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所以我们现在已经突破了2亿。也就是说，我们用20个月做到1亿，再用大约10个月冲到2亿。我们最大的合同大约200万。预售很艰难，我觉得我们聊了不少投资人。
So we crossed 200,000,000 now. So we did twenty months to 100 and then around ten months to 200. Our biggest contract is around 2,000,000. Pre sale was tough. I think we spoke with with a good amount of investors.
在30到50家之间，我们融了200万。200万。你还记得估值吗？9000万。
Between 30 to 50, we raised 2,000,000. 2,000,000. Do you remember the price? 9,000,000.
这里是《20VC》，我是Harry Stebbings。今天做客热座的，是全球增长最快的AI公司之一。他们只用20个月就把ARR做到1亿美元，又在短短10个月内冲到2亿美元ARR——今天这期节目他们首次独家宣布。他们已经累计融资超过3.5亿美元，最新一轮估值33亿美元，11轮。我非常激动欢迎联合创始人Matti来到热座。
This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And today, we have one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world in the hot seat. So they did twenty months to a $100,000,000 in ARR, just ten months to $200,000,000 in ARR, which they announced exclusively in this episode today. They've raised over $350,000,000 with the last round pricing them at $3,300,000,000, 11 laps. And I'm so thrilled to welcome their cofounder, Matti, to the hot seat today.
但在节目开始之前，我喜欢看到团队齐心协力把节目做成。我不喜欢的是，要在一堆平台、产品和工具里追踪所有信息、数据和项目。所以我们用Coda——这个一体化协作工作区已帮助全球5万支团队同频共振。它把文档的灵活和表格的结构结合，让团队协作更深、创意更快。他们的 turnkey AI 方案 Coda Brain 更是游戏规则改变者。
But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data, and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products, and tools. That's why we use Coda, the all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda Brain, is a game changer.
在Grammarly加持下，Coda正进入创新与扩张的新阶段，旨在重新定义AI时代的生产力。无论你是想一边保持敏捷一边整理混乱的初创公司，还是寻求更好对齐的大型企业，Coda都能匹配你的工作方式。它的无缝工作区可连接Salesforce、Jira、Asana、Figma等数百款常用工具，帮团队重塑流程、更快成事。现在就去 coda.io/twentyvc，免费获得面向初创公司的团队版六个月。就是 coda，c0da.i0/20vc，免费拿六个月团队版。
Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana, and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to coda.iotwentyvc right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's coda, c0da.i0/20vc, and get six months off the team plan for free.
Coda.i0/20vc。Coda让团队对齐，Radix则让你的初创名字同样犀利。这是给所有科技创始人的：终于想出完美公司名，一查.com，靠，被占了。要么停放，要么标价像帕洛阿托的房租。
Coda.i0/20vc. And while coda keeps your team aligned, Radix makes sure your startup's name is just as sharp. This one's for all you tech founders out there. You finally come up with the perfect name for your startup, then you check the.com and, damn, it's taken. Parked, unused, or priced like rent in Palo Alto.
于是你妥协，加字母、奇拼写，啥都干。其实不必——现在有专为科技创始人准备的域名：.tech。用.tech拿到真正想要的名字，无需妥协。更重要的是，用.tech，客户和投资者一看域名就知道你在做科技，酷吧？
So you settle with extra letters, weird spellings, whatever it takes. But, hey, you don't have to compromise because now there's finally a domain for tech founders like you, .techdomains. Get the start up name you actually want on .tech. No compromises. What's more, when you use .tech, you signal to your customers and investors that you're building tech with just your domain name.
所以如果你有中意的名字，现在就去GoDaddy等可信平台搜「名字.tech」，或访问 get.tech/20vc 抢注。名字搞定，轮到基金结构同样扎实。听《20VC》你就知道我们标准高得离谱。
Isn't that cool? So if you've got a name in mind, search for it now with .tech on a trusted platform like GoDaddy or visit get.tech/20vc to grab it. You've got the name locked down with Radix. Now it's time to get the fund structure just as solid. If you're listening to twenty VC, you know we have a really freaking high bar.
AngelList正是顶级风投使用的现代平台，超过40%的顶尖捐赠基金和银行都是其LP。客户包括前五风投机构，也有我们20VC，平台资产管理规模已达1.71万亿美元。他们把一体化软件平台与专属服务团队结合，速度与你同步。一位经理说：AngelList就像我基金的延伸。另一位说：AngelList让我彻底安心，细节把控、闪电响应、团队的真正主人翁精神，正是我摆脱后台运营烦恼所需。
Well, AngelList is the modern platform used by the best in class venture funds where over 40% of top endowments and banks are LPs. Their customers include a top five venture firm, 20 VC, and they now have, check this out, a $171,000,000,000 of assets on the platform. They combine an all in one software platform with a dedicated service team that moves as fast as you do. One manager said this awesome quote, AngelList feels like an extension of my fund. Another said, AngelList gives me total peace of mind, the attention to detail, lightning fast response time, and just real sense of ownership from the team are exactly what I need to stop worrying about back office ops.
所以如果你要发新基金，别犯傻，直接用AngelList，他们超棒。去 angellist.com/20vc 了解更多。你已经抵达目的地。
So if you're starting a new fund, don't be a moron. Just use AngelList. They're incredible. Head over to angellist.com/20vc to learn more. You have now arrived at your destination.
Matti，兄弟，我等不及了。我一直想做这期，所以非常感谢你今天来。
Matti, dude, I cannot wait for this. I've wanted to do this one for a while, so thank you so much for joining me today.
Hari，谢谢你邀请我。一起做了好几个项目后，终于能对话，我太开心了。
Hari, thanks for having me. After working on a number of projects together, I'm so happy we can finally speak.
兄弟，我太兴奋我们能做成。之前我跟很多人聊过，得说你团队里的Luke准备得太棒了。但我想先从起源聊起。你在波兰长大，这是Luke提到的。在波兰长大如何影响了你对世界和创业的看法？
Dude, I am so thrilled we could do this. Now I spoke to so many people beforehand, and I have to say Luke was phenomenal on your team in prepping me so much. But I do wanna start a little bit with the origins pre. You grew up in Poland, and this was Luke's. How did growing up in Poland impact your mindset towards the world and company building first?
在波兰，世界很小。我很幸运，住在华沙郊区，然后去华沙上高中，开始看到更大的世界，这太震撼了，让你意识到外面有多大。就像现在做11 Labs，我们知道前面还有更大的未知，这很刺激——只要不断爬山，就能看到更多风景。第二件事是我亲眼看到变化：郊区是公立学校，附近的孩子都来；高中里，我和联合创始人相遇，那是一群通过竞赛、层层选拔出来的人。
In Poland, it's a very different, much smaller world. For growing up, I was in a very lucky position where I was in the suburbs of Warsaw, then went to high school in Warsaw, then kind of started seeing more of that world, which was of course incredible because that kind of opens your eyes of like what's possible, that there's so much world beyond what you've seen in the smaller cities. And I think in a similar way as you think about building 11 laps now, it's the scale of what we don't know is still ahead of us, and this is, like, what's exciting, that we know that if we climb those those traditional hills, the traditional mountains, they will see increasingly more. And I think the second thing was I saw the transition where in suburbs of Warsaw, it's like a public school, so school where you would have just any kids that would live in the area. And in high school and where I met my co founder, you would have a slightly different crowd of of people that would win competitions, need to go through a few steps together.
突然之间，身边人才密度这么高，成了最大的动力，让你想探索更多、学更多、做更多。现在我们也在Eleven Labs努力复制这种密度，我相信任何公司都一样，尽量把人才密度拉到最高，因为最终这就是最大的动力——能和一群不可思议的人并肩。
And suddenly that density density of of talent was the most motivating factor to like explore more, learn more and do more, which now we are trying to of course replicate at that Eleven Labs where, and any other company I'm sure too, is like you try to keep that density as high as possible because at the end of the day, that's what's most motivating, being part of this incredible set of people.
我最有饥饿感是因为我爸总说，我们去切尔西时，他会说“这儿生活更好，赢家住这儿”，而我们不住那儿，我就疯狂想住进去。你早期那种疯狂的饥饿感从哪来？
I was most inspired or given hunger because my dad always said, like, when we went into Chelsea, oh, it's a better life here, and this is where people who've won live. And I didn't live there, and I wanted to fucking live there. And it fed me with this insane hunger. Where did your insane hunger come from in those early days?
肯定是家庭，我哥哥先出国读书，给我们树立了榜样，让我们觉得“你也得这样”。第二就是高中那群人。遇到极其聪明的联合创始人和一群好友，大家互相激励：我们要去最好的大学。
Definitely it was, you know, the combination of family, my older brother, all kind of trailblazed going abroad to study, then motivated us to like, you need to do the same. This is really helpful. And then the second, it was really this community of people in high school. Meeting my co founder was extremely smart, meeting some of our close friends, kind of going through this cycle of motivating each other. It's like, yes, we want to study at the best university.
我们要深入钻研，考爆这场试。这对我们冲劲十足、相信可能至关重要。当时一切都显得遥远，现在很多事依旧，但没有身边人的那股动力，我们走不到今天。
Yes, we want to go deeper and crush this exam. And I think this was huge, huge element for all of us just going after it and knowing that maybe it's possible. At the time, everything felt distant, and it's still, you know, many of the things do. But I think without that that kind of motivation through the people, which would be not possible.
说到身边人的动力，你和联合创始人Piotr关系很特别？对。那你们是怎么走到一起，Eleven Labs的点子怎么诞生的？
Speaking of the motivation through the people, you have a very special relationship with your founder, Piotr? Yes. Yeah. I have to ask then, you come together. How does the idea for Eleven Labs come to be?
真的是因为电影配音太烂才想做的？
Was it truly inspired by bad movie dubbing?
确实如此。我们创办 Eleven Labs 有两个契机。一是前几年，他在 Google 工作，我在 Palantir 工作，我们会约在一起做黑客周末项目。
It truly was. There was two things that coincided for us starting Eleven Labs. One was through the years prior, he worked at Google. I worked at Palantir. We would meet for a hack weekend project together.
所以我们尝试探索新技术。一次是做推荐系统，一次是在加密货币热潮时，我们做了一个加密风险分析器，效果不太好。后来有一次做音频项目，想法是能否分析你的说话方式并给出改进建议，这让我们看到了语音技术的潜力。
So we would try to explore a new technology. One was in a recommendation space. One, during the crypto height, we built a crypto risk analyzer, which wasn't very easy and it didn't work very well. And then once we did the project in audio, the idea was can it analyze how you speak and gives you tips on how to improve speaking. And that kind of opened our eyes what's possible in the technology space there.
然后那年晚些时候，从波兰来的那一刻让我们震惊：所有电影仍然采用配音，原片无论男女声都由一个人全部配完，用一种平淡、毫无情感的方式。就像用有声书的方式读电影，体验极差。结合我们之前做音频的经验，我们知道这是个必须被改变的问题。
And then fast forward later that year, the moment hit from Poland, which is, wow. All movies are still dubbed where you have all the voices from the original, whether it's male or female voice, narrated with one single character. So you have one voice narrating all the characters in a flat, no emotional way. So it's like a audiobook reading of a movie, a terrible experience. And something that we knew combining the experience from working on audio and now knowing this is a problem that, okay, this will change.
几年后，随着技术进步，所有声音都会保留原情感、语调，听起来棒极了。这个想法就此启动。当然，后来范围也扩大了：我们得先解决研究层才能真正实现；于是先从创意平台入手，再扩展到智能体平台，因为语音正成为我们与科技交互的重要接口。
Few years from now, as you imagine that kind of advancement, all the voices will have original emotions, intonation, sound incredible. And that kind of kickstarted this idea. And of course, then it expanded too. Okay, we need to fix the research layer to actually make it happen. Then we started with a lot of our creative platform work around Eleven Labs and then expanded to agentic platform work, how now the interaction is shifting where voice is this big interface for the technology around us.
最初确实只针对配音，后来扩展到今天所有与语音相关的领域。
Well, you know, was very dabbing specific originally. It kind of expanded through to everything voice today.
我是说，一部电影全用一个人配音，那观影体验得有多无聊。
I mean, it must be the most boring movie experience having one single voice for everything.
太糟糕了。
It's terrible. It's
太糟了。那你们确定方向后，下一步怎么做？进入研究层，判断这事到底可不可行？
terrible. So what do you do? When you land on the idea then, in terms of your next steps, you move into the research layer and determine whether it's possible to actually do this.
我们一开始并行做两件事。我合伙人尝试用现有技术拼拼凑凑，把电影配音做得更好；很快发现效果还行，但远谈不上惊艳。于是决定退一步，先把其中一个组件做到极致。
We first tried to, like, do two things in parallel. My cofounder was, okay. Can we use existing technology, stitch it together, and create a dab of a movie in a better way? And it quickly transpired that you get a good effect, but it wasn't brilliant. So to actually fix it, let's take a step back and fix one of those components and make it great.
同时，他搞研究，我的任务是验证有没有人真的需要这款配音产品。我到处发邮件给 YouTuber，爬邮箱、群发：‘如果我们有款配音产品能让你的视频多语言化，你感兴趣吗？’前几批的回复率大概 15%，全是个性化邮件，我们发了上千封。
At the same time, when he was doing research, my mission was does anybody actually want that dabbing product? So I was emailing all the YouTubers, getting the the the the emails, scraping them, and trying to message them, Hey, if we had a dubbing product to make your movies available in all languages, would you be interested in that? Roughly, it was like 15% reply rate initially from the first batches that we sent. All were personalized. I mean, we sent thousands of them.
大家的兴趣很平淡。他们都说，哦，我不太相信这能实现。你能给我们发个样本吗？那很好，但我该怎么把它用起来？YouTube 并不支持。
The interest was like lackluster. All of them were like, oh, I don't fully believe this is possible. Can you send us a sample? It would be great, but how will I operationalize this? YouTube doesn't support it.
所以当时有点兴奋，但还没到“这是必须解决的燃眉之急”的程度。接着第二件事发生了。我们开始寄样本，开始更频繁地和 YouTuber 交流，很快发现他们真正想要的帮助其实简单得多：他们想在后期制作时纠正说错的话。
So it was like, it was somewhat of an excitement, but not like a burning problem I need to solve it. But then the second thing happened. So we started sending the samples. We started speaking more with the YouTubers, and it quickly came that what they actually want help with is much simpler. They want to post produce and correct if somebody said something incorrectly.
他们想在正式制作前就听到脚本的效果；他们可能根本不想自己出声，而是想给影片配旁白。这是一个超级简单的问题，完全不需要改动语言。当然，我的联合创始人深入研究后发现，其实可以构建一种全新的文本转语音模型，情感更丰富、更直观，让旁白效果好得多。于是先把“对口型”问题放一边。
They want to understand how the script will sound before they need to produce it. They might not want to speak at all, and they want to voice over over the movie. So a super simple problem which didn't include anything with language changing. And of course, my co founder, as he dived into the research, realized that you can actually build completely new text to speech model, which will be a lot more emotional, intuitive, that will make that narration a lot better. So let's put a dabbing problem aside.
我们看到，大量创作者还有另一个巨大的痛点；那就先解决这个痛点，把研究专注在文本转语音这一层。
And as we see, there's this huge other problem with with a lot of the creators. Let's solve this problem first and bring that research just on the text to speech layer.
这只有靠自己造模型才能实现吗？
And that's only possible by creating your own models?
简短回答：是的。当时的所有模型一听就能分辨，像恐怖谷，效果很差，也无法复刻真人的声音。
Quick answer is yes. All the models at the time just you could tell immediately it's like uncanny valley, not very good. You cannot replicate the voices.
兄弟，作为投资人我该怎么判断？借这个节目让自己更懂行。我该怎么知道
Dude, how should I know as an investor? Again, use this show just to get better as an investor. How should I know
一个项目到底得自研模型，还是直接调用现有模型就行？我觉得答案放到 2022 年肯定不一样。那年大家还没开始认真想 AI，仍是元宇宙、加密货币的低谷期，公众对模型几乎零关注。
as an investor whether a problem needs its own model or whether you can just leverage alternative existing models? Well, I think the answer will definitely change now to like 2022. So that was the year where nobody yet like kind of was thinking about AI. This was still kind of downfall of metaverse crypto days. The attention to the models was like none in the public eye.
直到 2023 年 ChatGPT 出现，一切才开始爆发。当时你其实别无选择——无论用户还是投资人都清楚，市面上的产品就是不够好；剩下的问题是，这支团队能不能做出更好的东西？
Know, ChargeGPT happened 2023. That's where it kind all started spiking across. At the time, you didn't really have a choice. Like you knew as a user, as an investor, that what existed out in the market just wasn't very good. And then there was more of a question, will this team be able to solve and create something better?
如果你今天从零做 11 Labs，在架构上会怎么设计得不一样，考虑到我们今天的技术架构？
If you were creating 11 labs a day, what would you do architecturally differently, given the architecture that we have today?
我觉得现在仍然存在的问题是，你在多大程度上继续走那种单一模态的路线——当时主要是为语音训练一个专用模型，或为图像、视频等训练专用模型——而不是像现在更流行的主题那样，采用多模态方法，把推理和语音结合在一起，从而带来更出色的语音体验。我们最新一代产品其实就是这么做的，11 v3。如果当时就有它，我们大概能跳过几步，体验还会更好。
I think still a current question is, to what extent you continue on that kind of single modality space, where at the time it was mostly you train a dedicated model for speech or dedicated model for image, video, etcetera, over what is now more of a theme where you kind of train a more of a multimodal approach where you combine the reasoning and speech together to create even better speech experience. That's our most recent generation is effectively that, the 11 v three. If we had that then, I think we would have probably skipped few steps, and our experience would have been even even better.
扯开话题，但我就是担心模型进展明显趋于平缓。GPT-5 就是典型例子：从惊艳的功能描述，变成了讲成本和效率。一旦宣传重点落在成本和效率上，就好像在说“我们已经到顶了”。
So off tangent, but I'm just concerned about bluntly the plateauing progression of models. And, you know, GPT five was the embodiment of that. You move from, like, incredible feature descriptions to a description on cost. And when you have a description on cost and efficiency, it's like, oh, we've we've hit that. Right.
你同意吗？我们是不是进入了渐进式改良和平台期？在语音方面，我觉得有点……
Do you agree? And are we in an element of incrementalism and plateauing? In voice, I think there's a little
有点像“看情况”。看具体用例。说具体点，像有声书朗读这种场景，我们认为它已趋于饱和。新模型不会让朗读质量发生天翻地覆的变化。
bit of, like, it depends. It depends on the use case. But to make it more concrete, there are use cases like narration. In narration, we think it's plateauing. The new model generations will not make narration of an audiobook drastically different.
质量仍会差不多。但总的来说，你的观点是对的：只做研究，最终会被商品化，研究带来的优势会不够，所以必须做产品。在11，我们把两者结合。你觉得我们
It will still be in a similar quality. But I think in general, the point is right where if you just do research, eventually it will commoditize, and eventually that advantage you can deliver from research isn't enough, so you really need to build product. And as you think about 11, we combine both together. Do you think we're
已经到了“扩展法则”不再带来同等进步的阶段了吗？带偏见地说，我
at a stage where scaling laws no longer equal an equivalent level of progression? In a biased way, I
觉得进展仍只是“刚挠痒”，AI 被全面采用的逃逸曲线才刚刚开始，而扩展法则仍在继续。
feel like the progression is still, like, just scratching the surface where it's it's just the moment of, like, still seeing that kind of escape curve of AI getting adopted everywhere is just getting started while scaling laws continue in the same way.
但采用和研发是两回事。采用我同意你的看法，可研发的进步曲线
But there's a difference there between adoption and development. So I agree with you there in terms of the adoption, but actually the development progression.
我觉得在 LLM 领域和语音领域答案可能不同。语音方面，速度还没明显放缓。而且当它们融合后，会对世界意味着什么？对周围一切有更深一点的理解。但语音上，你仍会看到陡峭曲线。
I think, you know, it's probably a different answer on LLM space and different answer in in the VoiceBase. I think in VoiceBase, you are still not a slower rate. And then there's an interesting variation of, like, as they all combine, what does that mean for the world? Like, a slightly deeper understanding of everything around you. But I think in Voice, you still will see pretty quick curve.
在大模型上，我同意，某种程度上确实有点平缓了。
On the lamps, I agree, it's probably a little bit flattening to to some extent.
我在节目开始前和安德鲁·里德聊过。昨晚我和他聊得很愉快，他说，问他这个问题，比如，为什么OpenAI做不到？我记得我和基兰聊过这个，基兰显然是我的合伙人。有两个原因，你知道，我们没有合作。一个是那张小额支票，你非常友善地提供了，另一个原因是，无意冒犯，当时真的太早了，感觉就像，为什么OpenAI不会做这个？
I spoke to Andrew Reid before the show. I had a great chat to him last night, and he said, ask him about, like, why can't OpenAI do it? And I remember chatting to Kieran about this, Kieran obviously being my partner. And there were two reasons why, you know, we didn't work together. One is the small check, which you very kindly offered, and the other was like, no offense, it was super freaking early, and it was like, why wouldn't OpenAI do this?
无意冒犯，两个在伦敦的年轻小伙在做，这怎么不会由他们来做呢？你怎么回答这个问题，为什么OpenAI不会直接做这个？
No offense, two very young guys in London are doing, like, how is this not gonna be done by them? How do you answer the question, why won't OpenAI just do this?
他们肯定会做点什么，但我觉得他们，你知道，他们缺乏我很庆幸我的联合创始人和团队所拥有的那种天才。但我认为更长的真正答案是，一个是专注。我觉得在早期，尤其是，你知道，我们当时聊的时候，AI领域有太多不同的事情可以做。而我们押注的是，我们想在语音AI研究和产品领域真正占据并赢得优势。我们所有的工作都直接围绕语音展开。
They definitely will do do something, but I think they, you know, they they lack the genius that I'm happy my co founder and the team has. But I think the true longer answer is, one is focus. I think in the early days, especially, you know, when we spoke then, there was just so many different things you could do in AI space. And I think we took this bet that we want to really own and win in the voice AI research and product space. All our work is directly tied to voice.
第二点是，我实际上认为全球从事语音研究并且做得出色的人数非常少，可能顶级水平的大概只有50到100人。所以皮奥特能够在这个领域组建一支顶尖团队。我觉得我们有5到10个人能排进前100。就像，这是一支非常强大的团队，我一次又一次地惊讶于他们有多出色。具体一点说，文本转语音就是一个把其他所有东西都远远甩在身后的例子。
Then the second thing is I actually think the number of researchers in the world working on voice and being exceptional is super small, probably like 50 to 100 people at, like, the top level. So Pyotr was able to assemble one of the best teams in this space. I think we have five to 10 people that are in the top 100. Like, there is, like, a mighty team, which I'm kind of time and time again surprised how incredible they are. And to make it specific, I mean, text to speech was one that kind of have blown everything out of the water.
然后语音识别在基准测试上现在超过了OpenAI的Gemini。还有音乐，这又是没有大公司能破解或做到的。这是一支极其强大的团队。然后即使我觉得OpenAI真的在研究上做了什么，我觉得他们确实在尝试，那产品层才是你真的需要巨大优势的地方。如果你在一个创意领域，如果你做旁白，如果你做配音，如果你做适配，你要经过很多额外步骤才能真正做到完美。
Then speech to text is beating OpenAI Gemini on benchmarks. Now music, which is, again, something that no big company has yet been able to crack or do. It's an incredibly mighty team. And then even if I think if OpenAI does, you know, actually do something on research and I think they are trying, then that product layer is where you really need that big advantage of. If you are in a creative space, if you do narration, if you do voiceover, if you adapt, you go through so many additional steps to really make it perfect.
我们做得很好。如果你在构建一个语音代理或对话代理，你需要引入知识库、集成、函数。然后你要部署、测试、评估、监控。所有这些环节在一个平台上整合在一起，我觉得OpenAI是，你知道，没有投入那么多时间。他们可以，但他们没有。
We do that well. If you're building a voice agent or conversational agent, you need to bring knowledge base, integrations, functions. You need to then deploy, test, evaluate, monitor. All of these pieces are coming together in a platform, and I think OpenAI is, you know, not not investing as much time. They could, but they aren't.
所以强大的研究团队、执行速度，然后真正深入聚焦用例，我觉得，这三者的结合。
So combination of mighty research team, speed of execution, and then actually focusing on on the use case, I think, in a deeper way.
你提到那支强大的团队。那些人非常宝贵，OpenAI、Anthropic或者Meta似乎会为他们开出很高的价码。你会担心人才争夺战吗？当桌上摆着数亿美元时，你怎么考虑留住人才？
You mentioned that kind of the mighty team. Those people are very valuable people, and an OpenAI or an Anthropic or Meta would pay a lot of money, it would seem, for people like that. Do you worry about the war for talent, and how do you think about retaining talent when there's hundreds of millions of dollars going across the table for them?
不会。当然。我觉得人才，尤其是研究方面的，在那些公司里的规模都超出常规，尤其是在早期。当然，某种程度上，当你想到Meta和其他公司时，他们当然是在为技术诀窍买单，就像他们为Roth Island Two买单一样，因为早期招到这些人能让你对模型和架构有一些洞察，然后你可以带过来并加速。所以在早期，这比后期更有价值。
No. Of course. I think the talent, especially on the research side, is out of the scale across any of those companies, especially in the early days. Of course, to some extent, as you as I think about Meta and others, they are, of course, paying for the know how as much as they are paying for the Roth Island two where getting those early people gets you some insight into the models and architecture that you can then bring across and accelerate. So in the early days, it's more valuable than late.
但我觉得在我们这里，仍然有价值的理由之一是，11的上限才刚刚开始。所以我希望未来我们能以同样的规模与任何公司竞争。第二，你拥有的，也是我觉得在考虑那些公司时很重要的一点，是你从开发研究到实际部署研究的距离有多近。在ElevenLabs，如果你真的在创造新模型，它们几乎立刻就能投入生产，成为我们产品运作中最重要的部分之一。所以这个差距非常短。
But I think in our case, the reason I think it's still valuable is one, the upside for 11 is just getting started. So I hope we'll be able to compete with any of those companies in the future at the same scale. Two, what you do have, which I think is important as I think about any of those companies is how close you are from developing research to actually deploying research. And at the eleven Labs, if you are actually creating new models, they get to production and are some of the most important things that our products work on almost immediately. So that gap is super quick.
你知道，在大公司，要走完那一套常规的公司官僚流程才能把事做成。其次，我觉得我们现在有一个很小的MIT团队，可以互相学习、快速推进。我不觉得在其他公司一定能得到这种体验。他们似乎在为很多人优化，却不一定是为对的人。我们提到v1和做到beta，我记得你们是在2023年完成了Preseed融资。
When, you know, bigger companies, you go for their usual corporate red tape to get any of that work done. And then three, I think we now have like a very small MIT team that can learn from each other and move pretty quickly. I don't think there is a guarantee you'll get that in some of the other companies. I think they are optimizing for a lot of people, but not necessarily the right people. We mentioned that kind of the v one and building to beta, and I think it was 2023 that you raised the Preseed.
你们是怎么
How did
完成融资的？两个年轻人跑出来说：嘿，我们要干这个。Preseed融资过程怎么样？
the fundraise process go? You're two young guys saying, hey. We're gonna do this. How did the Preseed fundraise go?
Preseed很艰难。就像你刚才问的那样：你们要怎么解决科研问题？第二个问题更有趣——很多人觉得我们要解决的市场非常小。那时候我们做的是AI语音结合，根本没人往那方面想。
Preseed was tough. It was, you know, similar question that you asked. It was like, how will we fix research? The second question, which was very interesting, we think the market is very small for what you are solving, which at the time was like, you know, it's like a combination of AI voice. Like nobody was thinking about that.
所以我们很惊讶，也完全不同意。第三点是防御性：它真会比FAANG那些巨头做出来的东西更好吗？长期来看怎么竞争？主要就是这三点质疑。
So that was surprising to us, which we were very disagreeable. And third was defensibility. Will it actually be better than what incumbents from the FA and G companies will actually solve? Or like, how will the ad compete on long term? So these are the three.
因此过程很吃力。我们大概聊了30到50位投资人。2022年初更难，我们拿到了美国某家加速器（不是YC）的offer，纠结要不要去，最后决定拒绝。
So it was tough. I think we spoke with a good amount of investors between 30 to 50. And it was double hard at the time because we, early twenty twenty two, we got an offer from one of the accelerators in The US, not YC. And we were thinking like, should we take it or not? And we decided, no, we are rejecting.
我们觉得能创造更大价值，当时不需要那种帮助，于是选择独立发展。结果进入一段更焦虑的时期：得赶紧融资，GPU开销增加，又招了头几个人。
We think we can create something more valuable and we don't need that help at the time. So we decided to go independent. And this triggered this more stressful time where suddenly now you need to raise money. We started spending a little bit more on GPUs. We hired the first few people.
全靠我们在Google和Palantir攒下的积蓄撑着。但风险明显变大，我们想加码、投入更多，于是必须融资。你们Preseed拿了多少？200万。
It's like all of that was going from our savings from which we are lucky to have from Google and Palantir. But I was like, okay, now it's actually getting a little bit more risky and we want to double down. We want to invest even more. So we need money. Much did you We raise in the pre raised 2,000,000.
200万。记得估值吗？900万。投后900万。投后900万。
2,000,000. Do you remember the price? 9,000,000. 9,000,000 post. 9,000,000 post.
第一个投资人正好拿11%的股份，后面其他人再分层进来，所以总额刚过一百万。
The amount was exactly 11% of equity that the first investor was buying and then the other ones were layered in. So it's like just over a million.
那是2023年吗？
And this was 2023?
那是2022年。
That was 2022.
我完全不知道。兄弟，我已经习惯了在节目里听到这种故事，比如HubSpot，你就会问，那是啥时候？哦，2006年或者2008年、2009年之类的。
This was not never knew. Dude, I'm so used to, like, stories like this on the show where it's like HubSpot and you're like, when was it? Oh, 2006 or 2008 or '9 or whatever.
是的。其实才四年前，最终我们在英国有了Credo概念，来自ZE的Credo。我们有几个牛津的朋友，Peter Chaban也投资了，他是Polkadot加密货币的联合创始人。所以我们早期有一批不错的信徒，但要走到那一步，我们花了不少时间。
Yeah. It was only four years ago, which, you know, in the end we found we had Credo concept here in The UK, Credo from ZE. We had one of our friends, a few others from Oxford, Peter Chaban, invested, was a co founder of Polkadot, which is the cryptocurrency. So we had like a good set of early believers, but to get there, it took us
花得久一点。所以你们当时融了200万，然后呢？你开始组建团队，开始投资GPU，就是这样吗？
a bit longer. So you raised the 2,000,000 then. What happens then? You start building out the team, you start investing in GPUs, just take Exactly. Care
我们融资的主要原因是为了加速我们想做的事。第一件事是建一个小型数据中心，我们就建了一个，当时是在波兰投了几个，然后很快搬到美国开始买一些。接着是团队。我们开始招人，不多，但当时感觉已经很多了。那段时间大概增加了两个人吧。
The main reason we raised was to accelerate what we would want to do. First one was building small a data center, so we built one, and back then it was, I think, in Poland that we've invested a few, and then quickly after moved and started buying some in The US. And then team. We started hiring not many, but it felt like a lot of the time. It was like additional two people, I think.
好，先别太快，Matti。你其实是同时进行pre-seed融资和beta发布的。你们在beta发布时已经有产品市场契合了吗？有没有早期迹象表明它行得通？
Okay. So don't go don't go too far there, Matti. Did you because you kind of did the pre seed raise and the beta launch at the same time. Did you have product market fit on the beta launch? Were there early signs that it was working?
我们其实是在2022年完成的融资，但到2023年才宣布，我们一贯如此：我们不想为了宣布而宣布融资。我们的理念是，每一轮融资都应该有另一个目的——把产品推出来并送到用户手里，庆祝一批客户，表明你在某个领域站稳了脚跟，或者推出一个新的研究模型。所以我们每次融资都会配合产品发布。因此我们等了几个月，直到beta发布才一起宣布，那是2023年1月。回到你的问题，最初我们做配音时，早期就是发邮件，我们并没有产品市场契合。
We actually raised the round in 2022, but we announced it in 2023, and we do that all the time, is that we don't want to announce a round just for the sake of announcing a round. Our philosophy was always the round should have another purpose, which is bring the product out and help you get the product into the users, celebrate a set of customers to show that you arrived in a specific sector, bring a new research model into play. So every round that we would do would always tie into a product announcement. So we actually hold on for announcement for a few months until we had our beta release and then we triggered, which was January 2023. But to your question, initially when we worked on dubbing and that's the first early days and we were like emailing, we didn't have product market fit.
很明显，人们回复得很慢，我们发样本，他们也不怎么互动。所以整个2022年我们都没有。后来我们从配音转向旁白、配音，产品市场的信号才开始出现，也许有戏。
It was like very clear that people were so loud to reply and we sent samples. They weren't engaging. So we didn't through the 2022 period. And then when we shifted from dubbing into narration, voiceovers, then the product market signal started to hit. Maybe it's there.
我记得有三件事。第一，我们发了一篇博客，说我们是第一个会笑的AI，我们发了一些样本，被一些通讯转载，人们都说哇，太厉害了。第二天我们的等待名单就多了上千人。第二件事，我们邀请了大约前100名用户来Eleven Labs测试。
I remember this thing. There were three things that happened. First, we did a blog post around the first AI that can laugh, and we sent samples that got picked up by newsletters, and people were like, wow, this is incredible. The next day we had like thousand people on our waiting list. And the second thing happened, we invited the first 100 or so users to Eleven Labs to test it out.
我们有一位有声书作者加入了平台。我们的平台就像一个小文本框，你可以输入推文长度的文字并配音。他会把整本书复制粘贴500次，下载下来，拼接在一起，然后发布。他在平台上发布的时候，AI内容还被禁止。它通过了审核，被当作人类内容，然后开始收到“太棒了”这样的评价。
And we had this audiobook author who joined the platform. Our platform is like this small text box where you can type in text, tweet length, and narrate it. And he would copy paste his entire book 500 times, download it, stitch it together, then he released it. He released it on the platform at the time AI was banned. It passed through as a human content, and then it started getting reviews that is great.
然后他回来说，我想让我的其他书、其他朋友也这么做。所以我们觉得，我们发现了点什么。然后在2023年1月我们公开发布。我们知道开始收到更多信号，创作者、配音员喜欢这项工作。说实话，我觉得从那一刻起，我们看到了明显的势头，后来媒体开始报道，更多创作者也开始加入。
And then he came back saying, I want my other book, other friends to do it too. So was like, okay, we are onto something. And then we launched in January 2023 publicly. We knew we started getting more of that signal that creators, narrators love, love the work. And to be honest, I think from that moment onwards, we saw like a clear momentum and then there was like, you know, more events after the media picked it up, then more creators picked it up.
但在发布的那一刻，我们就知道它是有价值的。最后一点，关于产品市场契合的概念，对我们来说，从来没有完全——我觉得我们当时并不知道这到底意味着什么——我们知道用户喜欢我们的产品，但我不认为当时我们有产品市场契合，因为我们还在想，怎么确保它在未来五到十年都能提供价值？然后我们会决定，这才叫真正的产品市场契合。
But the moment of release, we knew that it's valuable. And then maybe last thing on that, it's like the product market fit concept for us, it never like fully, I think, know what this actually means where we knew users loved our product at the time, but I wouldn't call it at the time we had product market fit as we were thinking of like, okay, how do we make sure it's providing value for the next five to ten years? Then we'll decide. This will be like something we would call, okay. This is clear product market fit.
我们觉得这是可以自我维持的，只要我们继续走向未来。所以我们不会用那个定义。我觉得我们现在更接近了，但我们仍然知道我们可以创造更多价值。
We think this is like self sustaining for as long as we go into the future. So we wouldn't go by that definition. I think we are now closer to that, but we are still know we can create so much more value.
我想深入聊的东西太多了。你提到发布公告的时机，以及把它和实际的重要新闻对齐。你有没有关于发布公告、做发布的重大经验，是其他创始人应该知道的？
So many things I wanna unpack there. You said about kind of the the timing of your announcements and aligning it to actually kind of material news items. Do you have any big lessons on announcements, how to do launches that you found particularly work well that other founders should know?
所以这是第一点。100%确定，对我们来说，发布公告要靠近你想从产品、用户或招聘角度宣布的大事，和它绑定在一起。我觉得单纯庆祝数字本身不是正确的方式。某种程度上，这就像你在把公司送出去。你这么做是为了什么？
So that's the first one. 100%, like, for us, making announcement close to something big you want to announce from the product, from the user, from hiring perspective, tie it with that. I don't think celebrating the number itself is the right way. I mean, in a way it's like you're giving away the company. What are you doing it for?
你想尽可能多地展示这些。第二点是，我们真的想专注于你如何真正获得用户，而不仅仅是媒体公关元素。我觉得后者对第一次创业的人来说，并没有看起来那么有价值。我们记得做内测时，和一些大媒体聊过，一个拒绝了我们，另一个接受了，我们觉得这是大事。然后我们为采访做了所有准备。
And you want to show as much of that as possible. Second thing would be we really want to focus on how you actually get the users rather than just the media PR element. I don't think the latter is actually as valuable as it seems to a first time founder. For us, I remember when we did the beta, we were speaking with some of the bigger publications, and one rejected us, the other one accepted us, and we felt like it's a big deal. Then we did all the prep for the interview.
我们做了真正的新闻，然后它发布了。我们像守着他们告诉我们的截止日期一样守着这篇报道，结果它毫无影响。我觉得它可能让一些投资圈的人知道了我们，但我们其实一直并不在意那个。我们只关心用户。真正有效的是和讲AI的简报合作，和YouTube社区的朋友合作，他们在Discord上发消息说我们正在开放。
We did the actual news, and then it was posted. We hold it, like, everything around this post that they told us the deadline for, and it had no impact. I think it, I mean, it's like probably a few more people read about us from the investor scene, but we didn't really care about it all the time. We were like all about users. What actually worked was working with the newsletters that were talking about AI, working with our friends from YouTube community that then posted on Discord that we are opening this up.
我们的Discord社区是最有价值的之一。Reddit，那些人比谁都快地发现了我们。在Hacker News上发帖。所有这些远比媒体有价值，从那以后，我们总是把更多时间花在用户真正在的地方，而不是他们不在的地方。
Our Discord community was one of the most valuable. Reddit, those people picked it up quicker than anyone else. Hacker News posting there. Like, all of those were immensely more valuable, and we, since then, always spend a lot more time on any of the actual forms where our users are rather than where they are not.
我觉得我们严重高估了传统媒体的重要性。哦，100%。我记得我第一次上TechCrunch的时候，我
I think we grossly overestimate the importance of traditional press. Oh, a 100%. I remember when I was first in TechCrunch, I
我当时想，我要火了，一切都会顺利。
was like, I'm gonna be, like, viral. Everything's gonna work.
是啊。结果真发布了，你一看才涨了三个粉丝。而且那时候规模比现在大得多，所以我完全同意你说的“草根”路线。另一个相关的问题是，你怎么看待融资——给创始人的建议，是在产品发布前融资还是发布后？
Yeah. And then it happens and you're like you got, like, three followers. And this was when it was much bigger, and it's like so I completely agree with you there, the grassroots. The other element kind of tied to that is how do you think about fundraising, and this is advice to founders, fundraising pre or post a launch?
如果发布效果不错，通常你会收到更多关注。我觉得投资人、活动方、媒体都会找来。很大程度上，这其实会分散注意力，而你真正该专注的是把产品做好。我们第一次发布时就出现了这种情况，各种邀约蜂拥而至。我犯的错误就是接了很多邀约，参加了太多活动；最好的做法本该是把更多时间花在用户身上。
What has frequently happened if the launch goes well is you will get more interest. And I think you'll get interest from investors, from events, from media. To a large extent, this is like the time you should really focus on getting the product and kind of all of that is like a distraction to a large extent. Like, you know, the first time we launched that kind of happened, we started getting so much of that. And I'm sure I did the mistake then of picking up a lot of those and doing more events than we should, where the best course of action would have been to just spend even more time with users.
接着早期企业客户也开始感兴趣，越来越多企业级客户。在投资人这边，我觉得你要先铺垫好关系。你可以告诉他们：我现在不融资，等到 Q2 或 Q3 再评估是否需要更多资金。等真需要钱的时候，再去重新接洽，这才是最佳时机。
And then early enterprises started getting interested, so more of enterprises. I think on investor side, I think you wanna line up investors. You do want to tell them like, okay, I'm not racing now. I'm going to reconsider whether we need more capital in Q3 or Q2, whatever is the time period of time. And then when you actually need the money, then is the best time to actually re engage with them.
但我不会一直保持融资状态，那太浪费时间，也分散精力。你可以保持沟通，但别陷进去，没意义。
But I would not like, I think it's a waste of time to kind of be in this, like, continuous fundraising mode. It's, you know, distractive. You need to have conversations. It's not useful. Yeah.
你会选三家比较中意的，在融资空档也保持联系？还是直接说“我先埋头做产品，准备好了再找你”？
Do you choose three that you'd like to have that you engage with in between cycles? Or do you not even do that? You just say, Hey, I'm heads down on building. I'll come to you when I'm ready.
现在 Les 这个阶段，我们确实有几个觉得有价值、但目前还没进来的投资人。过去我们会主动找少数几家；如果他们通过任何渠道联系我们，我们也会互动。但互动内容不是“我们可能融资”，而是“能帮我介绍 X 吗？”或者“能帮我解决这个招聘难题吗？”
Today, Les, at the time, we do have a few investors that we think would be valuable that we might not have today in the space. Through the time, we would have few investors that we wouldn't try to proactively reach out, but if they reached out through any of the conversations, we would try to engage. But the engagement there wouldn't be like, Hey, we might be racing. It would be much more of like, Hey, can you help me with introduction to X? Hey, can you help me with this hiring problem?
这种方式效果极好。只要找对人、提出明确问题，又不滥用他们的时间——具体提出一两件真正有用的事——投资人也乐于帮忙。他们知道，如果你公司成长，对他们也有好处。我们就这么做过。
And this has worked tremendously well for the work where the investors are genuinely keen to help if you find the right person and you have a very clear problem and you don't try to like overuse their time too. Like you come up with one, two things that are concrete, useful, and then they know as well that if you are growing as a company, it's good for them to show the help too. So we've done that.
这也是个很好的试金石，能看出他们是真想帮忙，还是只是客套话。
It's also a good litmus test to see if they genuinely are interested in being there or if it's just platitudes of niceness.
哦，对，完全同意。在拿到 term sheet、接受资金之前，当你收到投资人兴趣时，正是测试他们能否真帮上忙的最好时机。比如让他们帮你找你想请上董事会的天使投资人。
Oh, yeah. 100%. Totally agree with you. Before it's like kind of the second thing where you do get the interest from investors, I think this is the best time to actually test whether they can be helpful. And before you accept any term sheet and money, it's like, now can you help me with angels that you want on cup table?
那你想先听介绍吗？那是最好的时机。
Do you want the introduction then? That's the best time.
对早期创业者在选择天使投资人方面有什么建议吗？
Any advice on angel selection for founders in the early days?
我觉得我们的思路是：第一，他们是否拥有我们没有的领域专业知识？这是第一类。第二，他们能否帮我们在某些我们接触不到的圈子里做背书？比如如果你是做AI的创业者，那有一群AI创始人做天使可能就有价值，这样你能参加同样的活动、同样的对话。第三，对我们来说，就是能否引入一些我们欠缺的市场推广专长——我们当时主要是自助式，也做过志愿项目，现在想走销售驱动，那怎么把这些也引进来？
I think the way we approach it is like, do they have domain expertise that we don't have? That's one category. Second, can they help us validate ourselves in specific circles we might not have access to? So like if you are an AI founder, it may be valuable to have a set of AI founders in there so you are part of the same events, the same conversations. And then, of course, in our case, it was can we have some of the go to market expertise where we we had a lot of self serve, some volunteer experience, the sales led, how can we bring that in place as well?
你提到一开始是作者身份，后来势头很好，用户激增，大概是2023年1月到6月这段时间。然后在2023年6月，你们从Brian Kim、Andreessen，还有Nat和Daniel——我忘了他们基金叫什么，NDFG还是什么——那里融了大概1900万美元？
You mentioned starting with the author. Suddenly it was going well, and you were seeing this great groundswell and great adoption. And this is kind of January to June 23, I believe. And then in June 23, you raised, like, $19,000,000 from Brian Kim and Andreessen and then Nat and Daniel from I can't remember what it's called, NDFG or something?
对，NFDG。Nat Friedman和Daniel Gross。
Yeah. NFDG. It's Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross.
哦，对，NFDG。真棒。那挺让人意外的，因为不是London Fund，也不是Index。
Oh, Yeah. NFDG. Wonderful. And that was quite a shock because it wasn't a London fund. It wasn't Index.
也不是Excel。那一轮是怎么谈成的？
It wasn't Excel. How did that round come to be?
嗯，NFDG，现在我觉得这名字不错，但我当时还劝他们换个名字，不过可能改不了了。兴趣大概从2023年3月开始。很多之前聊过的投资人重新找我们。我们其实处于观望状态。
Yeah. The NFTG, now I feel like it's a good name, but I was pitching that on changing that to like a different name for a while. Maybe it's not possible anymore, but the So it was like the interest started around kind of March 2023. We had a lot of the investors that were in close conversation in the past, like reapproach us. We effectively would be a little bit more in the waiting mode.
就是说，先等等看，我们到底能走多远，然后优先选我们真正想要的合伙人。我们真正想要的是：一方面让全球员工都信任并知道我们已经站稳脚跟，我们是一家值得信任、有雄心壮志的公司；另一方面，我们非常敬佩并愿意与之共事、且曾创造过非凡成果的人。而他们正好属于后者。更有趣的是，是他主动找我们的。
Like, let's see how we get through and let's optimize for their partners that we truly want. And what we truly wanted was a combination of making sure that people globally in a staff trust and know that we have arrived, like we are a company that can be trusted is building something ambitious. And then of course, that we would admire to be able to work with that created something special. And that was definitely in that category. In the latter category, it was a very fun thing because he approached us.
他是直接私信你吗？他怎么联系你的？
Does he just DM you? How does he just approach you?
他给我们发了邮件，但后来我在伦敦见到了他。他飞过来，整个过程有点奇怪，他先邮件联系我，但不确定会不会见面，结果上一次真的见了。然后在伦敦他住的酒店里我见到了他。他开口说的第一句话——也是唯一一个这么做的投资人——是：我测试了你们的API，这个东西不行，这个可以。
He emailed us, but then I I met him here in London. He flew in, and it was like a weird setup where he emailed me, but it wasn't clear whether it will happen, and it happened the last time. And then I see him in London in one of the hotels where he was staying. And the first thing he was saying was, which is the only investor ever to do that was, so I tested your APIs, and this thing doesn't work. This works.
语音效果不行，稳定性这个参数也不清晰。他是唯一一个真的测试了我们API的人，认定我们做的事有价值，还给了反馈告诉我们该改什么，然后直接说：我想投资。这当然就引出了愿景、我们到底在追求什么的话题。Nat的特别之处在于，你只要说一点点，他就能自动补全所有背景，拿他过去的经验对比，把可能相关的经验搬出来，而且立刻就能get到。第一次见面，他就完全明白我们要干什么，并从最开始就抛出关键问题挑战我们。
Voice here wasn't good. The stability wasn't very clear parameter. So he's the only person that tested our APIs, decided that it was actually valuable what we are doing, gave me feedback on like what we should change, and then told me like, and I'm keen to invest, which of course triggered a conversation of what's the vision, what we are after. And what's special about Nat is that you can tell him very little and he kind of has this beautiful ability of infilling all the context around it, comparing that to any of the past experiences and bringing any of those experiences that then might be relevant to you, but he gets immediately. From the first conversation, he knew kind of exactly what we are after and challenged us with the right questions from the start.
接着他动作非常快，很想跟我们合作。我们也很想跟他合作，虽然尽量装得淡定，但其实心里早就定了。同时我们也知道，外界更多把Nat和Anja看作天使投资人。
And then he moved very quickly. He was very keen to partner with us. We are keen to partner with him. We are trying not to show it too much, but we were. And then at the same time, we know that Nat and Anja were more perceived as the angels.
虽然我们因为GitHub和Xamarin时期就很佩服他们，但在外人眼里他们还是天使轮那一档。所以我们知道，这是拉来一个大机构、把我们定位成顶级公司的机会。我们跟所有经典的一线基金都聊过，a16z是伦敦这边最有激情的一家。我们在伦敦聊了几家基金，是的。
While we admired them from their GitHub and Xamarin days, that was still like an angel category for many of the externals. So we knew this is our chance to bring a huge investor to actually position us as a top company. And we spoke with all the classic tier, tier one funds, and a16z was just one of So you the spoke most passionate all the funds in London? We spoke with few funds in London, yes.
然后Brian飞到了伦敦？
And then Brian flew to London?
Brian飞到了伦敦。我的意思是，a16z的表现非常惊艳，他们真正做到了先表达关心再投资。他们给我们介绍了很厉害的人，还有一些名人来谈语音授权的事。所以在正式投资前的一两周，他们就已经全力在帮忙了。
And Brian flew to London. So Brian I mean, a sixteen z was phenomenal. They did exactly what we spoke about, which was they've shown us that they cared before they invested. They introduced us to incredible people, to some celebrities to work on the voice licensing. So they were like on it for two weeks prior or like week prior already to help out in any way they could.
然后Brian飞到伦敦，跟我们见面，我们签了一份初步条款清单。挺有意思的，他飞过来，我们在谈判，我一边打电话一边问联合创始人Piot：这些条款怎么样？我们能接受吗？
And then Brian flew to London, met with us and then we signed a preliminary time sheet, which was interesting. He flew in. We're negotiating. I was on my phone call to Piot, to co founders, like, hey, what about these terms? Can we accept this?
Piot会给出底线，哪些能让步哪些不能。然后我们当场一起签字敲定。
And Piot would give guidance on what is the hard line, what we can do. And then on speaker, we would sign together and finalize.
你觉得速度真的是投资人赢项目的差异化因素吗？
Do you think speed really is a differentiator as an investor in winning?
当然，速度对我们来说，无论是投资还是产品，都必须快。尤其是现在，执行速度和决策速度就是你唯一的优势。
Oh yeah, speed is like for us, even from investor, from product perspective, it's like you need to, especially now, the speed of execution, speed of investing is the only thing you have.
让我生气的是，我在那个世界里很开心。我可以极速行动，投入大量资金。但我越来越发现，创始人们想搞路演，想花十天时间见投资人，然后再用一周决定接受哪份投资意向书。而我愿意今晚就给你发投资意向书。
This is what pisses me off. I'm happy in that world. I can move supremely fast and invest a lot of money. But what I find more and more with founders is they wanna run a roadshow, and they wanna do a ten day process meeting investors and then have another week to decide which term sheets they wanna take. I'm willing to give you a term sheet tonight.
能省十七天。但搞路演越来越成常态了。你怎么看？很多伟大的公司都是在11 Labs上做出来的，
Save seventeen days. But it's more and more common that founders actually wanna run roadshows. How do you think about that? A lot of great companies get built on 11 Labs,
所以我更常能参与那些要从我们投资人那里融资的对话了。最近有家做医疗语音机器人的公司完成了A轮融资，它能在对话中极大地安抚患者。还有一家做医疗客户支持的公司。现在有好几家，我都在他们融资的对话里，挺有意思的。通常很明显，有些人并不完全清楚自己到底在优化什么。
so I get to be in the conversations now more frequently where they would raise money from our investors. Recently, we had a company raise a series A that has built a healthcare voice bot which would effectively help patients calm them through their conversations in an incredible way. Then there's like another company building for healthcare customer support. Quite a few and now I'm in the conversations of them raising the money which is an interesting one. And then usually it's clear that some of the people don't know fully what they are actually optimizing for.
所以聊聊他们是在优化估值？优化稀释？优化能帮他们的品牌？是这个品牌的人脉？还是具体的合伙人？
And it's good to talk about are they optimizing for the valuation? Are they optimizing for dilution? Are they optimizing for the right brand name to help them out? Is it the network of people that this brand name has? Is it the specific partner?
还是别的？我觉得分布挺散的。所以我通常和创始人聊，或我们的投资人让我和创始人聊时，都会问那个问题：你到底在意什么？你缺什么？
Is it something different? And I think it's like pretty distributed. So when I speak usually with founders or our investors ask me to speak with the founders, it's usually that question. Like, what is it actually that you care about for the thing? What do you miss?
然后很快就能看出来，他们是为了抬价而跑路演，觉得手里的投资意向书不够好；还是其实想要别人，但又不想丢掉第一份，于是边跑流程边保留选择权。
And then it transpires pretty quickly whether you know, they are going after just the roadshow that's there to bump it up because they think the value that they the time sheet they got is just not valuable, or is it that they actually want someone else but they don't want to they wanna keep the optionality of having the first one while while running the process.
我是个浪漫主义者。我讨厌路演这种“我要见所有人，再比较投资意向书，再决定”的想法。合伙精神去哪儿了？
I'm a romantic. I hate this idea of a roadshow where it's like, I'm gonna meet everyone and then I'm gonna compare term sheets and then I'm gonna decide. It's like, happened to the partnership?
可事实是反过来的：很多投资人想先给投资意向书，却还没表现出任何合伙精神。那你怎么知道这是个好合伙人？你怎么知道条款好不好？尤其你是第一次创业的创始人，从没跑过这流程。
Well, but it's, you know, the truth is the other way is is true where a lot of the investors want to give the term sheet, but that is before any show of partnership. So how do you know that this is a good partner? How do you know whether they are giving you good terms? Especially you're a FaceTime founder. You never run this.
你不知道自己被怎么估值。你得有相对比较，这可以通过跟其他公司、其他创始人聊，或者跟同行公司比，或者跑某种流程来实现。路演听起来可能太夸张，我们早期融资的方式一直是：先列我们真正在乎的投资人，先聊一两个可能不是首选的，看看我们想传达的信息是否成立。如果成立，就直接冲最想要的那几个。
You don't know how much you are valued. You need to have some relative comparison, and this can happen through conversations with other companies, other founders, or comparing yourself to other companies in the field or running some form of a process. Roadshow probably sounds pretty bad because it sounds like a lot. You probably like the way we approach fundraising was always, especially in the early days, like queue investors we really care about and first speak with maybe one or two that maybe aren't a priority so we understand whether the messaging that we want to put across makes sense. If it does, move straight to the the the top ones.
你对限时爆炸式投资意向书怎么看？
How do you feel about exploding term sheets?
我不喜欢他们，但我们还是拿到过几份。我们确实拿到过几份
I don't like them, but we got a few. We had a few through
你理解他们的做法吗？
Do you understand them?
当时不懂，但现在懂了。我还是不喜欢，但我不点名，举个例子，有一家规模较小的基金。他们觉得只要给我们一份投资意向书，我们就会拿去抬价其他家。这种情况很常见，也确实会发生。
At the time, I didn't, but I do. It's like I don't like them still, but I won't name the people, but so one example was a let's say a smaller font. They felt that if they get us the term sheet, we'll use that to bump other term sheets. Very often happens. And that does happen.
所以我收到了。感觉就是，你知道，他们的出发点是，如果估值太高，他们就投不起，也不想掺和。于是就这样了。作为投资人，作为
So I got it. It was like, you know and and they came from the approach of, like, if it goes too high, they won't be able to invest, and they didn't want to be part of that. So that happened. Very often being an investor, being the
第一份投资意向书最惨，因为你被当成“诱饵”，他们接着就说，嗨，我拿到了
first term sheet's the worst because you're used as the stalking horse where they then go, Hi. I've got
一份投资意向书。我拿到了
a term sheet. I've got
一家顶级基金的投资意向书。他们从不点名是哪一家，你作为第一个给的却没人记得，然后后面来的所有人都会踩着你过去
a term sheet from a great fund. They never name the fund, and you get no credit for being the first, and then you're just trampled on by everyone else that comes
我也不喜欢创始人太刻意这么做。如果他们就是想拿第一份意向书去抬价，我觉得这思路不对。好，如果估值差一个量级，那可能确实不合适。
through. Don't like founders that are trying to do that too much. Like, if they are trying to get the first time sheet to bump the other ones, think it's a wrong approach. Okay. If it's like order of magnitude off, it's probably wrong.
或者差5倍，那可以。但如果只差正负20%，那就是优化错了方向。投资人、合伙人能带来的价值远超钱本身，我觉得应该优先优化这个。
Or it's like, you know, 5x, then yes. But if it's like plus minus 20%, that's like a wrong optimization. There's just so much more value that investors, partners can give than the money itself that I think should be optimized for.
Andreessen能给你引荐明星，Matt和Daniel又是AI领域最聪明的大脑之一，还在调用别人都没用的API。美国VC是不是在玩一套欧洲VC根本不懂的游戏？
You've got Andreessen introducing you to celebrities, and you've got Matt and Daniel, two of the brightest minds in AI who are querying APIs that no one else does. Are the Americans just playing a different game to the European VCs?
我们热爱我们的合作伙伴。我的意思是，我们最近合作的团队太不可思议了，他们的网络。现在红杉的Andrew加入后更是另一个层次，传奇团队，也提供了疯狂的帮助。NEA同样带来了巨大的支持。
We love our partners. I mean, we have and recent team is so so incredible, their network. I mean, now Sequoia with Andrew is just another level two, iconic team, also crazy help. NEA two is just, like, bringing it all
面向美国。
to US.
他们都是美国的，所以我觉得他们在玩不同的游戏。根据我们目前的经验，他们更愿意承担风险。我们的对话总是在讨论如何下更大的注，而不是如何规避负面因素。对于Purech以及我们引入的任何合作伙伴，我总会做一个检查：当你合作的人或你合作的公司进展不顺时，他们会如何表现？所以我们通常会尝试获取一些反向推荐，了解他们在公司失败时的表现如何。
They are all US, so I think they are playing a different game. I think the you know, they're they are all, from our experience so far, a lot more keen to take the risk. Even our conversations are always like, how do we bet bigger rather than like optimize for the negatives? The one check I always try to do with Purech for any of the partners that we bring beyond the capital network brand is always for the person you partner with or the person you partner with, how will they behave if it's not going well? So we usually try to get any of the back references for how did they behave if the company was failing.
我们所有的反馈都非常积极。他们实际上在公司遇到困难时更站在创始人一边，提供帮助，甚至比公司顺利时更多。我也在对其他公司做同样的检查，也许这在美国已经习以为常了，因为美国经历过大起大落的公司太多了。但在欧洲我们接触的一些投资者中，这个检查并没有得到好结果。
All of the ones that we had are very positive. Like they actually were really on the side of the founder, helpful when it was not going well, even more so than when it was going well. And I was doing the same check with some of the checks with other companies and maybe this is like getting used to that, like, you know, in US, the kind of the set of companies that went up and down is so high. But in some of the investors we spoke in Europe, that check didn't yield the good results.
我和Brian Kim有一个项目进展不顺利。但我必须说Brian是最好的。他是那轮融资的领投方，他把钱退给了所有人，这很少见。他真的投入了大量精力把事情做好、做得快。这一点让我非常佩服他。
I have one with Brian Kim that didn't go well. I And have to say Brian was the best. He was the lead investor in the round, and he got the money back for everyone, and that's rare. And he really put in the work to do it well and to do it quickly. I was really impressed with him in that way.
没错，就是Brian，是的，Brian是我们做背景调查时表现非常突出的一个。Jennifer也是，太棒了，所有人都是，简直疯狂。
No, exactly. It's it's Brian, yeah, Brian was one of our checks came came up strongly. Jennifer too. It's sick. All of them, it's just a crazy ho.
好的，账户里有1900万美元。大多数人突然开始大规模招聘，不是招两三个人，而是真正的大规模招聘。但你偏爱非常小的团队。你之前跟我说过，Luke也跟我说过。
Okay. $19,000,000 in the account. Most people suddenly then go on a hiring spree, and not two people hiring spree, but, like, a proper hiring spree. But you favor very small teams. You've said this to me before, but Luke said it to me.
你为什么偏爱非常小的团队？我认为第一点
Why do you favor really small teams? I think the first piece
是人多往往解决不了问题。你不需要那么多人就能做出特别的事情，这是第一点。第二点是，通过保持——作为一个组织，我们今天有250人，但实际上更像是20个团队，每个团队5到10人，分别执行特定项目，他们拥有更高的所有权，可以非常快速地行动，在迭代现实中更快地看到结果并加以改进，我觉得这种方式运作得非常美妙。当然，这也带来其他挑战，但
is that more people frequently doesn't fix the problem. It's like you don't need that many people to do something special. That's the first thing. Second is by keeping and as an organization today, we are, you know, we're two fifty people, but really it's more like 20 teams going to market of, like, five to 10 people that are just executing on specific projects where they have higher ownership, they can move extremely quickly, they see the results in iterative reality a lot quicker to improve that, and I think this just works in such a beautiful, beautiful way. Of course, there are other challenges with this, but
这20个团队是按职能还是按项目组织的？
Are those 20 teams organized by function or by project?
这有点取决于产品，也就是按产品领域来划分。所以我们有一个团队负责我们的工作室界面，他们会负责你登录时的所有核心体验，还有一个团队负责整个语音代理套件，其中又有一个团队负责一些更企业化的组件，另一个团队负责一些自助服务的元素。所以所有团队都会按产品领域来组织。然后其他部分，我们会尽量快速地进行分片。当然，我们会有一个单独的团队负责人才，再有一个团队负责人力。
A little bit depends in the product by, like, a product area. So we have a team working on our studio interface, that will be responsible for all the core experience when you log in, team responsible for the entire voice agent suite and within that there's a team working on some of the more enterprise components, another team working on some of the self serve elements. So all of the teams will be organized there on the product area. And then the other parts, we try to shard it pretty quickly. We will have a separate team for talent, of course, then the team for people.
他们在实际执行时会拥有很高的独立性，这很有帮助。
And they will have a high degree of independence when they actually execute, which which helps.
你刚才提到了250人。从很多方面来看，相对于公司规模来说这算小的，但也还是有250人。公司文化最差的时候是什么时候？你从中学到了什么？
You mentioned two fifty there. It's small given the size of company in many ways, but it's also still 250 people. When was the company culture the worst, and what did you learn from that?
你知道，有些时候我能感觉到市场、研发和工程之间的那种紧张关系，这是一个具体的故事：在2023年，也就是2023年末，我们做了一个文本转语音的功能，然后我们做了声音，所以我们可以重现一个声音，接着我们在内部做了一个基础的语音转文本的方式。所以我们拥有了最初谈到的所有组件来创建配音。我们还没有公开做配音，但我们把这些组件给了一些客户，让他们可以使用文本转语音、他们的声音。然后有很多压力，说这是一项有价值的技术，可以给我们的企业客户。其中一个企业客户，我们告诉他们我们计划在那个月晚些时候推出结合这些组件的配音解决方案。
You know, there was, like, moments where I could feel this kind of tension between the go to market research engineering and this is like a specific story where in 2023, late twenty twenty three, so we did a text to speech, we then did voices so we could recreate a voice, Then we create, like, a basic way for speech to text internally. So we had all the components that we originally were speaking about to create dubbing. And we haven't done dubbing yet publicly, and we gave all the components to some of our customers so they could use text to speech, their voices. And then there was like a lot of, you know, pressure that like it's a valuable technology we can give to our enterprise clients. One of the enterprise clients, we told them that we are planning to launch our dabbing solution combining those components later in that month.
结果他们拿了这些组件，在我们之前两周发布了配音功能。那是我、我的联合创始人以及整个团队的低谷时刻之一，因为配音是我们的故事。我们对每个人都这么说过。我们知道这是我们想先解决的事情。我们拥有实现它所需的所有组件。
And they took the components and released dubbing two weeks before we did. And that was one of, like, the low moments for me, for my cofounder, for the entire team because dubbing was our story. We told that to everyone. We knew that this is the thing we want to solve first. Had all the components to be able to do it.
我们只是在等待把它优化到完美。结果突然这个合作伙伴先发布了，抢走了所有关注。所有媒体、Twitter、用户都在说，哇，这简直是最不可思议的事情。你能用另一种语言说话，声音却还一样，太神奇了。你能感觉到公司里的士气一下子低落了。
We're just waiting to optimize it to make it perfect. And then suddenly this partner released it and got all the attention. All the media, Twitter, all the users were like, wow, this is the most incredible thing that has happened. How amazing that you can speak in another language and still sound the same. You could feel the morale in the company was low.
大家都在说，我们早就讨论过这个。我们差不多两年前就知道这是要解决的东西。怎么会是客户先拿到并先解决了？所以研发工程团队很不爽，他们怎么就用我们给他们的组件先做到了？
People were like, we spoke about this. We knew for like almost two years that this is something we want to solve. How did it happen that the customer had this and solved this first? So research engineering wasn't happy. Like how did they do it before with the components we gave them?
市场团队也不高兴，因为我们怎么把产品卖给客户？现在我们所有潜在客户都没了。当然，我和Pierre也在说，嘿，这是我们的点子啊。既然这些都给了另一家公司，那还做什么合作？Palma是谁？
The go to market wasn't happy because like how did we sell this to the customer? And now we are like all the potential clients we could have had isn't good. And of course, me and Pierre were like, hey, this was our idea. Like, why would you do any of the partnerships if all of that is like kind of given to another company? Who was the Palma?
不知道我能不能提名字。客观地说，我觉得我们并没有明确告诉他们这是核心功能。他们可能只是想快速做点什么，那些天我们和他们开了很多会，因为我们在想，怎么办？合同里有没有让我们可以不再继续的灵活性？所以我们问他们，嘿，你们为什么发布了？
Don't know if I can mention. And to their credit, I don't think that we told them it was actually a factor. I think they were just trying to do something quick and we had a lot of calls with them those days because we were thinking like, what do we do? Does the contract give us flexibility to not continue? So we spoke through them of, hey, why did you launch?
我觉得并不是按我们的时间表来的，但时间点确实非常接近。他们告诉我们，他们以为这只是个不错的黑客马拉松点子，就交给实习生去做。实习生做了那个项目，然后它就爆了。但确实是这样。
I don't think it was dictated by our timeline, but the timeline was very close to each other. And they told us that they thought it's a good hack weekend idea, so they gave it to their intern. The intern has built that project, and then it exploded. But it was it did
那段时间确实给他们带来了几千万的收入，所以影响非常大。混蛋们。对于创始人来说，当公司遭遇这种泄气时刻，你最大的建议是什么？在遭受如此重创之后，你该如何让公司重新振作？
it did give them, like, in tens of millions of revenue over that period of time, so it was significant. Fuckers. What's your biggest piece of advice to a founder who has a moment like that where you just feel the air come out of the company? How do you inflate the company again after such a damaging blow?
我觉得第一反应不应该是，嘿，一切都好。你应该真诚，告诉团队你的真实感受。比如，这是怎么发生的？我们一起复盘，我们哪里做错了？
I don't think the first reaction should be that, like, hey. Everything is fine. I think you should be authentic and tell the team what you are feeling. Like, how has this happened? Go through, like, what have we done wrong?
而且，那种挫败感是显而易见的。我觉得我们——对我们来说，说出“我们对自己很生气，这是不对的”是有价值的。然后当我们从那个阶段走出来，是的，我们很愤怒，但我们到底要怎么做？
And, you know, that that frustration was clear. I don't think we I think it was valuable for us to talk to, like, we are angry at ourselves. This is wrong. And then as we move from that stage, like, yes, we are angry. What are we actually going to do about this?
并且要很快进入第二阶段。但我觉得我有时犯的一个错误就是直接跳到第二阶段。没问题，我们直接解决它。
And move to that second stage very quickly. But I think I've done a mistake sometimes. Was just going to the second stage. It's not a problem. Let's just go through and solve it.
我觉得把发生的事情彻底聊清楚其实非常有价值。但接着，你得进入下一步，长期来看，这会奏效的。然后你就能用无情的执行力证明自己，向世界展示。如果你重蹈覆辙，那就得有人承担后果；但如果你吸取教训没再犯错，那就没事。
I think it's actually super valuable to talk through what has happened. But then, you know, you need to go into the second thing, and then in the long term, that will work out, you know. It's then you can the relentless execution will prove itself out and show it to the world. And the the worst if you repeat the mistake, then someone needs to feel the repercussions. But if you've learned from that and haven't repeated the mistake, it's fine.
鉴于如今很多技术都在商品化，你觉得执行速度是赢家和输家之间的核心差异吗？还是研究质量、获取GPU的能力？你怎么看待这个问题？
Given the commoditization of a lot of technology today, do you feel speed of execution is the core differentiator between those that all win versus those that won't? Or is it quality of research, access to GPUs? How do you think about that?
我觉得两者都有。我们公司在内部把它拆成研究、产品和我们构建的生态系统——也就是分销和品牌的结合。但研究对我们来说是一种先发优势。我们在研究上投入，并且会继续投入。
I think it's both. I think it's, you know, the the way we approach this in the company is we have research product and the ecosystem that we built, which is a combination of distribution and brand. But research for us is a head start. We are investing in research. We'll continue investing in research.
我们想在语音技术上做到最好。但这给我们的只是接下来一年、两年、也许三年对竞争对手的优势。你觉得你们领先竞争对手多少？我觉得要看具体用例，大概六到十二个月吧，看我们所在的领域。
We want to be the best across the voice technologies. But all this gives to us is advantage over the competition for the next year, two, maybe three. How far ahead are you compared to the competition, do you think? I think it depends on the use case, but six to twelve months, I would say. It's depending on the space that we are in.
你觉得这算多还是不算多？
Do you think that's a lot or not?
我觉得算多了。所以那六到十二个月的研究领先足以让我们把第二件事做好——我们从一开始就并行推进——打造出色的产品体验。你觉得你们有多少收入花在算力上？我们自己建了数据中心。
I think that's a lot. So that research piece of six to twelve months is enough for us to then do the second thing well, which we do in parallel from the start, is build phenomenal product experience. What percent of your revenue do you think you spend on compute? So we've built our own data centers.
为什么要自建数据中心？大多数人直接用 CoreWeave 或 Nvidia 之类的服务就好了。你们为什么自建？
Why build your own data centers? Most people will just use a CoreWeave or use Nvidia or whatever that is. Why build your own data centers?
我们算过账。假设我们继续按现在的节奏训练模型，也就是持续大量训练；其次，考虑到数据传输和不断引入更多数据，大约两年内，自建会比租赁更划算。当然，前提是 GPU 基础设施成本不会大幅飙升。结果我们赌对了，ROI 是正的。
So we did the math. In our case, it was if we assume we continue training the models that the way we want to, so very continuously a lot of those models. Then second, for the data transfers and as we think about continuously bringing more data, we will likely on a two year horizon break even for having our own and not renting. Assuming, of course, you know, you need to assume some improvement in the GPU infrastructure, but assuming that wasn't too high of an improvement, we would have been successful, and we were. I think it kind of the ROI made sense there.
现在它开始产生红利：我们可以更快地做更多实验。这仍可能被颠覆，未来也许有新技术打破这个等式，但就当下而言，自建更划算，也更可控。
And now it pays dividends because we can just do more experiments quicker, and this can still be wrong. At some point, there might be innovation that kind of breaks that equation, but for the current time, it just makes more sense, more control.
很多投资人都在批评如今不少公司的单位经济模型很差，无论是 Replit、Lovable 还是类似的应用公司，整体毛利都很薄。你觉得这种批评公允吗？还是认为他们短视，没看到成本结构即将发生的变化？
A lot of investors are talking about the poor unit economics of a lot of companies that we see today, whether it's your Replits or your Lovable or any of companies like this. Well, any kind of application like companies period, really. They generally have pretty tough unit economics, generally speaking. Do you think that is a fair criticism, or do you think it is simply shortsighted given the changes we will likely see in the cost structure?
你提到的那些案例，单位经济确实挺难看。但他们的策略是：一，模型成本会下降；二，他们要做用户信任的品牌，然后把用户反馈数据再利用。拿 ElevenLabs 来说，我们的单位经济比大多数同行健康得多：研究、产品、分发都在自己手里。不过，如果我们现在要自研新模型，也会先牺牲成本结构，把“魔法”抢先发布，让对手来不及反应。
The unit economics in most of those cases that you mentioned is pretty pretty poor, but I think the strategy is that, yes, one, the models will optimize in cost, and then two, they will be the brands that customers trust and then they can actually use a lot of the signal back. And I think to Elevenlabs example too, I think our unit economics is much healthier than most of those companies. We control our research, our product and distribution, but it's still, if we had a new model that we need to release ourselves, we would optimize less for the cost structure so we can get that magic out quicker than other competitions even can think about creating their own model.
明确一下，你认为外界对利润率的担忧被夸大了，并不成立？
But to be clear, you think the concerns around margin are over expelled and not justified?
这行风险高，最终会有赢家。我欣赏 Lovable 和 Anton 做的事，Replit、v0、Bolt 也都是很棒的产品。我觉得至少会有一家，甚至多家能做出特别的东西。市场足够大，容得下他们一起成功。但肯定也会有输家，他们现在的毛利水平长期看确实不成立，编程类应用也一样。不过，我觉得这是一场很酷的赌注。
Well, it's a risky business where, you know, like, there will be a winner. I love what Lovable is doing with Anthen, but Replit, VZero, Boldt are all incredible companies too or products too that are doing some great work. I do think at least one, maybe more than one will create something special. The market is so big that all of them can create something special But yes, there will be definitely a loser and not mix too and that company and the margins that they are carrying does just not make long term sense and probably the same for coding apps. But I think it's a cool bet.
这不仅是“酷”在应用本身，而是他们敢跟世界上最顶级的公司正面竞争，而且像 Lovable 这样的团队还领先了。Anton 本身也是营销天才。
I think it's not even like cool from the sense of like it's, you know, it's a nice application, it's, it's an ambitious bet that they are trying to win with the biggest companies in the world that are trying will try or are trying, and their lovables of the world are winning. Anton is a phenomenal marketing person too, like,
他作为创始人亲自上阵的方式太精彩了。还有一点很有趣：你们一开始就选择了非常横向的客户策略，坦白说我会强烈建议别这么做。我记得 Philippe 也劝过你，要更聚焦 ICP，明确目标客户画像，而你们当时铺得很广、很横向。
the founder led way he's doing it. Is amazing. One thing that's also really interesting is you were very horizontal in your customer from day one, which respectfully I would advise you very much not to be. I think Philippe was telling me he was advising you the same. Be much more targeted in your ICP and have a clear mind of who that customer and user is, and you are much more broad and horizontal.
如果让你给创始人建议，Day 1 到底该选横向还是垂直？你怎么判断？
And if you're advising founders, how do you tell them when they're launching from day one whether to be horizontal versus whether to be vertically specific?
我觉得如果你要推出非常新颖、非常不同的东西，而你还没有完全了解一部分客户群体，但你知道有一个更大的群体，我认为横向完全没问题。如果你了解并且有领域专业知识，并且这是你试图赢得的品类，我认为就该纵向深耕。
I think if you're launching something very new, very different, and you don't yet fully know a subset of customer base, but you know that there is a bigger one, I think horizontal is is completely fine. If you know and you have domain expertise and this is the category you're trying to win, I think go go vertical.
你说纵向深耕，通常当你有垂直领域时，组织会趋于成熟，会有职级头衔。而你们决定取消头衔，这与传统组织结构非常相悖。为什么没有头衔反而更好？
You say go vertical that normally when you have verticals, have kind of a maturing of organization, you have titles. Titles is something that you decided to get rid of. This is very counter traditional org structures. Why is it better to not have titles?
有一些了不起的公司当然做过类似的事，Stripe 就是一个例子。但在我们这儿，尤其 Dan 那边，团队非常小。我们只有五个人。很多人加入时，我们想优化的是：第一，最重要的是影响力。你可以从第一天起就成为任何团队中最有影响力的人。
There are some incredible companies that, of course, did similar, Stripe being one one example. But in our case, it was, especially Dan, super small team. So we have team of five. A lot of people people join, and what we wanted to optimize for is like one, the main thing that matters is the impact. You can join and you can be the most impactful person from day zero in any of those teams.
所以头衔不该决定你的决策层级。第二，小团队会出现很多这样的小队。如果开始纠结谁有头衔、谁没有，那就成了干扰，因为团队就是不断执行的小单元。这是第二点。第三，我们也想在这种混合中明确，并且现在仍在做。
So the title shouldn't define what is your level of decisions. Second thing with the small teams that happens is that you have a lot of those small teams. So if you start looking at who gets the title or not, it just becomes a distraction given that teams are like the small units that just keep keep keep executing. So So that's the second thing. And the third thing we wanted to, like, also make it very clear in that mix and still do.
如果你今天加入 Eleven Labs，你可以非常快地转型为任何团队、任何职能的负责人。头衔让我们感觉受限。我们觉得新人看到组织已经有一整套固定角色，会让他们更难快速上位。只要你是合适的人，即使资历浅，也能管理资历更深的人。头衔会削弱这一点；但同时我们在子团队内部也有良好结构，比如谁是当前团队的负责人，如果大家无法达成一致，就由他来拍板。
If you are joining eleven Labs today, you can transition to being a leader of any team of any function super quickly. And titles felt limiting to that. We felt like people joining in and seeing that kind of the wider set of organization already having set of roles defined for them would make this a little bit harder. You can have a lower tenure and be a manager of people with much longer tenure if you are the right person. Titles we felt were taking away from that, but at the same time, we have a good structure internally within the sub teams, like who is the current lead of that team that will make the decision if people cannot agree on what's the right path.
但这个人可以——而且并不保证永远当负责人。头衔一旦给出去，在其他公司通常就永远跟着你。
But that person can and and it's not guaranteed that the person will remain a lead for forever. And the titles in a way, you when you give a title, it
通常在任何其他公司都会一直跟着。说到头衔，欧洲科技扩张的一个常见批评是我们没有那些真正见过大规模增长的“头衔人”，比如见过十亿美元 ARR 的销售副总裁等等。你怎么考虑这个问题？是想把美国顶尖人才请过来，还是想在本地培养？
stays stays usually forever in any other company. Speaking of titles, and a common criticism of European tech and scaling is that we don't have these titled people who've seen scale significantly. Your VPs of sales who've seen a billion in ARR, you name it. How did you think about broaching that? Do you wanna get top US talent here, do you want to grow talent here?
我们想在本地培养人才。我们会把现有人才与美国投资人网络里的顾问配对，目标是让人成长。我们热爱培养人。我们的做法几乎是：如果可以，我们宁愿押注一个人成长，而不是外部空降。Anton 在
We want to grow talent here. We match a lot of our current talent with the advisers from our our network of US investors, and the goal is to grow people. We love growing people. Like, our approach is almost if we can, we want to take a bet on the person growing rather than than bring them externally. Anton said on
最近跟我一起上节目时说，在欧洲创业是“困难模式”。你同意吗？
a show with me recently from Lovable that building in Europe is building on hard mode. Do you agree with that?
我觉得确实是困难模式。但也有一些巨大优势。
I think it is. I think it is building on hard mode. But there is some great advantages too.
优势是什么？
What are the advantages?
我认为首先是这里的人才非常了不起，你只需要知道如何找到他们。那人们通常搞错的是什么？有相当一部分人真的想努力工作、创造一些特别的东西，但他们没有机会，因为没有像我们这样有雄心的欧洲公司去尝试。所以他们唯一的选择就是去美国公司工作。而现在，就像你提到的Lovable。
I think the first one is the talent here is incredible, and I think you just need to know how to get it. What do people get wrong then? There is a good subset of people that really want to work hard and create something special, and they just don't have that opportunity because there's no us ambitious European companies trying to do that. So the only way they can do that is work for US companies. And I think now there's like you mentioned Lovable.
我觉得他们也在展现这种雄心，最近瑞典还有Legora等很多公司涌现。我们聊过Synthesia。所以有不少有雄心的公司，他们想要展示。我认为加入的人希望成为一家在全球竞争的雄心企业的一部分。
I think they are showing that ambition too and there's like just so many more Legora recently in Sweden that race around. We spoke about Synthesia. So there's quite a few companies that are ambitious. They want to show. And I think that the people joining want to be part of the ambitious company that is competing on a global scale.
也许在早期，我甚至一度很担心。我认为你希望能在欧洲创业，但不是只面向欧洲。我觉得这两者常被混淆，有时“在欧洲创业”被理解成“只服务欧洲生态”，这是不对的。你仍然要有全球抱负。所以即使现在，当我描述11时，我也把它看作一家全球公司。
And then maybe in the early days, was, like, even worried to a large extent. I think you want to be able to build from Europe, but not build only for Europe. And I think those two get conflated where sometimes building from Europe meant, okay, you are building for European ecosystem, which isn't the right thing. You still want the global aspiration. So even now, when I think about describing 11, I think about us as a global company.
我们是一家全球公司，我们想在美国取胜，在欧洲取胜，想在亚洲发展。我们拥有最棒的团队，而大部分团队在欧洲，因为这里的人才太出色了。
We are a global company with, we want to win in US, we want to win in Europe, we want to build in Asia. We have the best team and most of the team in Europe because the talent is incredible.
所以你觉得美国朋友说“欧洲人就是不像我们这么拼”是错的吗？
So you think it is wrong when our American friends say, hey, the Europeans just don't work as
我觉得你能找到想更拼的人。我们团队里就经历过，当时招了一些来自美国西海岸的人，而我们那些来自中欧和东欧的同事就说，其实他们也没我们拼。我得给团队点赞，他们真的是传教士般的存在，周末也在，真的很在乎。他们真心关心公司的成功。
hard as we do? I think you can find people that want to work harder. And we've had it actually at some point in the team where we hired some people from West Coast Of US and our people where we have quite a few from Central And Eastern Europe were like, oh, yeah, they don't work actually that hard as we do. I mean, we have such a, you know, to credit to the team, it's like the true missionaries that are there on the weekend all the time and really care. They really care about the success of the company.
不仅仅是拼，我觉得他们真的把自己当成公司的一部分，这是事实。所以我确实认为你在欧洲也能找到非常出色的人。
Beyond just working hard, I think they are and they they feel part of the company, which is true. So I do think you can find the people in Europe that are phenomenal.
因为你是光鲜的大牌而加入的人，招进来不好吗？
Is it bad to hire people who come because you're a glossy name?
这挺有意思，因为早期我们没什么主动投递，所以全是主动 outreach。那时更容易找到我们觉得合适的人，因为不用过滤噪音。而现在我们收到的简历太多，很多人是因为AI这个热词，或者因为我们现在规模大了，这也很正常。
It's an interesting one because we, you know, in the early days, we didn't have much inbound. So all of that was outbound. And it was easier in a way to find people that we felt were right because you didn't have to filter through the noise. And now we have just so much where so many people are going because the AI buzzword or, you know, we now are at scale. That makes sense.
但我不觉得，你知道，这没关系。不是每个人都愿意冒同样的风险，所以我并没有
But no, I think it's, you know, it's fine. Like, not everybody is the risk taker at the same amount, so I'm not in any
否定他们。你最大的招聘失误是什么？从中你学到了什么？
way discarding them. What's been your biggest hiring mistake and what did you learn from it?
我觉得，这大概是个老生常谈，但当我思考把人招进来并在公司里培养他们，就像整个招聘流程一样，你招了一个人，通常只有很少的时间去评估他们，但当他们进入公司后，会有更多信号。我本该更快做出一些决定，比如和某些人分道扬镳。如果你在面试时就不确定，但假设你还是给他们机会把他们招进来，然后在最初几周或几个月里你还是不确定，你就应该立刻分开，而不是继续给机会。我想这就是我犯过几次的错误。
I think the, you know, this is probably a traditional one, but as I think about kind of bringing people in and growing them into the company as like the full hiring process, you hire a person, you of course have very little time frequently to assess how they are, but then as they are in the company, have a little bit more of the signal. I would have taken some decisions quicker than I would have with separating with people. If you are not unsure in the interview, but let's say you are bringing them, giving them a chance and you are not sure in the first weeks or months, you should separate straight away rather than keep giving giving the chance. I think that's the the the few times I've think I've done that.
最难招的角色是什么？研究员。简单。创始人什么时候才不该再参与每一次招聘？
What's the hardest role to hire for? Researchers. Easy. When should a founder no longer be involved in every hire?
所以我们面试每一个人，而且我帮你——现在250人时你还在亲自面试。是的，我们还在面。我们希望能尽可能久地面试，因为这对我们招什么样的人是个很好的信号。我们能见到他们，但当然，公司在如何操作上还在变化。一方面，我们现在比六个月或十二个月前更注重在整个公司范围内优化工程和技术技能。
So we interview everyone and I help you You still do now at 02:50. Yes, we do. We hope to interview that as long as possible because it's a good signal of who we bring into the company. We get to meet them, but of course, we still think the company is like still shifting in terms of how we are approaching that. One is now even more we are optimizing for, like, engineering technical skill set in all parts of the company than we would have six to twelve months ago.
所以在某些方面甚至更加严格。但我希望我们能面试到一千人。问题不在于什么时候参与面试，而在于你在特定时间段内想招多少人。所以如果我一个月要招一千人，那是不可能的，因为那会超过
So it's even increasing in some aspects. But I hope we'll interview to, a thousand people. The thing isn't so much hard, you know, when to be involved in the interview, it's more how many people you are trying to hire within a specific period of time. So if I try to hire a thousand people in a month, it's impossible because it would be
我们拥有的时间。一年里，你们会招到多少人？
more than the time we have. In a year, how many people will you have?
到今年年底我们会到400人。
We'll have 400 by end of the year.
到今年年底？
By the end of this year?
到今年年底。
By end of this year.
这幅度很大，几乎翻倍了。你一下子增加了40%
That's a lot. Almost doubling. You're adding 40% in
几乎翻倍。原本三四个，现在大约有450个offer，也就是新加入的人。所以现在大约1250人，已经有30到50人确定要入职，我觉得我们还会再招100人。虽然依旧小而精，但三四个月内增加到150人，还是小而精，不过我们现在已经是相当全球化的团队，正努力把市场和工程拓展到我们所在的每一个地区。
That's almost doubling. Three to we have four fifty offers or so are, like, joining. So twelve fifty now, roughly 30 to 50 people that are already scheduled to join and I think we'll get an additional 100. Respectfully small and mighty, that's not 150 in three to four months. Still small and still mighty, but we have a pretty global team now where we are trying to bring a lot of our go to market and engineering in every location we are at.
所以我们打算在巴西、日本、印度、墨西哥同步建设。我们真的要搞本地化的前哨，在每个地方都建小据点。我觉得能行。你在意人均长期营收吗？长期来说，在意。
So we think we can parallelize that building Brazil and Japan and India and Mexico. So we are really going to that local new ones too, where we are building small outposts everywhere. And I think we can make it work. Do you care about revenue per head? In the long term, yes.
我们希望成为一家高效的公司。我觉得目前我们的人均营收指标很不错。你知道，这能很好地说明公司是否高效。但如果我们看到一条长期路径，我们当然愿意招那些能帮上忙的新人。你作为投资人非常清楚，关键指标之一就是留存，或者说你怎么看待客户的NRR。
Like, we want to be an efficient company. I think now we are, we have a very good metric for revenue per head. You know, it's a good show, like, are you an efficient company? But if we think there is a path for us to get there over time, we take easily the new hires that can help us. You know it extremely well as an investor, but of course, one of the key metrics is retention or like how you think about NRR for any of the clients.
所以我现在招人，帮我们在竞争对手之前拿下渠道，可能会暂时拉低我拿到的营收基数。但如果NRR持续增长，而未来五年我不再扩招，那这项指标自然会改观。
So me bringing people now, helping us get the distribution before competition does, might decrease my set of revenue I get. But if the NRR keeps growing and I don't hire more people in the next five years, that metric, of course, will change.
我能问一下你们现在的营收是多少吗？
Can I ask what revenues are you at now?
我们刚刚突破了2亿美元
So we crossed 200,000,000
哇。
Woah.
这个数字不错。
So it's a good number.
太厉害了。是啊，如果现在就有5000万，那已经很棒了。
That's amazing. Yeah. That is a great 50, if you've got that now. Yeah.
挺不错的。
It's pretty good.
我靠。
Fucking a.
谢谢。大名鼎鼎的Crusher。
Thanks. Famous Crusher.
“23”是多少？
What was the '23?
我想我们当时在3535之间。
I think we were between 3535.
3500万。3500万。你从一月开始公测。
35,000,000. 35,000,000. You went from beta launch in January.
到35。我们用了20个月做到1亿，然后又用20个月做到1亿。对，我觉得是这样。差不多。
To 35. We did so we did twenty months to 100 and then Twenty months to a 100,000,000. Yes. I think so. Like that.
然后大概10个月到2亿，稍微久一点。15个月吧，也许。只想哭。
And then around ten months to 200, a bit longer. Fifteen months, maybe. Just crying.
真的吗？这笨蛋。
Is that right? He's dumbass.
哦，太让人沮丧了。我是说，你知道的
Oh, it's so depressing. I mean, you know that
我很高兴来到这里。
I'm so happy to be here.
问题是，当然你知道，如果它涨得快，也可能跌得快。不过，你的收入不是相对稳定的吗？我觉得挺稳定的。
Well, the the thing is that, of course, you know, if it goes quickly, it can also go quickly down. Well, but but can I is is your revenue not relatively sticky? I think it's relatively sticky.
你觉得大型企业
You think large enterprises
是主要部分。我们现在最大的业务重心，也是我们全力投入的地方，是打造一个对话代理平台。最大的客户是
is the majority. Our biggest part of the business now and where we're obsessing is building effectively conversational agent platform. Like, the biggest customers are
但建设方面，你最大的客户是谁？不说名字，说规模。
But building who's your biggest customer? Not name, but, like, size.
我们最大的合同大约200万美元，主要集中在呼叫中心、客户支持、个人助理等领域。这些公司都在整合我们的研究成果，比如语音转文字、语音分析，然后接入我们创建的大量集成。所以在企业端，无论是思科、Twilio，最近还有Epic Games，这些都是我们最大的部署案例。当然，我们也很幸运，仍然有大量创作者和开发者通过自助方式持续使用我们的产品。
Our biggest contract is around 2,000,000, and they are mostly in a call center, customer support, personal assistance base. All of those companies are orchestrating combination of the research, so speech to text, analytics to speech, and then bringing a lot of those integrations that now we create. So that's on the enterprise side, whether it's Cisco, these are not the the the contracts there, but Cisco, Twilio, recently working with Epic Games. These are some of our biggest the biggest deployments of the work. And then, of course, on the we are in a lucky position that we still have a huge self serve distribution of creators and developers building all the time.
10个月做到2亿。那么到3亿用了多久？因为你20个月做到1亿，10个月做到2亿。
Ten months to 200,000,000. Yep. What was that to 300,000,000 then? Because you half you did twenty months to 100, 10 to 200. Well,
我们是一家有雄心的公司，所以我们希望——我们
we we are ambitious company, so we hope to Can we
能在5个月内做到3亿吗？
do five months to 300?
我们很乐意打破纪录，只要收入健康、我们创造的价值真实，我们愿意刷新纪录。
We would love to break break if it's a healthy revenue and we are creating good work, we would love to break the record.
上一轮的估值是多少？3？3.3。3.3。
What was the price of the last round? 3? 3.3. 3.3.
所有轮次，都是11的倍数。3.3。然后你在收入1.5亿美元的时候做了那轮？不是。更低。
All rounds, divisible by 11. 3.3. And then you did that when you were a 150,000,000 in revenue? No. Lower.
我们当时大概在1亿到1.2亿之间，我想。好的。1亿到1.2亿。但我只是在看
We were somewhere between 100 and 120, I think. Okay. 100 to 120. But I'm just looking at
再看一遍。你在2025年1月做的？
that again. You did that Jan twenty five?
我们在2025年1月宣布的，然后我们在2020年左右做的，我只是在看
We announced it Jan twenty five, and then we did that towards 2020 I'm just looking
着它想，好吧，所以他们2025年末的收入是2.53亿美元。这交易挺便宜的。11、12倍
at it thinking, okay, so they're doing end of year revenues for '25 at $25,300. It's quite a cheap deal. 11, 12 at
年末收入。所以我们在2024年10月做了那轮。所以我们拿到文件时大概8000万，然后当时就签了。
the end of year revenues. So we did the round in October '24. So we were probably at 80 when we got the docs and then it was signed then.
你们需要这笔钱吗？
Did you need the money?
所以我们对待任何融资的方式是，我们能不能把一些赌注提前？在这种情况下，更多是花在模型上，扩展到多模型。我们能不能把业务国际化，扩展到其他地区，然后加倍投入代理平台？所以开始构建更多真正的企业级功能，无论是你需要的可靠性，还是与Salesforce、ServiceNow、SIP中继的集成。所以，投资DOS，DOS是最重要的。
So the way we approached any of the fundraisers, it's can we bring some of the bets forward? In that case, it was even more, spend on models, expand it to multi model. Can we bring our work internationally, so expand into other regions, and then double down on the agentic platform? So start building even more of the true enterprise functionality, whether it's the reliability you need, whether it's integration with Salesforce, ServiceNow, SIP trunking. So, like, investing in DOS, DOS was the most important.
但在那个时候，
But at the time,
那是针对X当前收入的，所以表现相当不错。你如何在专注并按计划执行与能够做得更多之间取得平衡？我理解能够做得更多的好处，但有了更多钱你大概总能做得更多，并不意味着那就是正确的事。
it was for the x current revenue, so pretty good then. How do you balance between focus and executing according to plan versus being able to do more? I understand the benefits of being able to do more, but you can probably always do more with more money. It doesn't mean it's the right thing.
我觉得这有点像，能否在不干扰核心工作的情况下启动一项新努力？这大致就是我们试图采取的方式。比如，我们能否把业务拓展到一个新地方？能否在不影响对用户真正重要的核心事项的前提下，创造一种全新的产品体验？如果可以，我们很可能会投资并引入人手。
I think that the kind of the variation of this is, like, can you paralyze a new effort without distracting the core work? And that's roughly why we are trying to approach this. Like, can we bring our work to a new place? Can we create a new product experience without affecting the core thing that's actually important for our users? If we can, then we'll likely invest, bring the people into it.
如果会造成分心，那就变成了值不值得为了潜在收益而做的问题。当我们思考
If it's distracting, then it becomes a question of, like, is it worth upside? When we think about kind
“做得更多”时，我觉得我们之前漏掉的问题是：未来最大的业务线是什么？那条业务线现在要么规模很小，要么根本不存在。
of doing more, the the question that I think we forgot earlier was what's the biggest line of business in the future that is not a very big line or nonexistent today?
这很有意思，因为从相对角度来看，我觉得我们的智能体业务已经很大了，但还只是冰山一角。如果我们操作得当，仅这一块就能成为创造数十亿美元收入的业务，当然是通过打造语音智能体并深入拓展。所以这条线相对
It's it's interesting because it's on the on the relative basis. I think the our agents' work is already huge, but I think it's just scratching the surface. I think it's going to, if we play it right, it's like a multibillion dollar revenue generating business just from huge, of course, creating voice agents and going deeper. So I think this one is on, like, on the relatively And these
你们卖给企业、让他们用来管理客户支持的那些语音智能体。没错，明白了。
are the voice agents that you sell to companies to manage their customer support. That's right. Got you.
然后你可以深入，当然可以从语音扩展到对话智能体。我的意思是开始构建全渠道解决方案，整合邮件、WhatsApp，这就属于更传统的客户支持范畴了。你们会
And then you can go deeper. You can, of course, expand from voice into conversational agents. And by that, I mean you start building omnichannel solution with email integration, WhatsApp integration, which is kind of that, you know, more classic customer support. Would you
卖给Intercom和Decagon这样的公司吗？
sell then to an intercom and a Decagon?
目前我们跟Decagon有公开合作，所以确实在合作。但当然，随着你深入拓展，这要看Decagon和我们各自的发展方向。他们会垂直化还是继续横向深入？我们则会更垂直化。所以某些领域我们可能会重叠多一些。
Today, so we are have a public partnership with Decagon, so we do. But of course, as you start going deeper, it depends a little bit where Decagon goes and where we go. Are they going to verticalize or they will continue horizontal and go down? Well, we verticalize more. So there might be some areas where we overlap a little bit more.
但就今天而言，鉴于我们采取非常，像，伙伴式的横向方式，我们对待所有
But today, given we have very, like, partner horizontal approach that that we we we treat all of
把他们当作好伙伴。说到好伙伴，现在我们做的是“人类+智能体”。我们非常友好，彼此成就。总有一天，“人类+智能体”会只剩下智能体。你觉得公司内部员工对智能体的进入是否表现出很多抵触？
them as good partners. Speaking of kind of good partners, right now, we're doing the human plus agent. We're so friendly, and we're we make each other better. And there's a time when human plus agent just becomes agent. Do you think we are seeing a lot of resistance from employees within companies towards agents coming in?
确实有。但我们目前看到的这种过渡方式是，会出现更多专业化的人类，而智能体则承担那些没人真正愿意做、或者不需要领域专长的手工环节。举个例子，像预约排班、办理退款这些，只要在安全和身份验证上做好保障，基本都可以由AI轻松完成。但一旦需要帮患者理解出院后的后续流程，或者做病情分析，这就不能交给AI了，风险太高，需要深厚的领域知识。
We do. But the the way we've seen this, like, kind of transition happen now is where you will have more specialized humans, where the agents are taking more of the manual parts that nobody really wanted to do or didn't require domain expertise. So like a good example is like if you're taking appointment scheduling, if you are doing a refund, all of those, of course, assuming you have the safeguards and authentication in place, are pretty easily done with AI. But then suddenly, you need to help that patient navigate the outbound flow after going from hospital or understand analysis, that cannot be done with AI. There's too much at stake and you need a deep domain expertise.
所以我们看到一种转变：在“最后一公里”提供帮助的人反而更有价值。当然，AI可以在那些简单任务上全面协助。我认为这种趋势会继续。比例自然会变化，随着自动化深入，更多环节会被机器接管，而那些真正拥有领域专长的人的价值会被进一步放大，因为最终这也会帮助把
So we've seen like kind of the transition where that side of people helping in that kind of last mile is even more valuable. Well, of course, AI can help with those easier tasks across. And I think this will continue. Of course, the percentages will shift where you will have even more automation as it goes deeper and then even more value assigned to the people doing that domain expertise because, ultimately, it will help automate the
手头的任务自动化。拿红杉的钱，真的会比拿其他基金的钱带来更明显的加持吗？
task at hand. Does taking money from Sequoia meaningfully move the needle in a way that it doesn't from other funds?
你知道，我觉得我们的首轮是A16z领投的，那确实给我们带来了明显的加持。很明显，人们
You know, like, I think so so our first round was with a 16, and it did meaningfully move the needle for us. Like, it was very clear that people
对你的尊重程度不一样了。没错。
Respected you in a way that they didn't before. Yeah.
我同意。接着B轮红杉进来，这种认知进一步放大：A16z和红杉都在我们这家公司里，这种情况在任何创业公司里都极少见。所以很多客户因此更加认可我们。现在再加上Iconic，组合简直无敌。
I agree. And then Sequoia came in in series B and that's kind of doubled down that perception where it's like, okay, A16z and Sequoia are part of the company. It's also very rare to have both of these investors in any of the companies. So it did help, like, where a lot of clients would be respecting that. And now Iconic on top of that is just incredible mix.
还有NFTG二期。我觉得NFTG二期在客户层面通常不会带来这种光环，但投资圈会。而且我们的一些工程师或用户真的非常崇拜和信任Matt，我也一样，他非常棒。
And NFTG two. I think NFTG two is like clients will usually not have that perception, but the Investors do. But investors do. And some of our engineers or users really, really admire and trust Matt, and I do too. So he's great.
从你所拥有的和已经搭建的东西来看，你本身就是极具战略价值的资产。
You're a very strategic asset when you look at what you have and what you've built.
你们收到过收购要约吗？
Have you had acquisition offers?
我们确实收到过收购邀约。
We did have acquisition offers.
说实话，你们有没有认真考虑过其中任何一个？
Did you contemplate any of them, honestly?
我们总会做最基本的尽调，并让投资人知道，我们收到了邀约。最大的一笔是多少？最大的那家其实没钱，所以我们真正谈的那些，对话挺有意思，因为我们常常先谈战略合作，然后对方就说，哦，我们能不能考虑并购？有诱惑吗？有一点点，但只是在头一两次的时候。第一次是在我们A轮进展顺利的时候。
We always will do, like, the basic diligence and let our investors know that it's, you know, that we had this and you What was the largest one? Well, the largest one didn't have money, so but the ones that we went, it was like an interesting conversation because we would frequently try to like go into with the strategic partnership and then they would be like, Oh, can we consider, are we open to M and A activity? Was it tempting? It was tiny bit tempting, but in a way where in the first one or two examples. So the first one was when we were doing series A, it was going really well.
当然，当时我们也不清楚后续会怎样，那时还在曲线最开端。第一次就像，好吧，我们第一次遇到这事，得看看他们到底出什么价。但我们更感兴趣的是整个流程本身，看看并购怎么发生，而不是真的把公司卖掉。
And then of course we like, we're unclear how this will continue. It was like a very beginning of the curve. And the other first one was like, okay, this is first time we ever are doing this. Let's understand what they are offering. But we were more interested into like seeing whether more about the process itself, like how it happens rather than actually giving the company.
后来就很明确了，他们真想收购我们，我们明白了，得成为他们的一部分。所以我们直接拒绝。从那以后，只要对话往并购方向靠，我们就知道该怎么处理。
Then it was clear, okay, they actually want to acquire us. This is what we understand and we need to be part of the company. So we were a flat no. And since then, for any of the conversation now that we know that this is even approaching this M and A.
你们做过老股转让吗？我们
Did you do secondaries? We
做过老股转让，这有帮助。几乎每轮我们都做，给所有已归属期权的员工做二次要约，让他们可以卖股票，这样大家都能感受到公司真的有流动性。
did secondary. And that helps. So we do almost every round we can. We do secondary and a tender offer for all employees that have vested stock so they can sell the stock. So they all feel that there's actually liquidity to the company.
我觉得这很有价值，因为我们在押注一个巨大的未来，你希望知道自己能承担风险去搏一个大结果。当然，说财务不重要很容易，其实确实不是最重要的，但人们还是有那层基本需求。
And I think it's valuable because we are betting for something huge, and you want to know that you've you you can take the risk to bet on some big outcome, which, of course, you know, like, think it's very easy to say financial imperative is not important, and I think it isn't, but there's, like, this basic layer that people want to
我觉得是付托儿费、付
I think is paying for childcare and paying for
房贷。没错，就是这样。
a house. No. Of course. Exactly. That's what I mean.
但这就像，它本身并不是目标，而是你想要有一个被覆盖的、良好生活的底层保障，我们作为一家公司在这一点上极其幸运，也能够提供。但随后，现在的抱负就大多了，尤其当这一基础层被覆盖后。我常想的是，过去二十年里有多少伟大的欧洲公司，如果当时有二级市场和流动性选择，就不会出售，因为太多
But it's like, it's not the goal in itself, but you want to have like this bottom set of good life that's covered, which we are extremely lucky as a company to have and to be able to offer. But then, like, now the kind of the aspiration is much bigger, especially now that this basic layer is covered. Thing I often think is how many great European companies of the last twenty years would have not sold had we had secondary and liquidity options available at the time because so many
确实因为那时没有这些选择而出售了，而且那意义重大。
did sell because we didn't have that, and it was so meaningful.
我觉得这确实有助于认知层面，你知道，某种程度上，通过把风险因素去掉一些，你就能把金钱带来的贪婪感放到一边。
I think it does help with, like, the perception where, you know, there's like you can, to some extent, I think you can put away, like, any of the greediness that comes with money just by taking some of the risk risk equation away.
兄弟，我们快问快答。我会说一句简短的话，你立刻给出第一反应。可以吗？听起来不错。
Dude, we're gonna do a quick fire round. So I'm gonna say a short statement. You're gonna give me an immediate thought. Does that sound okay? Sounds great.
那么，你相信但身边大多数人都不信的是什么？
So what do you believe that most around you disbelieve? That you
你可以在欧洲打造一家具有全球规模的公司。你
can build a company from Europe at a global scale. You don't
你觉得人们还是不信吗？你不觉得我们正在稍微改变这种看法？
think people still think that? Like, you don't think we're moving the needle a little bit?
我觉得你在帮忙，我们生态里的很多人也在，但我不认为大多数人相信。也许还有一个不那么针对公司建设的观点，但我确实认为语音将成为我们与周围技术交互的界面。它将成为我们周围健康技术的主要界面。
I think you are helping, and I think many of the people in our ecosystem are, but I don't think most people do. Maybe another one which is not that specific to company building, but I do think voice will be the interface to the technology around us. It will be the primary interface for health technology around us.
我不会让你绕过去。你可以用300买OpenAI，用1.70买Anthropic，或者用1.20买Grok。你买哪个，卖哪个？
I'm not gonna let you wiggle on this one. You can buy OpenAI at 300, Anthropic at $1.70, or Grok at $1.20. Which one do you buy and which one do you sell?
呃，我不太喜欢这个问题。
Well, I don't know if I like this question.
Antoine 回答了。Antoine，Antoine，为了说明背景，他回答说他愿意买 Grok，并卖掉 OpenAI。
The Antoine answered it. Antoine Antoine, for context, answered he'd buy Grok and he'd sell OpenAI.
好。我们往积极的方向说，我会买 OpenAI。但我爱 Anthropic。你知道，如果我是做编程的，我觉得我可能会买……你
Okay. Let's keep it at a positive. I would buy OpenAI. But I love Anthropic. Like, you know, if I was on the coding side, I think I would be buying Do you
强制用 Cursor 吗？
mandate Cursor?
不，我们不强制。就像你用你觉得最有价值的工具。大多数人用什么？大多数人确实用 cursor。有些人用 Cloud Code，但还是 cursor 更多。
No. We don't mandate. It's like you you use what you what you think is most valuable to What do most people use? Most people do use cursor. Some people use Cloud Code, but still more cursor.
我觉得情况在慢慢变化。另外，你刚才的另一个问题，我忘了是哪位投资人说的，但我也认同——当我考虑那个决定时，我很乐意投资我常用的很多产品，我确实经常用 ChatGPT。偶尔我也会用 Anthropic 测试一下我们在这个领域的进展，但我觉得他们更多投入在编程而不是面向消费者，而 OpenAI 显然在 ChatGPT 这个消费者解决方案上投入很大。
I think it's shifting a little bit. I'm also, you know, to your other question, I don't remember who was the investor, but they did say, which I think I would also, like, as I think about that decision is I would be happily investing in a lot of the products I use, and I do use Chudge GPT very often. Every so often I will use Anthropic for, like, testing where we are with the space, but I think they are investing more in coding rather than cloud the consumer, and OpenAI is clearly investing a lot in ChajGPT, the consumer solution.
过去十二个月里，你最大幅改变想法的是什么？
What have you changed your mind on most in the last twelve months?
以前如果我们知道自己要做任何研究项目，就绝不会做任何产品创新。现在转变了，我们有时会借助外部研究去探索产品，即使我们内部并不开发它。
That we previously would not do any of the product innovation if we knew that we are doing any research initiative ourselves. And I think now it's shifted that we will sometimes explore product with outside research even if we don't have we we don't build it internally.
ARR 增长速度是个扯淡指标吗？
Is speed of ARR growth a bullshit metric?
要看时间维度。但总体来说，是的，我觉得 ARR 增长速度并不重要。
Depends on time horizon. But but in general, yes, I think speed of ARR growth doesn't doesn't matter.
你现在最喜欢的消费品牌是什么？为什么？
What's your favorite consumer brand today and why?
我真的很喜欢 Eight Sleep。我不知道它算不算消费品牌，但我最近确实很喜欢 Eight Sleep，它发生了相当大的变化。我是谷歌地图的重度用户，非常喜欢谷歌地图。从偏消费级的应用来说，我真的很喜欢。你可以任选一家公司当一天 CEO。
I really like Eight Sleep. I don't know if it's a consumer brand, but I do like Eight Sleep recently as as as as as like, changed quite significantly. I am a huge user of of Google Google Maps and love Google Maps. Lovable, I really like, from consumer ish applications. You can be CEO of any company for a day.
你会选哪家公司当 CEO？
What company would you be CEO of?
我会选谷歌或 OpenAI。我想了解一些惊人模型的内部技术。我觉得更偏向谷歌。我会选谷歌。Genie、VO3 这些模型都很了不起，同时，那种运营规模也很有趣。
I'll choose Google or OpenAI. I would know the know how of some of the incredible model. I think more Google. I would say Google. Genie, VO3 models, incredible innovations, and then at the same time, just the, you know, the scale of operation would be interesting.
你对谷歌非常看好。人们用“金蛋”来质疑他们。
You're super bullish on Google. People question them with the golden egg.
是啊。上一题他们没给我谷歌的选项。没有。是啊，我会用谷歌投资 Ambeth 300 美元，但那不是选项。
Yeah. They didn't give me Google in the previous question. No. Yeah. Would invest in Ambeth for $300 with Google, but that's not an option.
但你对谷歌非常看好
But you're super bullish
即使广告模式可能受到冲击，你也看好谷歌吗？
on Google even with the ads model being potentially up.
不，不，不是“非常看好”。我仍觉得谷歌未来不错，尤其是最近他们在很多地方都在追赶。
No. No. It's, like, super bullish. Definitely not super bullish, but I I think Google is I would still put a lot that Google has a good future. And especially recently, they are catching up in many places.
他们肯定还在赛道上。我要给你封个头衔。你将成为
They are definitely in the race. I'm creating a title for you. You're gonna
欧洲总统。好吗？提醒一下我们所有美国听众，欧洲不是一个国家，虽然你们喜欢把它当成一个整体。欧洲总统。你会做哪一件事，让欧洲创业生态更有可能成功？
be the president of Europe. Okay? I'm aware, for all of our American listeners, Europe is not a country even though you like to collectivize and make it one. President of Europe. What would you do, one thing, to make the European ecosystem have a higher chance of success?
我的话立即成为法律。是的。我会把很多AI法律代理给美国法律。我知道这会带来巨大的连锁反应，但我会尽量完全照搬美国对AI相关监管的路线并直接实施。或者，我们可以在欧盟和欧洲再建一个“州”，人们可以自愿加入并遵循那套法律。
My word goes into into law immediately. Yeah. I would proxy a lot of AI law to US law. I know this has a huge set of repercussions, but I would try to follow exactly how US is approaching a lot of AI related regulation and just implement the same. Or let's create another state in European Union and Europe that people can opt in that follows that law.
为了不让事情变得太复杂，考虑到所有后果。创始人品牌有多重要？我的答案会是“我不知道”，因为在很多方面，当我们思考11 Lapse，尤其是在早期，建立公司的人就是建立公司的人。某种程度上，他们仍然不知道，比如让一些非常高调的人，就像我现在上这个播客，会不会削弱这一点。我们希望它是互补的，因为我们成功的原因，我认为很大程度上是因为我们创造了卓越的研究。
To not, like, make it too hard given given all the repercussions. How important is founder brand? My answer here would be I don't know because in in many ways, as we thought about the 11 Lapse, especially in early days, it's the people that build the company are the people that build the company. And in some ways, they kind of could still don't know to what extent, like having some people that are very much out there, like let's say I'm now in this podcast, takes away from that. And we want to make it complementary because the reason we are successful I think is to a large extent because we've created incredible research.
工程师们只是埋头苦干，打造最棒的产品体验。市场团队正在发明新的方式，把自助和销售结合起来。所以是所有这些部分，再加上运营，在七个月内把公司从不到100人扩张到250人，同时保持文化不变。你知道，这些都是极其困难的事情，而在超速增长中，你几乎没有时间去充分欣赏那些个人，比你原本应有的时间少得多。我有时会担心，那种过于突出的创始人品牌会把焦点从他们身上移走。
The engineers are just grinding and creating the best product experience. The go to market team is inventing new ways to combine self serve and sales. So it's like all those parts and then supplemented by operations scaling the company from less than 100 to now two fifty in the span of seven months while keeping culture intact. You know, are like all so hard things and with hyper growth there's less time to be able to appreciate all those individuals than than you would otherwise. And I sometimes worry by having that kind of, you know, too much of the founder brand kind of takes away from that.
但我的想法在慢慢改变。我觉得也许通过让创始人品牌出现在公众视野，反而能提升这些贡献。最后一个问题，
But my mind is changing a little bit. I think like maybe you can elevate that by having a a founder brand out there. Final one, and
可能有点发散，但你收到过的最好的一条建议是什么，你最常想起的那条？
it may be a little bit of a thought, but what's the single best piece of advice you've been given that you think to most often?
嗯，我并不是最常想起这条。所以最近，我喜欢彼得·蒂尔说的，最大的风险就是不冒风险，以及那种迟迟不做决定或保持……
Well, the I don't it's not most often. So in the in the recent times, I I like what what Peter Thiel said about the biggest risk is not taking the risk and, like, kind of staying kind of not taking a decision or staying What
有没有哪次你没冒的风险，至今让你耿耿于怀？
risk did you not take that haunts
这个答案会变。如果你问的是“当时应该冒那个风险”的话。我通常不会这样，我通常会尽快采取行动。但我们现在正在考虑收购另一家公司，那是一家大公司。那家公司价值数亿美元。
you most? It's shifting because if if you ask me that, should have taken that risk. So I don't I don't usually I usually help try to to, like, take a quick action on on top of that. But one that that is we are considering is an acquisition of another company now, which is a big company. And that company, you know, is in hundreds of millions of dollars.
把他们引进来将是一个巨大的风险。而我们认为内部可以做得更好，所以我觉得我们不会冒这个风险。
It will be a huge risk for bringing them in. And we think we can do better internally, so I think we won't take that risk.
Matty，这次访谈非常有趣。非常感谢你容忍我的东拉西扯，你是一位出色的嘉宾。
Matty, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for putting up with my meandering, and you've been a fantastic guest.
展开剩余字幕（还有 9 条）
谢谢你，Harry。终于能一起对话，真是太开心了。
Thank you, Harry. It's a pleasure pleasure to be finally able to speak together.
终于把Matty请到演播室现场，太棒了。你可以在YouTube上搜索“20 VC”——就是数字二零加VC——找到这期节目。但在今天结束前，我喜欢看到整个团队齐心协力把节目做成；我不喜欢的是，要在一堆平台、产品和工具里追踪我们所有的信息、数据和项目。
So great to make that happen with Matty live in the studio. You can find it on YouTube by searching for 20 VC. That's two zero VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data, and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products, and tools.
所以我们用Coda——这个一体化协作工作空间已帮助全球5万支团队同频共振。它把文档的灵活和表格的结构合二为一，让团队协作更深入、创意落地更快。他们的即插即用AI方案“Coda Brain”更是颠覆体验。在Grammarly加持下，Coda正迈入创新与扩张的新阶段，旨在重新定义AI时代的生产力。无论你是想一边保持敏捷、一边整理混乱的初创公司，还是寻求更好协同的大型企业，Coda都能贴合你的工作方式。
That's why we use Coda, the all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda Brain, is a game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a start up looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style.
它无缝连接Salesforce、Jira、Asana、Figma等数百款常用工具，帮团队重塑工作流、提速提效。现在就去 coda.i0/20vc，即可免费获得面向初创公司的团队版六个月优惠。拼写是 c-o-d-a.i0/20vc，免费拿六个月团队版，coda.i0/20vc。Coda让团队步调一致，而Radix则让你的初创名字同样亮眼——这是给所有科技创始人的福利。
Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana, and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to coda.i0/20vc right now and get six months off the team plan for start ups for free. That's coda, c0da,.i0/20vc, and get six months off the team plan for free, coda.i0/20vc. And while coda keeps your team aligned, Radix makes sure your startup's name is just as sharp. This one's for all you tech founders out there.
你终于想出完美的公司名，一查 .com——靠，被占了。要么空停，要么贵过帕洛阿尔托的房租。于是你妥协：加字母、奇拼写，怎么都行。其实不必委屈，因为终于有专为科技人准备的域名——.tech。去 .tech 拿下你真正想要的名字吧。
You finally come up with the perfect name for your startup, then you check the .com and, damn, it's taken. Parked, unused, or priced like rent in Palo Alto. So you settle with extra letters, weird spellings, whatever it takes. But, hey, you don't have to compromise because now there's finally a domain for tech founders like you, .techdomains. Get the startup name you actually want on .tech.
绝不妥协。更重要的是，用 .tech 就是在告诉客户和投资人：你做的确实是科技，光域名就能说明。酷吧？如果已有心仪名字，现在就去GoDaddy等可信平台搜“你的名.tech”，或访问 get.tech/20vc 立即抢注。名字锁定，Radix搞定。
No compromises. What's more, when you use .tech, you signal to your customers and investors that you're building tech with just your domain name. Isn't that cool? So if you've got a name in mind, search for it now with .tech on a trusted platform like GoDaddy or visit get.tech/20vc to grab it. You've got the name locked down with Radix.
接下来就该把基金架构也弄得同样扎实。听二十VC的你都知道我们标准高得离谱。AngelList就是顶级风投都在用的现代平台，40%以上的顶尖捐赠基金和银行都是其LP。客户包括排名前五的风投机构，也包含20VC；平台资产管理规模已高达1,710亿美元。他们把一体化软件平台与同样高速的服务团队合二为一。
Now it's time to get the fun structure just as solid. If you're listening to twenty VC, you know we have a really freaking high bar. Well, AngelList is the modern platform used by the best in class venture funds where over 40% of top endowments and banks are LPs. Their customers include a top five venture firm, 20 VC, and they now have, check this out, a $171,000,000,000 of assets on the platform. They combine an all in one software platform with a service team that moves as fast as you do.
一位管理人这么说：“AngelList就像我基金的延伸。”另一位说：“AngelList让我彻底安心——对细节的关注、闪电般的响应、团队真正的主人翁精神，正是我停止担心后台运营所需的一切。”所以，如果你要发起新基金，别犯傻，直接用AngelList，他们太牛了。
One manager said this awesome quote, AngelList feels like an extension of my fund. Another said, AngelList gives me total peace of mind, the attention to detail, lightning fast response time, and just real sense of ownership from the team are exactly what I need need to stop worrying about back office ops. So if you're starting a new fund, don't be a moron. Just use AngelList. They're incredible.
访问 angellist.com/20vc 了解更多。一如既往，感谢大家的支持；别忘了锁定周四的精彩节目——Jason Lemkin、Rory O'Driscoll 以及 Twilio 创始人 Jeff Lawson 的本周新闻圆桌，绝对特别。
Head over to angellist.com/20vc to learn more. As always, I so appreciate all your support, and stay tuned for a fantastic episode on Thursday with Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, and Twilio founder Jeff Lawson. It's a special one, the news roundup of the week.
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