Carles Reina, GTM supervisor at Eleven Labs, shared why he invested in AI firm.
Eleven Labs
The angel investor who backed a billion-dollar AI startup when it was nonetheless in its infancy mentioned he determined to spend money on the corporate after simply half-hour of assembly one among its founders.
Carles Reina first determined to spend money on AI voice startup Eleven Labs in 2022, when he was a enterprise companion at pre-seed fund Idea Ventures.
Co-founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, Eleven Labs makes a speciality of superior text-to-speech and voice cloning expertise. In its January Sequence C funding spherical earlier this yr, the corporate raised $180 million at a valuation of $3.3 billion.
Then in September, the corporate introduced it was letting workers promote shares at a $6.6 billion valuation.
Nonetheless, earlier than Eleven Labs even had a concrete product, Reina, who was working at Palantir Applied sciences on the time, determined to take an opportunity on the agency after assembly Staniszewski.
“I met Mati when he was nonetheless at Palantir,” Reina advised CNBC Make It in an interview. “We began speaking, and inside half-hour of the primary dialog, I advised him, ‘How a lot cash would you like?'”
Reina defined that earlier than the launch of ChatGPT, voice AI hadn’t garnered a lot consideration as a result of large tech firms like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all had text-to-speech merchandise, however they hadn’t actually taken off.
“With ElevenLabs nobody was taking a look at voice AI, actually nobody needed to provide [them] cash. No VCs needed to really again ElevenLabs, again within the early days on the pre-seed spherical. So these are the kind of industries that I actually like, in order that I can get in earlier than everybody else,” he mentioned.
Reina has made 74 angel investments over the previous eight years, together with Revolut, Volumetric, Elroy Air, and Speckle. He now works for Eleven Labs as a go-to-market supervisor.
He mentioned he all the time tries to determine industries that different buyers are usually not listening to: “I’ve completed [invested in] largely AI earlier than it was attractive. I’ve completed robotics earlier than it was attractive as effectively.”
The No.1 trait to look at for in founders
Reina makes a speciality of investing in pre-seed firms — these with an concept, however typically with no absolutely developed product. This implies figuring out key traits in founders that point out a startup will succeed.
“If there’s a product, improbable, but when there is no such thing as a product, completely high-quality for me … I really like founders which might be very technical. They’re tremendous sharp, very good, actually attempting to construct a worldwide firm from day one,” Reina defined.
He mentioned he “invests primarily based on thesis,” so if a founder could be very technical, they’re going to have a deeper understanding of the product and the market they’re promoting to.
Reina mentioned he noticed these traits in Staniszewksi, which satisfied him to again ElevenLabs regardless of the voice AI market being very small on the time.
“Nobody desires to speak to AI voices in the event that they sound robotic. That is essentially the most important downside that there was proper… so once I spoke with Mati, he talked about each components, and he had not been available in the market,” Reina mentioned.
“It was actually fascinating to see he was fascinated with the issues of your entire ecosystem earlier than even truly having any product or earlier than even truly speaking to any actual potential buyer.”
Staniszewski had a background in arithmetic with a first-class honors diploma from Imperial School London. His imaginative and prescient and technical experience bought Reina, and ElevenLabs turned one of many few startups that he determined to again “actually inside lower than an hour.”
Now, Eleven Labs is planning a worldwide growth, together with constructing new hubs in Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico, in addition to getting the corporate prepared for IPO inside the subsequent 5 years, Staniszewski advised CNBC in July.
