus on craft and detail.
- Books provide "cheat codes" for real life, allowing rapid access to accumulated knowledge from others' careers. Read →
- View other companies as rivals for inspiration, not competitors for mimicry. Read →
- Tobi Lütke views companies as complex technologies, applying engineering principles to organizational design. Read →
- Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke demands an unquantifiable "craft and giving a s*" to build exceptional products. Read →