Issue No. 40Week ending Sunday, October 4, 2026511 episodes · 2211 articles
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AI startups

Mati Staniszewski on AI startups

3 quotes from 2 episodes on Founders Podcast and Cheeky Pint, each with a timestamped link to the source.

3 quotes2 episodes

The short version

Mati Staniszewski commits fully to building at the frontier of AI as the technology changes the world. Mati Staniszewski and the co-founder manage over 15 direct reports each to run operations directly.

Most interesting insights

Embedding technical resources inside individual ministries allows a central digital transformation team to assemble agentic citizen support.

“Every ministry had technical resources working on creating that agentic version of their work. Then it was a central digital transformation team that would assemble this all together to deliver that through the central citizen support, which I thought was brilliant.”

Mati Staniszewski, Cheeky Pint · April 2026 · Watch at 58:09 ↗

From How ElevenLabs Scales Past $450M ARR with 470 People

Top talking points

  1. Building at the frontier requires full commitment

    Mati Staniszewski focuses on building at the edge of technological change as AI transforms global industries.

    “AI is changing the world. We can build at the frontier of that change. We are going all in.”

    Mati Staniszewski, Founders Podcast · September 2026 · Watch at 56:59 ↗

    From Why Mati Staniszewski Refuses to Sell ElevenLabs

  2. Direct reporting keeps leadership close to team execution

    Mati Staniszewski and the co-founder manage over 15 direct reports each to maintain direct oversight across project groups.

    “Both me and my co-founder will have over 15 direct reports each that we'll work with.”

    Mati Staniszewski, Cheeky Pint · April 2026 · Watch at 53:17 ↗

    From How ElevenLabs Scales Past $450M ARR with 470 People

Key takeaways from these write-ups

Why Mati Staniszewski Refuses to Sell ElevenLabs

  • ElevenLabs co-founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski rejected multiple buyout offers early, choosing long-term independence over immediate financial security.
  • Staniszewski argues that selling a startup just to "make life easy" is the wrong proposition when you have the timing and the market right in front of you.

How ElevenLabs Scales Past $450M ARR with 470 People

  • ElevenLabs reached a valuation of $11 billion and crossed $450 million in annual recurring revenue with a team of 470 people.
  • Co-founders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski maintain over 15 direct reports each to eliminate middle-management layers and keep project groups under 10 people.

How we attribute quotes. Every quote was matched against the episode transcript, so the words and the timestamp are real (we trim filler words like "um", nothing else). The name comes from our written summary of the episode, and we use it only when a separate check of the captions finds that person on the episode. YouTube gives us no voice-by-voice transcript, so open the timestamp to hear who is talking. See a wrong name? Tell us and we fix or remove it.

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