ElevenLabs首席执行官：为何语音将成为下一代AI交互界面

我们不想变得和上一代编辑套件一样。

We don't want to become same as previous generation of of the editing suite.

相反，让我们在研发层面解决这个问题——系统能根据声音精确掌握语速的调控。

So instead, let's solve it on the research level where it will know based on the voice exactly how it should speak with the speed.

要满足所有这些不同的使用场景，你需要涵盖如此多样的声音类型、语言种类、口音差异和风格变化。

To be able to cater to all those different use cases, you need such a big array of different voices, different languages, different accents, different styles.

因此我们推出了语音市场，用户可以创建并分享自己的声音，当该声音被使用时就能获得收益。

So we launched Voice Marketplace where you you could create your voice and then share it, and when that voice is you earn money in the return.

如今我们已拥有近万种声音。

Today, we have almost 10,000 voices.

我们已向社区创作者支付了1000万美元。

We paid $10,000,000 back to the people in the community.

这些声音背后有许多疯狂的故事。

There's some crazy stories from the voices.

正是通过精准的技术演示案例，我们逐渐扭转了人们对AI的初始负面反应。

Just speaking through exactly the technology, showing the examples, and kind of avoiding this initial knee jerk reaction that AI is bad has has been has been driven.

语音正快速成为人机交互的新界面。

Voice is rapidly becoming the next interface for human computer interaction.

今天你将听到Eleven Labs联合创始人兼CEO马迪·斯坦尼舍夫斯基的分享：如何实现从文本转语音、全授权AI音乐到实时语音代理的闪电式开发，以及小型自治团队和全球招聘如何推动公司产品迭代。

Today, you'll hear from Mady Staniszewski, cofounder and CEO of Eleven Labs on building at lightning speed from text to speech and fully licensed AI music to real time voice agents, as well as how small autonomous teams and global hiring power the company's product velocity.

我们探讨了AI音频伦理、向创作者支付超1000万美元的语音市场、从创作者品牌向企业平台的转型，以及为何速度是定义声音未来的护城河。

We discussed the ethics of AI audio, the voice marketplace paying creators over 10,000,000, and the shift from creator brand to enterprise platform, Plus, why speed is the moat in the race to define the future of sound.

让我们开始吧。

Let's get into it.

很高兴欢迎我们的第一位演讲者Maddie，她是Elon Musk的联合创始人兼CEO。

I'm excited to welcome our first speaker, Maddie, cofounder and CEO of Elon Musk.

好的。

Alright.

Maddy，你能来真是太好了。

So good to have you here, Maddy.

非常感谢邀请我来到这里。

Thanks so much for having me here.

很高兴见到大家，早上好。

Great to see everyone, and good morning.

进场音乐是由Eleven Labs生成的吧？

Was the walk on music generated by eleven Labs, was it?

是的。

It was.

我们持续拓展音频领域的业务。

We expand continuously across the audio space.

我们最初从语音开始，然后构建了语音代理的编排系统，现在又开发了完全授权的音乐模型，可以制作出色的配乐。

So we started with voices, then created orchestration of how to build voice agents, and now also create a fully licensed music model so can produce amazing music to go alongside of it.

太棒了。

Awesome.

我们会详细讨论这个。

We'll talk all about that.

我很幸运从Eleven Labs创立初期就认识你们，过去三年合作见证了你们在产品发布、新产线推出等方面的卓越执行力，从文本到语音模型、语音转文字，再到音乐、音效，现在又推出了AI代理平台。

I've had the opportunity and also the luck to get to know from the very early days when eleven Labs got started and got to partner over the last three years to just see your execution everywhere from product launches to shipping new lines and models like you just mentioned, everything from text to speech models, speech to text, and then we started doing music, sound effects, and now the AI agent platform.

我很好奇。

I'm very curious.

首先，三年过去了，我依然对你们的发货速度感到惊叹。但我想问，在产品路线图如此昂贵的情况下，你们是如何同时保持速度与质量的？

First, I'm still in awe of the shipping speed after all these three years, but I want to ask, how do you actually maintain both the speed and quality when you have such expensive product roadmap?

首先，我们大约三年前开始合作，能听到这些好评真是太好了。

So first of all, we partnered almost three years ago, and so it's great to hear all the kind notes.

但他们没意识到合作时，我们的基础设施团队只有三个人。

But also, they didn't realize when we partnered, the infrastructure team was three people.

当然，现在我是Eleven Love的创始人。

And of course, now I'm Eleven Love's founder.

我们公司特别喜欢数字11。

We love number 11 in the company.

基础设施团队现在有11人。

Infra team is 11 people.

我们也见证了对方的成长，听说这里的公司总共募集了660亿美元资金，所以数字11在这里无处不在。

So we've seen the growth of the other side as well, I hear the companies here raised $66,000,000,000 in the total fundraising, so the number 11 is everywhere here.

但我想说，首先，作为我的联合创始人，Pyotch是我认识的最聪明的人。他是创建许多模型的研究大脑，并成功集结了我们认为是语音领域最杰出的研究人员，真正创造了首个能更好理解上下文并将其转化为情感语调的文本转语音模型，找到方法捕捉声音特征，使声音具备正确的风格、年龄、性别、方言等所有要素。当然，现在研究人员已将其扩展到语音转文本、音乐等其他领域。

But I think that, to start off, I think first piece, I think the smartest person I got to know as my co founder, Pyotch, who has been the research brain for creating a lot of the models and then being able to assemble what we think are the most incredible researchers in the voice space to really create the first text to speech model that could understand the context in a better way and turn that into the emotion intonation, then find a way to capture the characteristics of the voice so you have the voice sound with the right style, the right age, with the right gender, dialect, everything in one, And then the researchers across, of course, now expanded that to speech to text music and other work.

这就是我们的基础。

So that's our foundation.

而我们能快速交付的架构方式——尤其在AI领域发生这么多变化的情况下——是依靠许多小型团队。

And then the way we structure it to be able to ship quickly, especially with so many things happening in AI space, is a lot of small teams.

如今我们约有20个产品团队，每个团队5到10人，他们拥有完全自主权，可以独立推进产品交付。

So today we have roughly 20 product teams, each of five to 10 people size, which with full independence can go ahead and ship products.

当然，这有时会带来重复工作或进度不一致的问题，但从积极的一面看，各团队的自主权非常高，因此大家明白交付成果完全取决于自己，这让我们能够极速推进。

Of course, that carries some of the sometimes issues of duplicative work or sometimes people going at different speeds, but at the positive end, the ownership of each of the teams is extremely high, so people know that this is down to them to really deliver and ship, and it allows us to move extremely quickly.

我们将工作划分为创意空间——为娱乐领域的创意人员提供旁白、配音、译制等支持的创意平台；以及代理端——帮助人们重塑从客户体验到沉浸式媒体的语音代理和对话代理体验。

We bucket our work into creative space, so creative platform where we help with narrations, voiceovers, dubs for creatives and creatives in the immediate entertainment space, and then on the agents side where we help people recreate voice agent experience, conversational agent experience across customer experience all the way through to immersive media.

很棒。

Great.

11Labs的名字里有'labs'，和其他许多大型实验室很相似，这意味着你们既进行自主研发和模型开发，又同时构建这20款产品。

11Labs has labs in the name, very similar to many of the other big labs, which means you're doing your first party R and D and model development, but also building all these 20 products.

你们如何平衡这两者？既要持续推进模型研究，又不想延误产品发布？

How do you think about balancing both, like keep progressing on the model research, but at the same time not delaying sort of the product launches?

是的，这非常棘手。

Yeah, it's very tricky.

我相信在座各位都有同感。

I'm sure many of you have the same thing.

比如，当你不确定研究创新是否会颠覆刚开发的产品时，还要继续开发吗？

Like, do you build a product when you don't know if the research innovation will displace the product you just built?

早期我们也遇到过这种情况。举个简单例子：我们有个语音模型，最常见的需求就是能否调节语速——添加滑块控制音频生成速度和说话快慢。但我们坚决反对这种设计，不想变成上代编辑套件那样满是滑块开关。

We had this in the early days too, so one of the simple examples was we had a model at work and one of the most common requests was could we do at different speeds for voices, so could you have additional slider to modify the speed of how audio gets generated and how quickly it speaks, And we are very against this idea of, no, we don't want to do any sliders, any toggles, we don't want to become same as previous generation of the editing suites.

于是我们决定在研究层面解决：让系统能根据声音自动判断最佳语速。

So instead, let's solve it on the research level where it will know based on the voice exactly how it should speak with the speed.

我们坚持这个原则大约九个月，但研究端始终无法突破。

And we resisted this for, I think, a good amount of nine months, and we couldn't solve it on the research side.

最后产品端用极其简单的方案就满足了所有用户需求。

And then the product was super simple solve that got all the users across.

我们当前采取的方法是，如果认为研究工作将耗时超过三个月，那么产品团队可以自由添加其他模型或扩展功能。

And now the approach we take in looking at this is if we think the research work will take more than three months, then the product is can do anything they want to start adding other models, adding some of the extensions.

当然，时间表有时难以预测，但大致上我们内部研究团队提供的指导是：本季度希望交付哪些短期计划，哪些是长期计划。对于长期项目，你们可以利用其他工作来填补空白并优化成果。

Of course, sometimes the timeline is tricky to predict, but roughly, the guidance we have from our internal research team, what are the initiatives we hope to ship this quarter, what are long term initiatives, And then for anything long term, you can use any other work to close that gap and make it better.

我想首先需要确认研究承诺是否能满足时间要求，然后再与产品团队协调一致。

I guess, first, you kind of have to figure out if the research commitment is going to meet the timeline first and then go on to align with the product teams.

这非常合理。

That makes a lot of sense.

当所有人都在搬往旧金山进行线下集中办公时，Eleven始终采取全球化布局，保持团队分布式协作。

As everyone is moving to San Francisco and building in person and locked in in the same space, Eleven has always been building globally and having people more distributed.

但你们现在应该已经在伦敦、华沙、旧金山到纽约等地设立了多个中心吧？

But you now have centers, I guess, in different locations from London, Warsaw, San Francisco to New York and other places.

你们如何看待全球化扩张与全球人才招募的策略？与之相对的，集中办公的利弊又该如何权衡？

How do you think about building this global expansion and finding talent globally versus, I guess, the trade offs of building in the same place?

是的，我和联合创始人都来自波兰。

Yeah, so me and my co founder are Polish.

我们最初在华沙和伦敦两地起步，可以说如果不是从欧洲起家，11 Laps根本不会存在。

We started between Warsaw and London at the time, and I think 11 Laps wouldn't have existed if we weren't starting from Europe.

这现象很奇特——在波兰，当你观看波兰语配音的外国电影时，所有角色不论男女都由同一个配音演员用毫无情感起伏的单调声音演绎。

It's a very peculiar thing, but in Poland, if you watch a movie in Polish language, like a foreign movie in Polish language, all the voices, whether that's a male voice or a female voice, get narrated with one single character.

没有情绪，没有语调变化。

No emotions, no intonation.

可想而知效果非常糟糕，但至今大多数影视内容仍采用这种配音方式。

As you can imagine, it's pretty terrible, and it's still happening today for most of the content out there.

我在中国长大时也有类似经历，我们有很多西方电影是中文配音的

I've had a similar experience growing up in China, that we have a lot of western movies dubbed in Chinese So

糟糕，太糟糕了

bad, so bad.

就像波兰的情况一样，作为后共产主义国家，这是一种更便宜的做法

And it's like in Poland, of course, post communist country, it's a cheaper way to do it.

你不需要雇佣那么多人

You don't have to hire as many people.

只需要一个单调的有声读物式电影配音，公司就是这样起步的。我们最初在欧洲开展业务，后来意识到如果要找到最优秀的人才来解决当时的研究问题，就必须不拘泥于旧金山或西海岸，要在全球范围内招募

You have one monotone audiobook reading of a movie, and that was kind of where the company started, and we started initially in Europe, and we realized that if we wanted the best people to solve what was a research problem at the time, we need to hire wherever they are, and we couldn't lock ourselves to just San Francisco or look at the West Coast.

我们知道需要在欧洲和亚洲各地寻找人才，于是开始完全远程办公。在工程团队建设上，我们也非常反对传统的招聘方式——不再局限于查看LinkedIn资料或传统背景，而是探索全新的人才选拔方法

We knew that we need to find them across Europe, across Asia, and bring them into the company, so we started fully remote and started looking at those people, and then on engineering, we also were very against this traditional hiring method of looking at LinkedIn, looking at traditional background, and trying to figure out could we go and figure out a different method to hire people.

这种模式带来了非常有趣的招聘结果

That led to some very interesting hires.

比如我们雇佣了一位拥有惊人开源文本转语音模型的人才，他当时还在呼叫中心接听电话赚钱

So we hired a person that had incredible open source text to speech model and was working in the call center at the same time as a recipient of the calls to make money.

哇

Wow.

他现在是我们团队中最杰出的研究员之一，负责所有数据处理工作

And he's now on the team, one of the most brilliant researchers we have doing all the data processing.

但这种模式一直延续着，早期团队确实非常分散

But this same pattern kind of followed, and, of course, the early team was very distributed.

当团队规模超过30人后，我们发现新成员需要实体办公空间来深入融入企业文化，了解公司所有项目。于是我们在伦敦、华沙和旧金山设立了枢纽办公室，让员工能线下协作，这就是我们平衡两种模式的方式

And then as we started scaling, so beyond 30 people, we realized that the new people joining, there's benefit of them having a space to be next to others to get deeper into the culture, understand what are all the projects that are happening in the company, so we started the hubs where you can go into London and Warsaw and San Francisco, where you can work with others in person, and that's how we try to, like, marry those two.

如果你处于职业初期，我们会尽量让你在中心工作，以便你能完全融入公司环境。

If you are early in your career, we try to hire you in the hub so you can immerse yourself in the company.

如果你习惯远程工作也没问题，但只要你愿意，随时可以来中心与我们共事，这种方式效果非常好。

If you are used to remote work, completely fine, but then if you want, you can always come and join us in the hub, and that worked really well.

目前我们仍在招聘一些非常规背景的人才进入公司特定岗位，让他们与传统背景的同事相互学习融合。

Currently, we continue hiring very untraditional backgrounds in some of the place of the company and then fusing that with very traditional backgrounds which can teach the others.

比如在销售部门，我们也做过这类实验，这种组合效果非常出色。

And in sales, for example, we've done some of those experiments too where that combination worked really well.

经验告诉我们，人才真的无处不在。

The lesson is you can really find talent everywhere.

关键在于你投入多少精力以及如何寻找他们。

It's just how hard and how you you look for them.

我觉得在欧洲也有个有趣现象，美国人工作热情高涨，参加社交活动时也总想谈论工作。

And I think in Europe also, this was an interesting one, in The US, people are very keen and excited to work, and if you go for any social event, like, you you want to talk about work.

但在欧洲我没有这种感觉，大多数人并不热衷于此。

And in Europe, I didn't have this feeling where it's like most people don't want to do that.

这就像是文化差异使然。

It's like the cultural piece is different.

不过确实存在一小部分人也追求这种工作热情。

But then you do have the pockets of people that actually strive it too.

只是他们缺少能实现这种工作方式的企业平台。

They just don't have the companies where they could do that in.

因此我认为我们的欧洲团队是最充满动力与激情的一群人，能拥有他们是我们的幸运。

So I feel like our team from Europe is the most motivated and passionate set of people that we are lucky to have.

是的，我可以证实这一点，因为我见过他们中的一些人非常专注，工作态度确实很好。

Yeah, I can attest to that given I've met some of them very hardcore, very good work ethic for sure.

而且你们还保持了相当扁平的组织结构，让员工横向承担很多责任。

And you have also maintained a pretty flat org structure and have people own quite laterally a lot of responsibilities.

你能谈谈这背后的考虑吗？

Can you talk about the rationale behind that?

我猜你们还实行了无头衔政策。

And I guess there was also a no title policy.

是的，我们一年前取消了头衔，目前进展顺利。

Yeah, so we removed titles a year ago and it's going well.

这种做法仍然有效，我认为很多AI公司其实已经在这样做了，比如工程师通常就是技术团队成员，而在很多市场拓展部门，你就是市场拓展人员，而不是销售副总裁之类的角色，所以我觉得这其实是相当普遍的模式。

It still works, and I do think that but I thought a lot of AI companies kind of do it too already with member of technical staff being, like, the usual piece you have for engineering, and then in a lot of the go to market, you are just go to market, not VP of sales or other roles, so I think it's it's actually a a pretty common pattern.

但在我们这里，我们采取小团队模式，团队人数极少，通常是5到10人，我们想明确表示每个团队都是我们亲手打造的。

But in our case, we we we had a small team approach where you have extremely small amount of people, usually the five to 10, and and we wanted to make it very clear that every team we we we create those teams.

你有六个月时间来证明它的价值。

You have six months to prove it.

如果验证成功，这个团队就会保留并继续工作。

If it's proven, that team will stay and continue working.

但关键在于，你从加入的那一刻起就能对公司产生任何影响。

But it really is that the moment you join, you can have any impact on the company.

所以你在团队中可以担任任何角色。

So you can have any role in that team.

资历不会决定你在层级中的位置。

The tenure will not define your position in the hierarchy.

如果你聪明、敏捷且充满热情，就能迅速提升自己，而这确实大有裨益。

If you are smart and quick and passionate, you can elevate yourself very quickly, which this really helped.

此外，对外界而言这是一个通用层级——所有关注11号项目的人都知道我们是市场推广团队，而非市场推广团队，不存在同等程度的定位问题。

And also, it's a common layer to the external world where everybody looking at 11 knows that we are the go to market team, mis go to market team, there's no, like, positioning to the same extent.

我认为这让我们在与众多合作伙伴和客户交流时，他们也能确信自己始终接触到最优秀的人才，同时我们还能不受定位限制地派遣人员参加各类会议和活动。

What this allows us to do is, I think, when we speak with a lot of our partners, with a lot of our customers, they also know that they are getting the best people always, and we can also send people to different conferences, different events, regardless of that positioning.

扁平化结构的微妙之处在于它不只有优点。按现有模式，我们实质上是为各细分领域设立牵头人——研究、创意工作、代理事务、市场推广、自助服务、销售主导，当然还有运营。

I think the tricky thing in the flat structure, there's not only positives, In the way we currently have, it's it's a set of leads effectively for the subdivisions, so the research, creative work, agents work, go to market, self serve, and sales led, and of course, ops.

这些牵头人构成核心层级，其下则是全球范围内相对扁平的小团队运作模式。

Only And that's the layer of leads, and then under that, there's pretty flat small team approach across across the world.

关键在于要让这些牵头人能够驾驭团队的复杂性，当发现团队间存在有价值的事务时，能主动提出跨团队建议。

But then you really want the leads to be able to carry the complexity around the team, so suggest things between one team to another if they see that there's something valuable between them happening.

因此选拔具备场景切换能力的人才至关重要，同时要让团队专注本职——有趣的经验是：如果让某人加入所有Slack频道并给予完全透明权限，他们反而会因阅读所有消息而频繁分心。

So I think picking those people that can context switch between is super important, and then letting the team fully focus on that, and then having which is, which was interesting learning where if you if you put a person into all the Slack channels and give them transparency, they actually get frequently distracted because then they read all the messages.

理论上可以选择不读，但人们往往还是会看，所以需要通过限制大量信息的访问来强制保持专注——这种方法确实有效。

You can still choose not to read them, but they still they still do, so you kind of need to cut the access to a lot of those pieces to force the attention, and that kind of works.

所有这些细节措施都运作得非常好。

All those small things work work really well.

或许我们也可以借鉴部分经验。

Maybe we can borrow some of that lesson too.

让我们稍微转换下话题。

Let's switch in gear a little bit.

作为一线人员，你目睹了大量创意工作——无论是艺术、音乐还是广告领域——都开始采用AI工具。

You're you're on the front line seeing a lot of the creative work, whether it's from art, music, or advertising that are starting to adopt AI tools.

而最初，情况并非如此。

And in the beginning, that was not the case.

当时存在很多阻力。

There was a lot of resistance.

现在我们正看到人们逐渐适应并欢迎使用更多生成式AI工具，包括AI音频技术。

And now we're just seeing the the adaptation and the the welcoming of using more of the generative AI tools, including, you know, AI audio.

你们做了一些非常明智的事情——从市场分成机制到与创意产业合作。我记得你特别强调过，我们必须找到与他们合作的方式，并观察市场随时间的演变。

And you have done some really smart things from the marketplace payouts to, like, working with these creative industries I remember how much you stress, like, we have to find a way to work with them and sort of observing sort of market shift over time.

所以问题是，你如何真正适应这些变化，在初期就找到与行业合作的方式？以及你是如何应对其中一些挑战的？

So the question is, how do you actually adapt to these changes and find ways to work with the industry in the infancy, in the beginning, and how did you navigate some of the challenges in that?

我认为首要任务是花时间深入行业，了解他们的优先事项和动机。

So I think the first piece is actually spending time with the industry and trying to understand what are their priorities, their incentives.

当然，这有时很棘手。

Of course, it's sometimes tricky.

有时你甚至会感到不知所措。

Sometimes you then end up being starstrucked.

我们很荣幸能与Jarrett合作，从他杰出的作品中学习——了解什么是重要的，制作流程中哪些环节可以使用AI，哪些需要保留，AI在哪些方面真正能提供帮助。

We had an honor and pleasure to work with Jarrett on some of his incredible work and and learn from him on, like, what is important and, like, which parts of the production process you can actually use AI, which ones you wanna keep, where is it actually helpful.

因此我认为这是该领域所有合作关系中最重要的核心理念。

And so so I think that's the super important thesis across all the partnerships in the space.

就我们而言，我们尝试在语音领域实现这一点——这项技术将如何改变未来配音行业的形态？当然，要满足各种不同用例需求，你需要极其丰富的声音库：不同语种、口音和风格。

In our case, we we try to figure out how to do that on the on the voice space, which is, of course, with that technology, a, how will the voice acting space look like in the future, and then, two, of course, to be able to cater to all those different use cases, you need such a big array of different voices, different languages, different accents, different styles.

所以我们推出了语音市场平台，用户可以创建并分享自己的声音，当声音被使用时就能获得收益。

So we launched Voice Marketplace where you could create your voice and then share it, and when the voice is shared, you earn money in the return.

今天，我们拥有近一万种声音。

Today, have almost 10,000 voices.

我们向社区民众返还了一千万美元。

We paid $10,000,000 back to the people in the community.

这些声音背后藏着些疯狂的故事。

There are some crazy stories from the voices.

我们首批声音中有一个深沉的西班牙语嗓音，这项技术的神奇之处在于，现在同一个声音能以相同方式适配所有不同语言。

One of our first voices will say a deep Spanish voice, and the magic of the technology is that the same voice now is available on all different languages in the same way.

当时支持30种语言，现在已扩展到70种。但最初西班牙语加入时，在西班牙本土反响平平。

So it's 30 different languages at the time now it's 70, but 30 languages at the time, and we had the Spanish voice join us, and it wasn't picking up on the Spain.

后来这个深沉嗓音在英语国家意外走红，如今已成为我们所有应用场景中最受欢迎的免费声音。

Nobody really liked it as much, and then it picked up in an English speaking country, that same voice, because of that deepness, and now it's our top free voice for all the use cases.

隐藏信息：大家都可以注册我们的声音交易市场，说不定还能赚点外快。

Hidden messages, you can all register to our voice marketplace and maybe earn some money too.

我认为第二重要的是，要思考如何参与其中，如何联合整个行业共同革新，而非单打独斗。至于与唱片公司合作，我还在学习如何沟通。

The so that's the the I think the second important thing is, like, figuring out how we can be part how we can bring the industry together to disrupt together rather than just to disrupt, and with labels, I think I'm still learning how to interact.

我们与Merlin、Cobalt等四大唱片公司合作，将他们的音乐纳入模型，通过授权方式生成内容并提供商业使用权，确保完全合规。

So we worked with labels, Merlin and Cobalt, so fourth majors, to bring their music into the music model so we can do it in a licensed way, so you can generate that and give commercial rights so you're fully protected.

这个过程很艰难。

That was a hard process.

我们花了十八个月敲定可行方案，关键是在协议中加入强制机制——设定截止期限来推动决策：要么共同推进，要么各自行动，这种紧迫感非常有效。

It took us eighteen months to figure out the agreement that works, and in the end, I think the main thing was adding a set of forcing functions or forcing timings to find effectively a trigger of like, okay, this is when we do it, and we either do it together or we do it separately, and those forcing functions really help add urgency.

后来我们多次调整这个强制机制，大体上仍能顺利推进。当然，寻找折中方案绝非易事。

Then we needed to move that forcing function a few times, it still worked to a large extent to go after that, and then two is, of course, know, finding the compromise wasn't wasn't wasn't easy.

但在我们这种情况下，与唱片公司合作实际上是在保护他们所关心的东西，当然他们也关心如何通过与他们合作的成员和艺人持续取得良好表现。

But then in our case, working with the with the with the labels there was kind of protecting what they are caring about, and they, of course, also care about how how they continue doing well by their members, by their artists that they work with.

因此我们会花大量时间与他们的成员合作，讨论我们对技术的看法，未来几年会发生什么，这确实很有帮助。

So we would spend a lot of time working with their members, speaking about how we think about technology, what's going to happen in the next couple of years, and that really helped.

所以仅仅是通过具体技术讲解、展示案例，并避免一开始就对AI产生'这是有害的'这种本能反应，效果就非常显著。

So just just speaking through exactly the technology, showing the examples, and kind of avoiding this initial knee jerk reaction that AI is bad has has been has been tremendous.

或许可以联系到之前的问题，当你们在这个领域探索时，你们是如何考虑引进合适人才来主导这些职能的？

And maybe tying back to the earlier question, as you are navigating, like, this landscape, how do you think about, like, bringing the right talent that can head and lead some of these functions?

这些大多都是未知领域，不知道该如何驾驭。

And these are mostly unknown territories of how to navigate it.

那么你们在哪些方面成功引进了合适人才呢？

Like, where have you been seeing success in bringing the right people?

对于我们完全陌生的领域，比如这个案例中的Legalis等，我们总会引入至少一两位该领域的专家，他们过去曾与相关方有过全职互动经验，但同时我们会通过大量咨询顾问来调整策略，帮助我们在具体对话中取得进展。

So here, for the spaces that are kind of completely new to us, so this and, like, Legalis and I get another example, we would always kind of bring at least one or two people that were in that space that kind of have interacted with the same parties full time in the past, but then would actually adjust that with a lot of consulting people that would help us in a specific conversation.

以音乐行业为例，我们聘请了与我们有密切合作的音乐律师作为顾问，好处在于他们认识所有参与者，实际上成为了我们之间的沟通桥梁，让双方能够用同一种语言交流。

So in this case, in music, we had music lawyers that worked very closely with us that consult across a few of them, and the good thing is that they know all the players and they effectively were this bridging gap between both of us so we could speak the same language.

这确实非常有用。

And then that was really helpful.

是的。

Yeah.

他们对人才有非常特定的要求：既要有足够的风险承受能力，又要能理解商业机会，从而指导各个领域采取正确的行动链条。

And they have had a very specific taste for people that are risk tolerant enough and also understand the commercial business opportunities to, you know, help guide the right chain of actions in each of those domains.

我觉得这非常有意思。

I found that very fascinating.

100%。

100%.

我是说法律方面，不知道你们中有多少人正在寻找第一位法律顾问，或者已经有好几位了。

I mean, legal, I don't know how many of you are trying to find the first legal counsel or have a number of those.

对我们来说，这可能是招聘中最棘手的角色之一，因为你正在进入一个几乎完全陌生的领域。前几位法律人员明显不合适，所以我们分道扬镳了。

For us, this was, I think, one of the trickiest roles to hire for because you are hiring into the space you don't know know very little about, and then we had the first couple of legal people that were clearly not fit, so we separated us.

后来我们聘用了第三个人，他来自多家财富500强企业，但从未在初创企业或风投领域工作过。结果就是每次谈话都在强调我们看到的种种风险。

Then we hired a third person, and that person came from like a number of Fortune 500 companies, and they never worked in start up space, never worked in venture, and what resulted is, like, everything every conversation was pointing out the risks that we see.

所以我们想做的每件事，都伴随着可能存在的无数风险。

So, like, anything we wanted to do was, like, the number of risks that this could carry.

这种合作非常困难——虽然你确实需要了解风险，但当所有风险建议都变成'这是底线'时，最终每个决定又回到了原点。

And it was really tricky to work because we it's like you kind of get risks, but you've gone that risk advice of, like, okay, and this is where we should draw the line, but everything was back to decision.

现在我们聘用了一位曾在多家公司担任法律顾问的人（注意不要挖角）。

And now we hired a person working previously in a number of companies as a council, and don't poach them.

他们很特别，更懂风险平衡之道——不仅能指出风险所在，还会说'其他公司是这么做的'。

They are interesting, and they understand the risk equation a lot better, they are not only like a counterpart to figuring out what the risks are, but also like, okay, this is what other companies do.

这可能是我们应该采取的方式。

This is what we should potentially do.

他们成为了真正的智囊伙伴，带来了巨大改变。

And then they are like a true thought partner and a tremendous change.

确实如此。

For sure.

Eleven Labs最初更像是创作者品牌，服务对象从个人创作者到创业的创作者群体。

Eleven Labs started as more of a creator brand everywhere from the individual creators to the creators that are building businesses.

但现在你们在企业市场取得了很大成功，不仅始于AI代理平台，甚至还包括语音转文本和文本转语音模型。

But now you have been having a lot of success moving into enterprise, not just started from the AI agent platform, but even with the text to speech speech to text models.

你们是如何应对这一转型的？

How have you been navigating that transition?

因为这是许多优秀消费级创作者品牌常跌倒的地方，但你们迄今为止转型相当顺利。

Because that's one of the very commonplace where, you know, a lot of really great consumer creator brands fall down, but you have had so far a pretty smooth transition.

我们刚推出时，在启动经典PLG模式后收到了大量企业客户的主动咨询。

So when we launched, we had a lot of early inbound when we started kind of the classic PLG, a lot of inbound from enterprise.

我记得和A60Z团队合作时，我们最初的想法是：当然要成为工程公司，不想要销售团队，希望由工程师来承担销售工作。

And I remember speaking with A60Z team when they joined us, where our initial take was, of course, we want to be an engineering company, we don't want salespeople, we would like to reinvent that and have, like, engineers do the sales.

我们确实雇佣了一名传统销售和一名非传统销售（工程师），让他们立即开展销售工作——结果可想而知，在这个案例中完全行不通。

We did hire one traditional salesperson and one non traditional salesperson, like an engineer, and we told them, like, do sales now, and that really, as you can imagine, didn't work out in this specific case.

但我们吸取了教训，现在采取了两者结合的投资策略。

But we learned our lesson, and we now do invest in a combination of that.

目前是80%销售+20%工程，仍保留了些许当初的理念。

It's 80% sales, 20% engineering, so still a little bit of that.

但最关键的是要理解客户群体及其核心需求，并深度合作将这些洞见反馈回来。

But this was, like, super important lever of understanding who are the customers, what they care about, and working deeply with them to bring it back.

这种深度合作逐渐揭示了我们在产品和研发端真正需要发力的方向。

And then that kind of working with them was kind of opening of what we need to actually do on the product and research side.

Hippocratic的Munjal今天在场。

Munjal from Hippocratic is is is here.

他们是最早将技术应用于医疗领域的杰出案例——开发代理程序处理医院预约来电，还能主动外呼提醒患者服药或就诊。要实现这些功能，需要将语音转文本、大语言模型、文本转语音等技术整合编排，再搭建系统集成并部署。他们在2023年率先实践，后来我们看到这种模式在客户体验等多个领域被复刻，因此决定加大对全流程编排系统的投入。

He was one of the the earliest incredible use cases in the health care space where they would create effectively agents that would take inbound calls that are calling the hospitals to take and schedule appointments, and beyond that they would do all the other parts of outbounding to the patients to remind them about taking medicine or reminding them about the appointment that's happening, and and to be able to do that, that suddenly shifts from using a one foundational model into combining the speech to text, the LLM, the text to speech to orchestrate them together, then the integrations you need to build, then you actually need to deploy, and they were one of the areas that was 2023, but then we've seen this repeated pattern across across a number of other customers and customer experience base and and many others, and and we decided to invest more into helping with the entire orchestration.

因此，我们不仅能实现文本转语音，还能整合研究成果，使整个组合流程更加流畅。

So instead of just doing text to speech, we can help combining our research to make this whole whole combination of that more fluid.

但若考虑企业应用，确实需要构建系统内的知识库整合方案。

But then if you are thinking about enterprise, you do need to build the combination of knowledge base inside a system.

你需要协助将其部署到电信服务商，无论是Twilio还是SIP中继。

You need to help deploy that with telephony providers, whether it's Twilio, the SIP trunking.

比如，如何用模板化方式更简便地实现？

Like, how do you do that in a templatized and easier easier way?

当然，最大的普遍缺口在于：演示容易，但如何真正实现生产部署？

And then, of course, the the biggest gap that's the most common, it's easy to do a demo, but how do you actually build it to production?

如何测试？

How do you test?

如何进行版本控制？

How do you version control?

如何根据结果持续评估、监控并优化？

How do you evaluate, monitor over time, fine tune over time based on the results?

所有这些都构成了重要组成部分。

And and all of that is has been a big big part.

正如我们来之前与Matt讨论的，底层基础必须到位——安全合规性，以及服务依赖该基础设施的客户群体。

And underlying all of all of that, and we spoke a little bit with Matt before coming here, the foundation needs to be there, is the security, the compliance, serving serving the the customers across that will rely on that infrastructure.

这正是Eleven Labs希望突出的特质：使用我们的软件将始终可靠，终有一天达到99.99%甚至99.999%的可用性——这在AI领域颇具挑战。

That's something that we want to shine through as Eleven Labs where if you are using the software, it's going to always be reliable and always the four nines or five nines, hopefully, one day will be will be there, which is tricky in AI space.

但这就是我们的目标所在。

But the the that's the that's the goal.

当然，PLG（产品导向增长）与销售模式之间最明显的区别在于，从识别到服务目标客户的全周期要长得多。我认为这正是观察我们内部团队热情度的有趣之处——当时团队中很多人没有企业级服务经验，而另一部分人则有。缺乏经验的一方对企业化转型非常怀疑，比如要等待六个月或十二个月才能看到结果。早期我们不得不屏蔽这些信息，只是让他们相信‘我们会搞定，这能成功’。他们当时非常怀疑，但十二个月后确实见效了。这可能是最艰难的文化转型——如何让所有人保持同步前进。

Of course, the the difference between the the one obvious difference between PLG and sales is the the cycle to work through and identify the right customers is much longer, and and I think that's where eagerness from our internal team was was interesting to observe, where you had a lot of people that didn't work in an enterprise setting, and then you had other side of the company that did, and the side that didn't was very skeptic about going enterprise and, like, kind of waiting the six months or twelve months to results, and in the early days we needed to shield them from that information and, like, trust us, we'll do this, and it will work, but they were very sceptic, and then, of course, after twelve months it worked out, but that was probably the hardest culture really of how you kind of still keep everyone jumping on same train.

完全正确。

That's exactly right.

据我观察，很多公司在开始采用更多企业级产品发布模式后，实际上都放慢了节奏。由于要为客户需求进行定制开发，导致产品发布不断延期。

A lot of companies actually, at least I observed, sort of slowed down after start adopting more of the enterprise sort of product launching and, like, building for the customers' request that started to thank you so much to delay sort of the product launches.

你观察到这种情况了吗？还是说仍能保持平衡——既能快速推出演示版、概念验证和早期预览，同时又能交付稳健可靠的产品？

Is that something you're seeing, or is there still, like, a good balance of like, we still want to be able to put out demos and POCs and early teasers quickly, but at the same time, we'll get to deliver a very robust and reliable product?

这包含两个层面。

So there are two parts.

首先是团队结构差异，其次是外部产品架构差异。

The first part is so we have a, like, a difference on the team structure and then we have a difference on the kind of external product structure.

在外部产品架构方面，我们追求快速迭代，但面向企业客户时必须确保稳定可靠。

On the external product structure, we want to ship very quickly, but of course, you are shipping to enterprise, you want to make sure that it's stable and reliable.

因此我们严格界定alpha版与非alpha版，并据此推进阶段性过渡。

So we delineate very clearly what's alpha, what's not alpha, and then we go for that transition through that period.

在与客户合作时，他们和我们的合作伙伴可以自主选择是否接入alpha版。选择接入即表示清楚知晓这是可能不稳定的测试版本。这种选择权成为最重要的杠杆——要不要参与创新？有些客户在这方面表现惊人，他们勇于尝试并展示创新成果。

And then as we work with the customers, they can and then our partners, they can decide whether they want the access to alpha in the first place, and when they do, that's clearly shown that this is an alpha product, it might not be as stable, and so they get a choice, and I think that choice has been the most important lever, like do want it or not, and some are incredible in doing that innovation and showing some of their work or experimenting with that work.

比如约翰所在的德国电信正在打造革命性的播客体验，这源于他们早期测试将文本转换成类似NotebookLM风格的播客，并配备令人惊艳的语音库——你可以选择地道的德语或英语发音。

Deutsche Telekom, with John here, is creating some of the incredible new podcast experiences, and that came from, like, testing early models of turning a a text a text into, like, a more NotebookLM style of a podcast with incredible voices that you can select for German speaking voices, English speaking voices that that that sound good.

第二个层面是团队结构划分。直到团队超过100人后我们才这样做：将公司产品明确分为产品市场匹配前和匹配后两个阶段。

And then there's a second, which is team structure piece, and that's something that we didn't do until until later when we had more than 100 of us, is that we delineate inside a company products that are pre product market fit and pro post product market fit.

对于已达成产品市场匹配的产品，你需要为长期发展而工作。

On the post product market fit, you are working for the long term.

你们之前进行了大量的测试和评估。

You test and evaluate a lot before.

你们只有在真正准备就绪时才会部署。

You you only deploy when it when that's that's that's truly ready.

在产品市场匹配前，你们的使命是持续推出产品，直到我们认为达到了产品市场匹配。

The pre product market fit, your mission is is to ship until you think we've hit the product market fit.

通常我们会给予六个月的验证期。

And usually, we give the six months period of, like, proving it out.

如果不行，我们就终止这个产品，过去我们曾用这种方式终止过产品。

If not, we kill the product, and we've killed product in the past this way.

但这是最重要的部分，明白吗？

But that's, like, the the main important piece of, like, okay.

在我们确认存在大量潜在用户基础之前，我们会持续迭代。

Until we know there is a big potential user base, we we we will continue iterating.

我曾目睹过一些当时看来艰难的决定，但事后证明放弃某些产品是正确的选择。

I've been able to observe some of those, I guess, hard decisions in the moment, but it's the right decision later on to let go of some of the products.

这是我最喜欢的问题之一。

This is one of my favorite questions.

我的合伙人马丁·卡萨多常说公司会经历三个阶段。

My partner, Martin Casado, always say companies go through three phases.

分别是产品阶段、销售阶段和扩展阶段。

There is the product phase, there's sales phase, and there's a scaling phase.

既然你经历过其中某些阶段，作为CEO你觉得最艰难的转型是什么？

Given you have been through some of those phases, what has been the hardest transition for you as a CEO?

有很多很多小型的。

There is a lot of a lot of mini ones.

当然，我的联合创始人一直在我身边支持我，我认识他已经十五年了。

Of course, I have my my co founder next to me across each of those, which is the I know him for fifteen years.

他是我高中时期最好的朋友，所以能有这样的组合我真是太幸运了。

He's my best friend since high school, so I have, like, the the most luck to to to have that combination.

当然还有你，詹妮弗，以及所有帮助我们度过这些转型期的伙伴们，这简直太棒了。

Of course, you, Jennifer, and all the partners to help us through those transitions, which has been incredible.

但我最近意识到，当我们成为一家拥有350名员工的公司时，这意味着我们的市场团队和围绕它的激励机制已经发展得非常成熟。

But I think the recent realization was when we are now a three fifty people company, and of course that means our go to market team and the incentive structure around that has evolved pretty strongly.

而我当时没看清，现在回想起来很明显的是，在早期阶段，每个人都是凭热情做事。

And what wasn't clear to me, and now in hindsight is obvious, is that in early days everybody would just operate on a passion basis.

他们只会做自己认为对公司最有利的事。

They would just operate what they think is best for the company.

随着市场团队的扩大，我们意识到如果要打造这台机器，激励机制真的非常重要。

As our go to market team enlarged, we realized that the incentive structure really matters if you are building that machine.

在这个转型过程中，当帮助创建这台机器的人成为机器的一部分时，这些激励机制最终会驱动行为，如果不明确说明，可能与你的预期略有不同。

And that transition where you shift from a lot of the people that are helping create that machine, are part of that machine, those incentive structures will eventually drive the behaviors, which might be slightly different to what you had in mind if you don't make it extremely clear.

在某种程度上，配额和佣金实际上是战略的滞后指标，而战略又在某种程度上引领着未来会发生什么。

And in some ways, the quota, the commissions are effectively a lagging indicator of strategy, and then strategy is kind of leading of what will happen in the future.

所以你需要找到一种方法将这两者结合起来，确保配额、佣金和你想要推动的战略更紧密地联系在一起，尽可能缩小它们之间的差距。

So you need to find a way to resolve those two together, where you want to make sure that quota and commissions and the strategy that you want to drive are closer together and they and the kind of the disparity as close as possible.

因此，对我来说最大的认识是：我们正在成为一家更大的公司，因为有基于佣金的明确行为会发生；其次，要真正解决这些问题，我们需要非常坦率地明确表示，即使佣金只是这样，你认为不对，也要回来告诉我们，一起讨论并调整方向。

And so here, for me, the biggest realization was that we are becoming a bigger company because there are clear behaviors that happen based on the commissions, and then, two, to actually resolve those, we need to be very upfront in terms of making it explicit that sometimes, even if commissions are just this, and you think it's the wrong thing, come back to us, let's speak about it, and let's adjust course.

现在我们已明确告知所有销售团队，如果他们遇到本质上可能具有竞争性的交易，比如我们的价格表显示他们可以报很低的价格获得更高佣金，但他们觉得不妥时，最好先来征求我们的意见。

So now we are explicit with all our sales teams that if they are seeing a deal that, let's say, might be competitive in nature, and our pricing table would suggest that they can go very low and earn higher commission, but they think it's wrong, it's better to come to us.

我们仍然乐意支付佣金，但会终止交易并与我们共同行动。

We are happy to still grant commission but kill the deal and and go out with us.

最近就有一个案例，我们基础层的竞争对手想获得我们模型的演示授权，虽然激励机制会促使你向他们销售，但幸运的是我们最终没有这么做。

We had this case recently where one of our foundational level competitor came to us wanting to license our models for demos, and and, of course, the incentive would suggest that you should sell to them, but luckily, luckily, we didn't.

是的。

Yeah.

不过佣金还是照付的。

You're granted commission, though.

在早期阶段，你们完全可以

In the early days, you can definitely

我已经调整了这一点。

And I adjusted that.

现在政策已明确规定，禁止向基础模型公司销售产品。

Now it's in the policy, so you cannot sell to the foundational model companies.

所以对所有内部人员来说

So it's clear clear to to all the

非常明确。

Very clear.

内部都清楚。

Internally.

这太棒了，麦蒂。

That was incredible, Maddy.

非常感谢您与我们分享所有的经验教训。

Thank you so much for for sharing all the lessons and learnings with us.

让我们为Maddie鼓掌。

Let's give a round of applause to to Maddie.

谢谢。

Thank you.

感谢收听本期a16z播客节目。

Thanks for listening to this episode of the a 16 z podcast.

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再次感谢您的收听，我们下期节目再见。

Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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