ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota

Transcript

We had two employees that in February had already achieved the entire full year quota. I'm so excited to welcome Carlos Reina. Carlos is the CRO at Eleven Labs, one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. Customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business. He's scaled the revenue org from zero to over 350 million in ARR. The role of a CRO is fundamentally thinking about not the revenues today, but the revenues of tomorrow. Let's do the things that no one is doing. That is what makes me passionate. And that is what a good CRO needs to be doing because we're not here to do easy stuff. This is a masterclass in scaling sales in an AI first world. It's the fastest product in terms of revenues that we've ever had. It's insane. On top of that, Carlos is also an incredible investor with his own solo GP fund, Baobab Ventures, which has backed the likes of Revolut and of course Eleven Labs in the early days. If you want to do something, budget is never going to be a problem. So what is the problem? If you want to do something and you're not allowed to, why would that be? Ready to go? Carlos, I know a show is successful when I get friends of mine outside of tech say, oh, love the clip with Carlos. And I'm thinking, really? And they're saying, I never thought that quota and sales comp would be so interesting. And I'm saying, thank you, Sarah. I had no idea you were interested in it. So it was such a successful show. I thought we had to do a round two. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for inviting me. This is great. I'm happy people were interested in sales. Sales and sales comp, according to that clip, which now has 5 million plus views, which is insane. Dude, I actually wanted to start on you have now led the way in a new CRO charge, I think. Eleven Labs is probably one of the most exciting companies on the planet. You as CRO there lead the way. Are a generation of CROs being left behind? Some of them, yes. But I think it's fundamentally that the market has changed. The way that we build companies today has completely evolved. We can do deals much quicker, but also for me, the key item is a deal can be done. You can hire teams that have a ton of experience, but how do you think beyond a single deal and think about distribution entirely? Right. And I think that's what we're thinking, what we're actually missing in many ways. Yes, it's great to do business development. It's great to do affiliate thinking. How do you think about much more on a strategic level, but also able to execute? And for me, those are the key components. How do you embed AI in your entire distribution component so that you are able to actually do more with less? Right. What do you mean by that? Is that simply using Artisan qualified Monaco and having my AI SDRs do outbound for you? No, that doesn't work. Good. Glad I suggested that. It doesn't work. I've tried very large numbers of AI go to market tools and they don't work because they see everything as a transaction. If I was building it and hopefully people will be able to actually use this. If I was building an AI, a Genetic platform for sales, [SPEAKER_01] right? I'd be thinking, okay, let's actually understand each one of the core potential leads. [SPEAKER_01] What do they prefer? Do they prefer to be reached out over email? Do they prefer to [SPEAKER_01] attend events? Do they prefer to have a phone call? And you can try to map some of those components, but what people put on LinkedIn and social media, right? That is the most fundamental element. But what we're actually seeing on the AI SDR front is that the majority of [SPEAKER_00] these tools track everyone as if they actually want to receive a message and people hate it. [SPEAKER_00] And you see the response rates on outbound emails has dropped to the lowest of any point in [SPEAKER_00] time. It's less than 0.01%. People getting messages on LinkedIn has skyrocketed. [SPEAKER_00] And you can perceive that as actually a transaction email mass sent to everyone, [SPEAKER_00] or it was generated by AI. That doesn't work. [SPEAKER_00] So outbound is dead. Outbound is dead unless you do it with humans or unless you do it humanly. And that's fundamentally the key item. I can tell you at 11 labs, I spent the past two years plus trying to convince the team to hire engineers to help me build AI agents for revenue for sales, right? And it was only last year that they were like, okay, let's do it. So we ended up hiring people and we ended up building AI SDR that handles inbound, super good results. I have now an AI proposals manager that scans the web for RFPs and RFIs and then proposes scores and proposes things. I have an AI customer success manager that fundamentally leaves in the back in an email and essentially proposes emails, looks at all of the data of a single customer, all of the pricing tiers and everything that we have in the contract, and then proactively proposes things. So when my AI customer success, my customer success manager goes in the morning to check the emails, that person has a number of drafts that the AI has created. And then that person can change those drafts to put it out there and to send it back. We store what we actually sent and what it was originally created and what the responses are to actually fine tune. So each one of [SPEAKER_01] the customers ends up getting a slightly different message with a slightly different tone. And if they [SPEAKER_01] speak other languages, then it's completely different language. That works. And that has [SPEAKER_01] closed deals for us already. We generate money from that AI customer success manager, [SPEAKER_01] fundamentally because it is humanly, right? It's human, it's specific as human. [SPEAKER_01] So are we cutting the size of our team? If we can do so much with these different AI agents, [SPEAKER_01] are sales teams of the future going to be dramatically less? [SPEAKER_00] I think we will end up seeing the fact that people are becoming much more efficient. [SPEAKER_00] I think the goal for me at 11 labs is 50% improvement in productivity. That's the one that [SPEAKER_00] I want to do because then it means that I can hire fewer people, right? And that's fundamentally, [SPEAKER_00] I prefer to manage a smaller team that gets super well compensated. Any upsells, any contracts that the [SPEAKER_00] AI agent ends up closing, I will pay those commissions as if a human actually closed it. [SPEAKER_00] And I'm very happy with that. But also that means that the people that we want to retain [SPEAKER_01] Are sales teams of the future going to be dramatically less? I think that we will end up seeing the fact that people are becoming much more efficient. I think the goal for me at 11 labs is 50% improvement in productivity. That's the one that I want to do because then it means that I can hire less people, right? And that's fundamentally, I prefer to manage a smaller team that gets super well compensated. Any upsells, any contracts that the AI agent ends up closing, I will pay those commissions as if a human actually closed it. And I'm very happy with that. But also that means that the people that we want to retain and have are going to be extremely top talent that are performing at 11 that no one else is performing. That has a consequence. That is instead of actually doubling my team or doing a five X or doing whatever it is over the next two years, I end up hiring less people, but they're very concentrated. Totally. That has an impact for sure in the industry. Totally get that. You mentioned the word commissions there. I'm really intrigued. We see OpenAI don't have commissions. It's like, here's your salary, and then here's your equity. And often people say salespeople are coin operated. You said that actually last time you have a 20X quota, which is a lot higher than anyone else. We interviewed the head of sales at Clay recently, and they said there's a six to eight. Post 20, what is the commission structure? And how do you advise me as a founder on how to set the commission structure? I can tell you we had two employees that in February had already achieved the entire full year quota. Yes. And I put a message in Slack saying these two people have reached the Mount Olympus of sales at 11 labs because in two months already like the quarter, right? And I think, I mean, this in the nicest way, did you not massively miss that quota then? I don't think so. It's like, I think you need to put a quota that is challenging, but also fair. And if people miss it fundamentally because it's too high, they need to do the right thing and then lower it or compensate them correctly. Right. But also salespeople, good salespeople, they want to be the best ones. They want to actually, they're moved by the coin. They're moved by the fact, a big challenge ahead of them. If you don't put that challenge, they're just going to be slacking. You're not going to get the best out of it. Right. And I think for me, that's the key item is we say, Hey, you reached your quota a hundred percent. Fantastic. And then you start unlocking accelerators to the point that I'm very happy. If we sign a million dollar commission check, I'm the happiest person in life. Fundamentally because that person did so much money for the business and for our shareholders and for the rest of the company, that is an absolute no brainer. Again, for me, it's for every $1 million in revenues that any single person signs. And I don't care if it comes from the SDR, the account exec, the CSM, or it's an engineer that went all in and then managed to get a contract. It's every single million has $33 million in extra valuation for the company. If you put it that way, it's a benefit for everything. Some people get more equity on the engineering side. Great. They deserve it because they don't get commissions. Fantastic. They were popping up the entire value of their stock. When you get the accelerators, how do you advise me on how to structure the accelerators? It depends. The way we do it, and I think it's fair is for every single extra tier, you get another 25% extra commission on top of it. We started with 5% commission on anything that you sell. And then we have the accelerator. After your quota that is. No, that is including your quota. And then after your quota, yes, additional, and we have a 1.1X, 1.2X, 1.3X, 1.5X, and so on. Right. So the more you keep selling above your quota, then you hit those accelerators. But then we have accelerators or SPIFs, specifically for individual products. So if we are incentivizing one product, because a quarter we want to incentivize that product, then we will put an accelerator or a specific SPIF for that specific product. And then people are even more motivated on that front. Do you find that always works? Accelerators? No, no, no. I think it's easy to get hooked on SPIFs or specific incentives and lose the entire side of what you're trying to do. If you put too many accelerators, if you put too many incentives in one place, you create the wrong behavior, which is people trying to sell whatever it is to actually unlock it. For instance, we don't pay commissions on pilots. Why? Because it's not adding to our valuation as a company. And because it's not adding to our valuation as a company, the engineers, the researchers, the ops people, no one is actually getting a boost in their equity. So why should we pay it? Let's do the right thing. And let's do the complex thing, which is let's do the pilot if needed. Let's convince the customer that the metrics are there, and we're doing it really well. And then on top of that, once we sign a yearly contract or a two year contract, then we pay the commission. So pay on retention and expansion. Yes. Yes. So first 12 months, you can close it early, it doesn't really matter, $50,000 or $1 million or $10 million, whatever you want. And then anything that gets expanded over the next 12 months, you will get commissions. Great. And you can hit accelerators with that and so on. If it's a strategic account, and we have designation of what is a strategic account. So for instance, the top 20 or 30 accounts in a given market, depending on how big the market is, then fundamentally, you will unlock commission for two years, fundamentally. And we can change it if needed, right? But at a practical level, we found that that's the first way. I will never forget one of the great CRs saying to me on the show, you do not ever want your farmer going against someone else's hunter. Meaning you're cushy, but super nice CS enablement. Hey, let's get champions in your company. Kind of happy. Against someone else's all star hunter who is there to close your business. How do you feel about that? True. And then how do you think about then retaining the hunter on the account? The hunters are important, very important. Specifically, when you think about distribution, for two years, fundamentally. And we can change it if needed, right? But at a practical level, we found that that's the first way. I will never forget one of the great CROs saying to me on the show, you do not ever want your farmer going against someone else's hunter. Meaning you're cushy, but super nice CS enablement. Hey, let's get champions in your company. Kind of happy. Against someone else's all-star hunter who is there to close your business. How do you feel about that? True. And then how do you think about retaining the hunter on the account? The hunters are important, very important. Specifically, when you think about distribution, you think about outbound, inbound, you think about a lot of different pieces, right? But at the same time, a hunter that is not well managed will create more damage than opportunities. So, for instance, you're trying to close a company that has multiple sub-companies. It's the big holding company, we can use any name you would want, right? And then you have a hunter that essentially tries to go to each one of them, but doesn't do it in a very structured way, trying to align what are the incentives for this big account. Then fundamentally, you end up having discrepancies on pricing, you end up having discrepancies on what is the actual value for them. And then each one of those discrepancies ends up coming back to haunt you, essentially, when you try to renew the contract or other forms. [SPEAKER_01] So it is important to have them, but at the same time, you need to have them in check together with customer success. I actually am a big believer of customer success. I don't believe customer success is a satisfaction or happiness moment for customers. No, it's customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business that, in essence, it works for the customer, but also works for the business to incentivize growth, expansion, cross-sell. [SPEAKER_01] What do you mean by that? Because I had Chris Dagnon on the show, who's one of the all-time great CROs, Snowflake, zero to four billion or whatever it was. And he's like, CS is complete bullshit, complete bullshit. You have professional services, pay for it and we'll make you great. To what extent do you agree? Or do you think customer success is? [SPEAKER_01] In the world where Snowflake grew up, that made sense. In the world we are in today with AI, that doesn't make any sense. Because fundamentally, anyone can spin up a competitor of your product in the next two days. Anyone. So fundamentally, your customer success, you need to actually go as deep as you can, as early as possible and try to close it as soon as possible, a single contract. And then your customer success is the one that actually will help you expand it quickly and retain the customer. So if it becomes a services business only, what you're charging for every single penny, then you become a transaction. You're not building a community, you're not retaining in the long term. You should be incentivizing them to actually do both things, community, trust, and also incentivize the long term. So that's why I am in favor of charging for services, but in not all cases it makes sense fundamentally. The game has changed. [SPEAKER_01] Where else has the game changed? Where else are old school CROs out of date? In general, going one market at a time, it doesn't work. Traditional sales, the traditional method has been like, oh, you open one market, you go deep, you win the accounts, you show the value, then you go to the next one, and then you go to the next one and so on. And there's the bullshit advice that sales folks have been giving for many years. And I know now it's changing fundamentally because the reality is if you're going to have 100 competitors in the next month, because you're starting to get some traction or because of whatever reason, or everyone is thinking about the same problem, then going deep, then opening one market after another, instead of actually parallelizing and trying to do multiple bets at the same time, it's just counterintuitive. Is that only enabled by a PLG motion though? A PLG motion allows you to do multiple markets at the same time much easier, because if you have an enterprise motion, you need everything from SDRs to AEs to CS in that place. Why? No, not really. So, for instance, one of the things, and I know this is going to be controversial, but I think all of the tech startups are afraid to actually hire someone that has had 20 years experience, 25 years experience. And the excuse that they use is the person is not going to feed the business. And I think it's bullshit. I think it's completely wrong, right? Fundamentally, someone has 20 years experience in sales and has been selling for the past 10 years to the same financial services firms in the city or in the US has so much wealth, so much knowledge that it can propel the entire business. Now, the question is not all of them are going to feed your business, but a good portion of them, if they're still hungry and they still want to actually do something that is meaningful, they're going to fit really well. Those type of profiles will shorten your sales cycles because they will join and be like, okay, now I know the product really well. I know the vision. I know how to properly pitch it. Let me call my friends that have been interacting and all of my stakeholders that have been in track for the past 10, 20 years. Now we just go directly to the C-level. Dude, is that not a massive misalignment of cultures? When you think about super young, hungry reps, and then you're bringing in a 50-year-old Simon, who's been selling into the city financial services for years? The biggest example is Google. In the early days, you have Sergey Brin and Larry Page, together with Eric Schmidt. That's amazing. A guy that had tons of experience was really successful, ended up coming in and magic happened. I think fundamentally, both parties want to make it work. It can happen, but you need to make it work. And you need to hire the right people that will have the same brainwave as you are. Do you worry that people pull 11 Labs so much out of your hand that anyone could sell it? No, I don't think so. I don't think it's that easy to sell, especially in this environment. Of course, I think if you have a big brand, like OpenAI or like an Anthropic, it's a little easier. And the nice thing about this being around too, is I can push back more. [SPEAKER_01] You can't have a 20X quota and say it's not easy to sell. You can't have that much better people than everyone else. And you need to hire the right people that will have the same brainwave as you are. Do you worry that people pull 11 labs so much out of your hand that anyone could sell it? No, I don't think so. I don't think it's that easy to sell, especially in this environment. Of course, I think if you have a big brand, like an OpenAI or like an on top, it's easier a little bit. And the nice thing about this being around too, is I can push back more. You can't have a 20X quota and say it's not easy to sell. [SPEAKER_01] You can't have that much better people than everyone else. I think you can. I think your people are not, I love you dude, but your people are not 4X better, 4X, than everyone else in market. I do 100% believe that our people are 4X better, without thinking twice. And I would take them to war. I will go to war with them, every single one of them. It's because we are tough on them, but also they're tough on us. They give us the feedback, the difficult feedback, and I get it every single day. And I'm happy that they give me the right, the tough feedback. Because what we're trying to do here, and I've always believed and grew up with the idea of, we're trying to find the ground truth. And what the ground truth means, today it means X, tomorrow means something else and the following that will mean something else. So if you don't have people that are constantly challenging you and constantly thinking beyond what actually is happening today, you're not going to be able to survive. Those are the people that we hire. Where are people challenging you where you don't have an answer? Which market should we be opening? How deep should we go into some of the structure changes? The company is growing very quickly. [SPEAKER_01] Do we need a global accounts team? [SPEAKER_01] So I'm already thinking about the global accounts team. [SPEAKER_01] When do we implement it? How do we implement it? How do we motivate people? Should it be 20X? Should it be something else? What product should we be selling? Should we be selling to competitors? Should we be selling to resellers? So there are all of those things, the team challenges every single day. And I love it because it's intellectually stimulating, but also because it forces the entire business to rethink our position every single day. So you would advise founders today to go to as many markets as possible, as soon as possible? Not as many markets as possible. I think that you need to map out and have a reasoning and a thesis of why that market, so that you can refer to that and understand whether the market conditions have changed. [SPEAKER_00] And then you have to actually evolve your thesis. [SPEAKER_00] But for me, go to market is similar to investing in venture capital, right? [SPEAKER_00] So you need to test a hundred things to actually be able to find the three, four, five, six things that actually perform and do really well. We do the same in venture, right? We invest in companies knowing and believing that all of them are going to work and all of them can be like a billion or trillion dollar company. And then we realize, it didn't work, but I still have three or four or five that are going to be working really well. Go to market is actually the same thing. Test as many things as you can, not only in opening markets, but also, do you need to try self-service? Do you need to try working with resellers, with partners, with the cloud ecosystem, with a grants program, with an affiliates program? There's so many things. And opening markets is one of those ones. What did you test that didn't work? And what did you learn? At 11, I've tested endless amounts of things. And I absolutely love it. For instance, media entertainment in the beginning did not work for us. It just didn't. What does media and entertainment mean? So big brands, big entertainment studios. And the thesis was, they're generating so much content, we should be able to actually sell to them and make a ton of money on this. And the reality was, yes, they do make a lot of content. But when you have an industry that is very heavily influenced by the public, the audience, the quality they need to produce, events, all of that stuff, then potentially the industry might not be ready for technology that you're trying to sell. That was a big learning. And we spent months and months and months trying to break into the entertainment industry to realize that we were not growing as fast as we wanted. So we ended up switching and having another ICP was, okay, let's work with media creation platforms, right? That worked really well for us. And then we ended up saying, hey, actually, the wall is moving. We had a thesis around the mold of the wall is moving towards the agentic systems. How do we also bring a product to market that fits really well in the agentic world? And we had a vision on that. So we ended up working on that. And today, AI agents, it's actually fantastically huge for us, fundamentally, because we had vision, we bet, we went early, we started working with partnering with some companies, and that panned out really well. You said the words not growing as fast as you wanted. Now you're an ambassador on the other side of the table. You've seen how fast a company can grow with 11 labs, you've also seen a way of revolute, to be fair, to edge cases, to be fair. [SPEAKER_01] Well, you need those two educations. That's what we're saying right now. That is the business of venture. My favorite thing with VCs is when you get other VCs say, I don't know if Carlos is very good, because if you actually take out 11 labs and Revolut, he's not that good. And you're like, yeah. We've done four unicorns. Yeah. It's fine. Sure. But my point is, has it changed how you think about attractiveness in company growth? I don't know. I think you still need to have companies grow from one to four, or from zero to one, and it takes them 18 months to get there. And I think that's actually not bad. It means you need to incentivize the portfolio to be able to actually iterate and experiment as much as they can, because we don't know what's going to work. And We'll have done four unicorns. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] It's fine. [SPEAKER_00] Okay, sure. But my point is, has it changed how you think about attractiveness in company growth? [SPEAKER_00] I don't know. I think you still need to have companies to grow from one to four, or from zero to one, and it takes them 18 months to get there. And I think that's actually not bad. It means you need to incentivize the portfolio to iterate and experiment as much as they can, because we don't know what's going to work. And I think it is us, even with new products that I'm heading and I'm trying to get to market, I truly don't know how we're going to price it. I truly don't know if it's going to work out. I'm just trying to iterate. Is it going to take us a little longer to get to the first million and the first 5 million and the first 10 million? Fine. We have the ability, but we need to iterate. And I think it's exactly the same. At 11labs, we have a business that grows extremely quickly. We're smashing it, all of that stuff. But at the same time, we have brand new bets that are not generating any revenue. And that's great. But they're bets that we're doing for next year. So I think the idea of what's the biggest bet you've got today that's not generating revenue? [SPEAKER_00] So we have, we're generating a good amount of revenue, but government work, fundamentally, it's a tiny portion of it. And I think that's okay, because the role of a CRO is fundamentally thinking about not the revenues today, but the revenues of tomorrow. I'm already thinking about all of this quota, I've been thinking about how do we put the pieces together so that 11labs next year grows even faster than this year? Because I know this year we'll smash the numbers. I have the right team, we're going to continue hiring. We have the motion that we set for last year, it's going to grow really well. How am I doing it for next year, being very creative so that I can start putting the right bets? That's what being my quota this year. You'll hit a billion in revenue by end of year. Who knows? I would love to hit a billion dollars in revenues by the end of the year. We have some targets internally. If we can do it, great. If not, it will be a little bit later. That's absolutely fine. [SPEAKER_00] Any big lessons on forecasting? It's freaking hard to do. [SPEAKER_00] It's impossible. We forecast and then we realize usually that we've—but that's different. Traditional sales leaders on the show for the last three or four years, I've done 20, I've been able to pretty much get there to three to five percent accuracy. [SPEAKER_00] Yes. I'm like, wow. Now I have a clue. [SPEAKER_00] But it's impossible if you think about it from an experimentation perspective. And I always tell my team, I want us to test as many things as possible. I only need one of those to work really well to give me another hundred million dollars in revenues or 200 or 300. [SPEAKER_00] And so when you say things, do you mean channels, affiliates, partners, referrals, or do you mean products? Channels, products, ideas, should we be pitching services? And I was in a meeting with a CEO of an airline very recently, a few days back. And we were talking about agents and all of that stuff. And then at some point, he was like, but Carlos, everyone keeps pitching me. I get over a hundred pitches every week, companies doing customer support. I mean, I don't want to have another pitch on that. And I was like, you're a hundred percent right. And I hate it. We do it and we do it really well. But at the same time, it's boring. The majority of companies will start with bottom line optimization. So what's boring customer support? Customer support optimization for me is yes, your mindset is I want to automate, increase a bunch of percentage points to my profitability. So that's what I'm focusing on. And that's great. It is fantastic. What I'm actually interested in is how do we figure out a way to partner with a company and create a labs area? So it's Company X Labs, right? So that we can figure out a way for them to generate new revenue opportunities. That's what actually makes me passionate, but we have to prove that that is the right thing. So that is one of the experiments. And I'm spending a lot of time these days on how do we prove that the idea of labs for companies, where we essentially are their consultants and help them build agents that will generate top line revenue with new ideas, new products, is actually something that we can scale and generate hundreds of millions. [SPEAKER_00] How do you think about the trade off between doing that well, it's maybe a little bit more low margin, given the fact that it's quite hands on? I'm thinking British Airways Labs where you have amazing voice agents who call you up and are very personalized, give you tips on how to enjoy New York with your wife. That's great, super nice idea, may get more money from it. Boom. Versus actually we can do avatars and we can compete with all the avatar companies. Higher margin, a very adjacent product. I don't know. I think I would rather do things that are actually much more complex than the ones that are actually less complex. I think we are here as startups and VCs to do the difficult things. I don't believe in doing the short path, things that actually are much easier. If someone is doing it and someone is super good, maybe we should be buying the company. Or maybe we should not, we should just partner with them. Let's do the things that no one is doing. That is what makes me passionate. And that is what a good CRO needs to be doing because we're not here to do easy stuff. I think customer support is uninvestable today. And I get so much criticism on Twitter for this because everyone criticizes them. But Sierra and Dakikon, obviously two market leaders in terms of brand and how much money they've raised. And you've got 16 providers who've raised over 75 million in the last 18 months. And you've got all the incumbents, your Salesforce and Atlassian, and then your Intercoms and Zendesk and everyone in between. OpenAI will do a customer support product if they continue doing new products. I'm not quite sure where that product roadmap is. And that is what a good CRO, I think, needs to be doing because we're not here to do easy stuff. I think customer support is uninvestable today. And I get so much shit on Twitter for this because everyone shits on them. But I'm like, Sierra and Dakikon, obviously two market leaders in terms of brand and how much money they've raised. And you've got 16 providers who've raised over 75 million in the last 18 months. And you've got all the incumbents and your Salesforce and Atlassian and then your Intercoms and Zendesk and everyone in between. OpenAI will do a customer support product if they continue doing new products. I'm not quite sure where that product roadmap is. Maybe it was going to happen. Maybe not anymore. Do you agree it's not investable? I would not personally invest. But I also think that the opportunity for companies that are established and growing a lot to go into that space is good. It's big. Why doesn't 11 Labs do it? We do. We do customer support. And the majority of our customers start with customer support. And we make an absolute ton of money on that. And the ROI for our customers that use us for customer support is insane. Insane. [SPEAKER_00] What percent of your revenue is customer support? 20, 30, 40? [SPEAKER_00] We don't share that. But I think it works really well. It's the fastest product in terms of revenues that we've ever had. It's insane. But also when you look at all of our competitors, like you mentioned Sierra, DecGone and all of the other ones, we power all of them. So we actually make money off customer support with our agents platform. But also we make money from our API foundational model layer across the board. So that's the good thing about 11 Labs. It's spread so widely. How do you think about empowering your competitors? I think fundamentally we've been very happy to actually support the entire infrastructure layer because we believe that the opportunity in the market was way bigger than anyone was expecting, right? Voice and interactions with humans and human technology interaction, it is the fundamental piece that was missing in the entire puzzle. Now you end up having a situation where, similar to Nvidia, that was competing with powering everyone, but also competing with everyone, right? I think that's actually fine. It's okay that the market is big enough for multiple companies to coexist and then try to target the same customers. I'm not going to deny it. I think that also means that everyone needs to be aware that that will happen. So when we launch our agents product, I called the biggest platforms, agents platform that were operating in our platform. And I told them, guys, FYI, in the next couple of months, we're going to be launching our agents product. We're going to be competing with you, right? Just wanted to make sure that you're okay with this. I wanted to make sure that you understand that we are going into this space. And the funny part was all of the founders that I interacted with telling them this, they were like, yeah, welcome on board. That's okay, right. And it's good because if you're able to actually be transparent with that and say, hey, I'm going to be competing with you. But at the same time, I'm partnering and in some deals you will win it and some deals I will win it and some deals we will partner together. That's when you end up creating a good ecosystem in parallel. So I think you have to be unwaveringly aggressive on BD and sales, because I think you have an 18 to 24 month period where CIOs, CISOs, are like, AI, we have to have it, we have to have a message for it. That won't last forever. Do you agree? [SPEAKER_01] A hundred percent. And our team is dedicated to that. Everyone is selling agents left and right. We've had the best quota ever. It's been fantastic. But people are incentivized to sell agents because we know we are competing with other companies. And sometimes those companies end up complaining to us being like, why are you competing with me when you're also selling me? But the reality is, hey, if you charge me $1 and I could be charging the end customer $20, then maybe I'm doing something wrong here as well. I totally get that. One of my dear friends is Jason Lemkin, who built a game. And he built a game and he used 11 Labs for the voice. And he was like, it was great. Amazing. It was such a beautiful product. So amazing. But it was expensive. And then people started using it. It became even more expensive. And he's like, this will be the year of substitution where you try a great product like 11 Labs. It's amazing. And then you go, oh, it's expensive. And then you substitute for the cheaper, but 80% of it. Do you think that's true? No. I think there was a lot of conversations last year and I asked actually, and I've changed, I've evolved my mind on all of these things. But of course it will continue to evolve, right. But a lot of people were talking last year about open source models are going to take over, even on the AI voices space, you're going to get commoditized and so on. And for a period of time, I kind of believed it. I was like, yeah, there is a point in time, open source models will take over. It will be fully commoditized. Great. We just need to continue going deeper on the product integrations, full verticalization, distribution, all of that. Great. And what I ended up realizing is, even if open source models become extremely good at the same quality level that we have, it is the additional hassle. It is the additional components that make it very difficult for any organization. So if you're a bank already, you might want to play with the idea of what if I use open source models? The problem is that those open source models are not built for the skill that you would want, right. You would still need to maintain them. You would still need to actually make them operational. And 11 Labs actually takes that away from you. And 11 Labs agent takes that away from building the entire orchestration and managing it, right. Everyone can be building anything from scratch. It's just, do you have the time and do you have the resources? And if the priority in the company changes, are you going to be able to continue to adjust and make sure that you get the right funding in there? And I don't think that is true. And we're seeing it all around the world. We're like, yeah, we could go with open source models. Excellent. Do it. You try to operationalize it and they've lost three months and then they come back. actually make them operational. And 11 apps actually takes that away from you. And 11 apps agent takes that away from building the entire orchestration and managing it. Right. Everyone can be building anything from scratch. It's just, do you have the time and do you have the resources? And if the priority in the company changes, are you going to be able to continue adjust and making sure that you get the right funding in there? And I don't think that is true. And we're seeing it all around the world. We're like, yeah, we could go with open source models. Excellent. Do it. You try to operationalize it and they've lost three months and then they come back. It's interesting. 11 apps is almost a bit like OpenAI in the way that or Anthropic in the way that it's like, it's this foundational layer and you can go in any strategic product direction you want from that foundational layer. There's this LLM, yours is voice. And the question is, will I be Claudified, so to speak? And then there's a question of, will I be 11 Labsified? You can do SDR agents with voice. How do you think about weighing that off in terms of where your product direction goes? [SPEAKER_01] I think it's an evolving question all the time. It's not that simple to decide. Do you have verticalized sales teams? We have verticalized sales team right now in specific markets, markets that are much bigger or markets that are much more mature. 100%. We will have people that only do VFSI, only teams that do healthcare. What does it take to do vertical sales teams? And what's been your big lessons on what mistakes people make? So I will give you an example. In India, I tried to implement verticalized sales team too early and essentially depressed the revenues for a single quarter. And it was an absolute disaster. And then I realized what happened there then? You divided everyone and then it didn't work? What happened? It didn't work because people were not passionate enough. It was a lot more like you needed a long time to actually close some of the biggest sales and see, the team was way too small. And if you do it early on, if you segment too early, then you fundamentally end up screwing things up. So what I realized, I have this placeholder in my calendar every single week that is called pipeline construction. And that pipeline construction, it's similar to portfolio construction that you're familiar with, but for me, it's pipeline construction. How do I take a B2C term and put it in my mindset is like, how do I design the perfect pipeline for any given market and segment? And that's when you start thinking is like, actually, you need the liquidity, but you also need the big whales. So each one of my account execs needs to have the ability of closing big whales specifically on the enterprise segment, but also having liquidity in the pipeline so that they don't lose their confidence because people were losing their confidence. So you told me, you have pipeline construction. What's the next subsequent step? You break out how many sellers you have in that market? Correct. Yes. So how many, so let's say we have 20? Let's say 20 for any given market. Doesn't really matter. I mean, we have a lot less than those ones. Sure. Let's just say, but what do we do then? 20 average deal size? I look into the average DSIs. I look into what are the numbers companies in there? What's the average deal size? 100k? Depends on the market. Depends on the market. Let's just say 100k because it's easy for our maths. 100k. And then we're like, okay, if I need to hit, what's the maths we're trying to get to? I'm just trying to understand. So for me, the key item is, how many companies are in that market? How many very complex enterprises in that market? And how do I creep enough liquidity in that market to close deals every single week so that the team stays motivated and sees the challenges of closing deals? Have you ever had a situation where you're like, the ramp I need to get on my sellers to get to my quota is too high? Yes. I'm not equipped enough to hit that quota. 100%. Government vertical is one of those ones where we said, you know what? And it was one of the big bets that I made this year. It was like, I don't care how much we make. Why do government in the nicest way? Hard sale cycles, tough to get in. Yeah. You're crushing in other areas. Why do government? Fundamentally, because one is very sticky. Number two is, it's a benefit that we make to society. If we can deploy agents for people to have better interactions with the actual government and government services, it's an absolute no brainer. And I don't care if I don't make enough money to justify it or if I lose money. It doesn't really matter to me. And then the three is, it's a hard industry to get in. So the moment you actually get in, then it's just, you never leave that industry. So fundamentally, when you start mapping those things out, you need to make the bets in one of the, some of those bets will pan out really well. Some of the ones will not pan out that well, but it's literally portfolio construction. Like how quickly can I do some of these sales so that I can spend time also in the difficult ones. And my investors don't call me saying, what the fuck are you doing? I'm going to fire you. Right. And I think that's a fundamental idea of portfolio construction and you do it at a country level, each one of the new countries that you actually want to be launching. And that is a completely different concept than what the majority of CROs are actually thinking these days. If you tap it into AI agents for a go to market and other pieces, then you have something that is quite unique for your business. So what did you do in India then? You verticalized too early, segmented too early. Yeah. Depressed the market for a quarter. We went back to zero. We went back to horizontal. Let's do horizontal. Let's allow people to do much deeper. And then we will start segmenting again when the right timing comes. And what ended up happening is, we would then give them a named account list based on, and negotiate with them based on fundamentally, how I was thinking about the portfolio construction. And that worked really well. Literally we lost a quarter. We ended up changing all of that from the ground up. And then you could see people starting closing deals in the first month. And it was insane because it was day and night. We had Horizontal. Let's do horizontal. Let's allow people to do much deeper. And then we will start segmenting again when the right timing comes. And what ended up happening is I would then give them a name account list based on, and negotiate with them based on fundamentally how I was thinking about the portfolio construction. And that worked really well. Literally we lost a quarter. [SPEAKER_01] We ended up changing all of that from the ground up. And then you could see people starting [SPEAKER_01] closing deals in the first month. And it was insane because it was day and night. We had [SPEAKER_01] changed the culture in the team, in the local market by getting it wrong. Let's go back to the basics. [SPEAKER_01] Let's redo it from scratch, accept that we made a mistake and then move on. [SPEAKER_01] Does brand dramatically reduce enterprise sales cycle? When you can, no offense, Eleven Labs in India, I'm sure a year ago, not actually a very big brand. No. [SPEAKER_01] Today is fantastic. [SPEAKER_01] Versus in the UK and the US, very big and much easier. Does brand reduce enterprise sales cycle? [SPEAKER_01] Yes. One million percent. And whoever tells you otherwise is lying. That is a fact. [SPEAKER_01] Right? And I think the ideal scenario is no one gets fired. The idea, [SPEAKER_01] you remember IBM, right? It's no one gets fired for actually buying IBM. It's the ideal scenario for any brand. Literally you become the safest asset in the block. Great. It's a long way. I think the two companies that today have been able to make it is, or three companies if you want, OpenAI, Anthropic, full respect for them, Cursor. [SPEAKER_01] The three of them, I think for me are Cursor killed enterprise unbelievably well. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. They've done super well. It's fantastic. Those are the three brands that are [SPEAKER_01] blue chip organization right now in the procurement's teams perspective and [SPEAKER_01] IT teams perspective. It's fantastic. It's great. But I run on Twitter. It's one of those really funny ones, but everyone on Twitter is [SPEAKER_00] no one uses them anymore. We all use Code. You're such idiots. And it's sure, we're going to HSBC in Hong Kong, or wherever around the world, Barclays Bank in Swansea. That's what I promise you. They're using Cursor actually in their local dev shop. And it is great. It just means brand will help you solidify your position, but also you need to address the bigger problem. The stickiness of these big enterprises. That's also the unwavering one. And it's not that easy to get into the big enterprises anyway, right? It's not that easy. You've done it. You've done it with the portfolio companies. You know how difficult it is for them. But once you start getting into the motion, then fundamentally, as a venture capitalist, I've done it, period. I have all of the companies we invest in, we basically found, you know, we do all the work, really. That's exhausting. What do you do with LPs? So imagine your LP is the big whales. Multi-year sales cycle. Multi-year sales cycle. Exactly. I mean, seriously, multi-year sales cycle. One of our biggest LPs was a six-year sales cycle. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Absolutely. But how do you create enough FOMO? How do you create enough brand to be able to actually reduce that six years to a lot less? Yeah. Brand does that. Exactly. What percentage of your new sellers work out? [SPEAKER_00] The majority of them. [SPEAKER_00] Do they? [SPEAKER_00] The majority of them. Yes. We're talking about our churn rate on the sales side is actually not that big. Really? It's because when I make an offer, I tell every single person, Eleven Labs is going to be extremely difficult, right? Extremely difficult. We are a hard company to work for because we have extremely high expectations. You're going to work a huge amount of hours. I expect full commitment and people love it. So you end up filtering out people that actually don't want to have that type of life. And I think that's okay. And the funny part— Do you think it's possible to retain that at scale? Yes. Yeah. These soft management people who are like, oh, we need to filter down the messaging. Do you think that's possible at scale? I think it is possible. But it is possible if you try to retain a smaller team and you implement the latest technologies [SPEAKER_01] to actually make everyone more efficient in general. [SPEAKER_01] I think of course, the bigger the company, then I think you get softer. [SPEAKER_01] But you look at what Marc Andreessen was saying the other day, companies are overstaffed [SPEAKER_00] by 25% and even more, right? Of course, there is a trade-off between overstaffing and understaffing. So if you understaff and people have even in sales or revenue, you have too much pipeline, they end up not closing anything. How many salespeople do you need to hire this year? We're about adding about another 120 people more or less. So we'll keep the entire sales team— What's your sales team now? [SPEAKER_01] It's 130 people. [SPEAKER_01] So we'll keep it under 250. Okay. But you're doubling sales team? [SPEAKER_01] Sales? Doubling the sales team, yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And the sales is going to grow much quicker than that. [SPEAKER_01] Do you worry about that? [SPEAKER_01] Yes. [SPEAKER_01] That's a lot to bring on board. A lot. Doubling the sales team. [SPEAKER_00] Yes. [SPEAKER_00] What are the pitfalls that you need to avoid? [SPEAKER_00] I mean, one is the dilution. [SPEAKER_00] If you're not upfront about the expectation, I think you end up diluting because people come with different expectations. [SPEAKER_00] They essentially behave in a specific way that it's not the way that you wanted. [SPEAKER_00] How fast can you correct it? [SPEAKER_00] I went to a company the other day, [SPEAKER_00] but essentially there was a sales leadership board of all the reps and there were seven reps. [SPEAKER_00] And six reps had between 5,000 and 8,000 points, [SPEAKER_00] just points, just thinking that. And then the bottom one had 2,000. And the next best one had 5,000. Pretty clear. If you're not upfront about the expectation, people come with different expectations. [SPEAKER_01] They essentially behave in a specific way that's not the way that you wanted. How fast can you correct it? I went to a company the other day, but essentially there was a sales leadership board of all the reps and there were seven reps. And six reps had between 5,000 and 8,000 points. And then the bottom one had 2,000. And the next best one had 5,000. Pretty freaking clear. This person is way off. Do you just cut it there and then? [SPEAKER_01] Or are you saying, oh, give them time. It's only been a month. Yes and no. I think for us, all of the stats are publicly open to everyone. So everyone knows how much revenues we make. Everyone knows each one of the reps. Do you have a leaderboard internally? Yes, we do. How do you do that to create that competition? So people, we post automatically. We have a bot that will post automatically into the sales channel every single week, a summary of what percentage of quote attainment, year to date for that specific quarter and all of that stuff. [SPEAKER_00] And the forecast. [SPEAKER_00] On a power wrap basis. [SPEAKER_00] On a power wrap basis. [SPEAKER_00] So anyone can see it anytime. [SPEAKER_00] And if you're at the bottom, then you're going to be able to see that you're on the bottom. [SPEAKER_00] And at a practical level for me, it's beyond that. [SPEAKER_00] It's one component. [SPEAKER_00] But if you have someone that is building strategic accounts, then I'm not too worried. [SPEAKER_00] If someone is actually building the right pipeline, I'm also not too worried. Right. But they need to see the action. You need to see how many meetings they're doing. If I open a calendar and someone has a full calendar or it's empty, I'm like, what did you do this week? Do you worry about demoralization or losing? I mean, dude, if I'm looking at the report and it's like Harry bottom, next week, Harry bottom. [SPEAKER_01] I'm like, oh, fuck. [SPEAKER_01] It's so mean. [SPEAKER_01] It's public. I was the fat kid at school and it was horrible because you had running races and losing in public was so public because everyone could see how far behind you were. [SPEAKER_01] It's not very nice. [SPEAKER_01] Sales attracts a different profile. Sales attracts people that are much more outspoken, people that are much more extroverted, people that will actually want to do something different. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] So by definition, you don't go into sales if you're not willing to take harsh feedback. [SPEAKER_01] If you're not willing to actually start. [SPEAKER_01] Do you not think most sales reps are softer today? [SPEAKER_01] I think a very large portion of them are because they don't have the environment to actually push harder or because they've already lost the passion and they just want a normal job. And that's okay. Don't get me wrong. [SPEAKER_00] That's absolutely fine. [SPEAKER_00] It is not what I'm hiring for. [SPEAKER_00] What's your tell for the obsessed that wins? [SPEAKER_00] For me, you can get it very quickly. [SPEAKER_00] Right. People that have extremely high energy, that are sharp, that are thinking quick. And there are other people that are slightly opposite, but they're going to be very, very deep. And it might take them a bit more time to actually get there. And those are less obvious. But once they do, it's insane. Really good. Right. If people are sharp and they're energetic and passionate and they come across as someone that really wants to win, you can ask them, hey, pitch me 11 laps as if I was a fish, whatever it is. It doesn't really matter. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] Then you get a sense of how quickly they're thinking and how passionate they are, how much passion, how much they've actually researched the company, who they're thinking about. [SPEAKER_01] All of that stuff, you end up having in a very short conversation. I don't need to spend more than 20 minutes to know if I want to hire someone or not. I will tell you the majority of times I end up putting my feedback in Ashby. We use Ashby internally. I end up putting my feedback in Ashby during the conversation. By the middle of the conversation, I have my feedback. I'm one of those crazy guys that writes a lot while I'm talking to someone. I hate when it gets recorded because then people end up behaving in a very specific way versus actually being themselves. So I write a lot while I'm interviewing people and then I have my summary. In parallel, I'm writing and doing my summary and that's it. [SPEAKER_01] And it works really well for me. [SPEAKER_01] And why do you hate the recorded element? So for me, all our calls in the Launch Fund are recorded because it's important for us that we can share them and I can ramp up without being in the room. My personal take is interviews. People behave differently if they think that they've been recorded versus if they think that they have freedom to say whatever they think is best. In sales, we ask everyone to record it and we have it mandatory for everyone. You use Gong? We use Gong and then it automatically fills out our Salesforce. So we try to automate as much as possible. And by the way, Lovable has the best CRM that I've ever seen. Those guys have really smashed it. Shout out to them. Lovable CRM? Yes. Lovable ended up building their own platform. No shit, can you imagine if they didn't? I mean, that'd be fine. We should be building our own platform as well, but we're not. Do you buy that? Do you buy the SaaSpocalypse of like you will customize your own software entirely in the future? For some areas, yes. Where will you, where will you not? I think for core applications, core things, yes. Really smashed it. Shout out to them. Lovable CRM? Yes. So Lovable ended up building their own platform. No shit, can you imagine if they didn't? I mean that'd be fine. We should be building our own platform as well, but we're not. Do you buy that? Do you buy the SaaSpocalypse of like you will customize your own software entirely in the future? For some areas, yes. Where will you, where will you not? [SPEAKER_00] I think for core application, core things, yes. [SPEAKER_00] So a CRM, I would love to customize it. I would love to actually build it myself. [SPEAKER_00] Even like, it doesn't really matter. You can, you don't have to spend that much time. [SPEAKER_00] It's just a pool of data. But you haven't in your Salesforce. We haven't, we haven't done it. We use Salesforce. But for some other applications, why wouldn't you do it? If it fits better in your entire ecosystem of applications, if it's easy enough, then maybe you should. Would I build an entire Google Drive or Gmail? No, I wouldn't. It wouldn't make any sense. But for a good amount of applications, for sure. If I was a procurement guy, I would be building procurement software for myself. [SPEAKER_00] So you think the SaaSpocalypse is over exaggerated? I think there is a very large portion that is over exaggerated. But I think there is a real fact that people will end up building their own applications. And I think that's key. I think it's, why not? [SPEAKER_00] What would you like to do with Eleven Labs today that you're not able to do because of lack of budget? [SPEAKER_00] Oh, we've never actually put any constraints on lack of budget. [SPEAKER_00] If you want to do something, budget is never going to be a problem. And that's been since the beginning. [SPEAKER_00] So what is the problem? [SPEAKER_00] If you want to do something and you're not allowed to, why would that be? It might well be because you haven't proven with a test or experimentation that that is the right thing to do right now. So for me, it's, you want a budget. You want what do you want? 100K? You want 50K? You want 200K to actually prove that things? Do it. Don't ask me for a million dollars. Don't ask me to dedicate an entire team to it. Don't ask me to dedicate six months of your time to that specific thing. I'm not going to do it. But if you do it on the side and then you prove me that you can actually make it work. And I start seeing some results. [SPEAKER_00] We'll scale it and we'll give you all of the budget that you want. You're on the CRM and you said that it's so interesting about, I want to see the data before I scale it. You now do paid and you do paid, but you know, on an F1 car. Yes. Remind me the team. Oh, the Revolut F1. How did you weigh up the decision to do that when it's a big investment and you had no data, honestly to suggest it would work? [SPEAKER_01] It took us a long time to actually get comfortable with the idea. [SPEAKER_01] How much did it cost? [SPEAKER_01] We spent a good amount of money, the budget, we had a budget in mind that [SPEAKER_01] we wanted to spend and we went to different teams and we ended up negotiating. We like, this is the budget that we have, how much we want to be spending for year one, for year two, all of that stuff. And what are the options? And then all of the teams that we spoke to, some of them were, no, for this, no, or for this, you don't get anything. [SPEAKER_00] You didn't even get the logo. Some of them are, oh, we'll do all of this stuff. And then we ended up narrowing down into two teams. And then we ended up negotiating with two teams in parallel. And then there was one which is Aston Martin Revolut F1. They're, we were very impressed. But it took us a while to actually be comfortable with the entire concept. Would you rather premium branding on a worst team or secondary branding on a number one team? Premium branding on the worst team, 100%. You get more exposure and also you have a lot more creative freedom [SPEAKER_01] and also you're betting. [SPEAKER_01] So the reason, one of the main reasons why we ended up picking Aston Martin Revolut F1 [SPEAKER_01] is because if you look at the past, the story of Audi [SPEAKER_01] is every single sports entertainment or sports championship that Audi ended, [SPEAKER_01] they ended up winning within five years. [SPEAKER_01] And that's fantastic. [SPEAKER_01] And they're building the car from scratch. [SPEAKER_01] They build it on the engine, they build everything from scratch. [SPEAKER_01] They're competing with all of the big ones and I'm a big Formula One fan, [SPEAKER_01] but they're competing with all of the big ones. [SPEAKER_01] And I actually feel that this idea of incumbents, very technologically driven with a really clear mindset drive, idea to win and so on. [SPEAKER_01] It is who we are as a company, Eleven Labs, but also is who Nick and the team are at Revolut. [SPEAKER_01] So it fits really well with your entire narrative as a company. [SPEAKER_01] What was the biggest paid marketing event that you did, event or channel or activity that you did, [SPEAKER_01] that was a mistake? [SPEAKER_01] And what did you learn from that? [SPEAKER_01] The majority of them end up producing good returns. [SPEAKER_01] But when I look at the ones from an enterprise perspective, [SPEAKER_01] that have better ROI for us is dinners. [SPEAKER_01] When we do a dinner with execs in a given city that has the best ROI that you could have. If I go to a trade show, the majority of them don't have good ROI. How much does a dinner cost? You could have a dinner with like 15 people and cost you 3000, 4000, 5000 dollars. If you want to go bigger than essentially you need to shut the entire place down and all of that stuff. [SPEAKER_01] And what did you learn from that? [SPEAKER_01] The majority of them end up producing good returns. [SPEAKER_01] But when I look at the ones from an enterprise perspective that have a better ROI for us, it's dinners. [SPEAKER_01] When we do a dinner with execs in a given city, that has the best ROI that you could have. If I go to a trade show, the majority of them don't have good ROI. How much does a dinner cost? You could have a dinner with 4 to 15 people and it costs you 3000, 4000, 5000 dollars. If you want to go bigger, essentially you need to shut the entire place and all of that stuff. So you will have to spend more. It depends on the city. It's not the same doing it in Mexico City or doing it in Barcelona or doing it in London. But the ROI is actually quite solid. But for dinners, the benefit is that you end up—imagine you're inviting competitors, right? So you're inviting competitors, different customers you're trying to close. Those guys are going to know that you are talking to these other guys. So there is a FOMO that ends up being created in place and it just pans out really well. Right. And because they know—it's usually the same ICP. So they know who is doing procurement, who is doing whatever, who's doing the sales, who is the CTO, who is the chief AI officer, all of that stuff. They know each other. [SPEAKER_00] That always works really well. [SPEAKER_00] The worst ROI for us has always been conferences. [SPEAKER_00] It just—there's no ROI in there. [SPEAKER_00] What's the takeaway from that? [SPEAKER_00] We should be spending less on those things and should be building our own events more. You should be building your own events more. That's why we did 11 labs. [SPEAKER_00] You did this insane 11 labs event, which kind of reminded me of some kind of rock concert meets Steve Jobs kind of event. Do you need to see, ironically, a return on that or is it— [SPEAKER_00] Yes. [SPEAKER_00] 100%. [SPEAKER_00] Why wouldn't you? [SPEAKER_00] Because it's difficult to know. No, so you end up having this concept of influence, revenue, and then direct revenue or close revenue. Right. So there are a lot of different variations, all of this that you can plan. [SPEAKER_00] And the event that we run in London, the 11 labs summit in London, was fantastic. [SPEAKER_00] We wanted to prove that a European company can actually be running these big events with so many people. [SPEAKER_00] And then put up a show that actually gets people passionate and talking about it. [SPEAKER_00] And also motivated and presented. We presented some ideas. We brought some guests to talk in front of everyone else. What is your biggest tip for me? If I'm thinking about one company in particular of ours—Solve Intelligence. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Amazing business in London. [SPEAKER_01] AI for patent lawyers. [SPEAKER_01] They should do an incredible event for patent lawyers specifically. It would be an amazing close-knit community. [SPEAKER_01] If you were to advise them—you should know this—if you're going to do an event for your customers, having done it so well, what would you say that advice would be? [SPEAKER_01] Bring the right ICPs, design the content really well, and think carefully about the content that you want. [SPEAKER_01] What would be your advice on the content design? [SPEAKER_01] And what does that mean? It has to be not salesy. I think it needs to feel natural. You should do a presentation of your company, some insights, talk about the things that are coming next, your vision. But if you make it too salesy, people will walk away and never come back. And I think that's the fundamental trade off. For me, these big events—we talk a little bit about 11 labs. Matti ends up doing the big speech, the big keynote. But then after that, for me, it's all about how do we put those partners, those companies that are building in our platform or are using our technology in front of as many people as possible. So we learn about them. I did a fireside chat with three amazing companies like BCG and Connect. For me, it was more about how do we enhance their appearance? How do we talk about what are they building? What they're using? It's less about 11 labs, it's about them. Right. And I think you need to plan the content in a way that it feels less salesy. You talk about it, but also you bring partners to validate that what you're doing is actually right. Totally get that. You said that partners—how do you think about partnerships as a channel at 11 labs? Yes. And what are the big misnomers that people have around partnerships? There is a concept that I really like that we've actually done fairly well at 11 labs, which is strategy partners. And that is strategy partners. Companies that we put in that bracket is companies that have a CBC. And I'm going to say this—it's going to be controversial—but I actually love CBC. It's corporate venture capital because they help you navigate big brands. They are your champions internally. And their incentive is to actually make it work really well for the business. Just for people to understand, that's Salesforce Ventures. That's exactly like Deutsche Telekom Capital, like T Capital, which they have one. They all end up having one entity. Docomo Ventures, they all have one. [SPEAKER_00] But the good thing is they know their business and they were not sexy until a year and a half ago, two years ago. They were not sexy. It was that returns were not there as we know, right? CBC getting returns is really difficult. [SPEAKER_01] And they were just trying to get a location in the best companies. But it's just not possible. I think they all end up having one entity. Docomo ventures, all of them have one of them. But the good thing is they know their business and they were not sexy until a year and a half ago, two years ago. [SPEAKER_01] They were not sexy. [SPEAKER_01] Returns were not there, right? [SPEAKER_01] CBC getting returns is really difficult. And they were just trying to fight to get a location in the best companies. [SPEAKER_00] But it's just not possible. Today we've proven with 11 labs that we dedicated time to actually partner with Waffen capital from Toyota, with the Deutsche Telekom guys, with the Telefonica guys, with Liberty global that actually joined our cap table, all of those pieces. [SPEAKER_00] That is a fantastic distribution strategy. [SPEAKER_00] And so you get them to invest a small amount and then you distribute through them. [SPEAKER_00] Exactly. [SPEAKER_00] And we negotiate contracts with them and essentially they end up, depending on the situation, on one side or another. [SPEAKER_00] Do they have to bring a certain amount of pipe or promises to get a certain amount of allocation? Yes, they do. At 11 labs, nothing is free. But I think I like it because the way I organized this concept initially incentivizes it. And it was so funny when I pitched it to Matthew. I was like, really people are going to give us money as a contract? And I was like, investors. And I was like, yeah, let's try. And I think the reality was that you end up aligning incentives. [SPEAKER_01] If the incentive is only to invest, but your incentive is actually to close a deal, how do you figure out something that works along the way? [SPEAKER_01] So you end up saying, you know what, you will invest for every million dollars that you want to invest. You need to actually bring X amount of revenues in the next 12 months or 24 months, whatever timeframe you want. Right. And there has to be some penalties and some consequences if that doesn't happen. [SPEAKER_01] That is the way that— [SPEAKER_01] How do you actually, if you don't bring it, we strike you less? [SPEAKER_01] Is that possible? [SPEAKER_01] We buy you out. Yes. Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] I think it was perfectly fine. And then everyone is incentivized and the logic—and I strongly believe that is the case. And that's how I pitched it to everyone: we want the best. So if you invest a million dollars in 11 labs and you bring a contract, you help us close a contract, then your valuation goes up. So you're making money from the VC side, but also your business is getting more efficient because it's implementing 11 labs. It's a win-win for everyone. I totally get that. I think the other thing that you also get is a public market messaging story: we're closely partnered with 11 labs, a pioneer in the industry and four large telecom providers, wherever you are around the world or whatever enterprise you are. That helps a lot. A hundred percent. But also the beautiful thing is you end up building new products specifically for them because then you get the insights of the industry. So we went into the telco industry. We had no idea about the telco industry. We've actually learned everything about the telco industry, partnering with KPN, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Entity Docomo, all of those really amazing brands that have been in the industry for a very long time. We work very closely with the Warband Capital guys at Toyota. We are learning a lot about the automotive industry because they're in the cap table. So everyone is motivated to it. In the same way, in financial services, there's a number of things. Or even going into different markets, there's a number of advantages of having corporate VCs in your cap table, just because you incentivize and you increase your opportunities of being successful. What are the biggest mistakes that you think people make with partner ecosystems? I think people think of them as a silver bullet. Oh, we'll have a partner and then it's done. I think you need to have people who nurture those partners incredibly well to teach them, train them, onboard them. Yes. What would be some others from your perspective? It takes time. It takes a long time. And that is the reality. If you're coming into the distribution side with partners or you're building an entire partner ecosystem, thinking that you're going to be making another 20% of revenues in two quarters, you're wrong. [SPEAKER_01] That doesn't happen that way. [SPEAKER_01] You need people dedicated to it. You need incentives for them because people lose interest and you need incentives for your own team. [SPEAKER_00] So initially start using SQOs—sales qualified opportunities or SQOs as sales qualified leads—to be able to actually track how much volume has been generated and what is the actual traction being generated. [SPEAKER_00] And then once you start having solid motion in there, then you start tracking and move it towards revenues. [SPEAKER_00] So each one of the SQOs needs to be generating a certain amount of revenues. [SPEAKER_00] Other than letting them invest, how do you incentivize your partners to push you? [SPEAKER_00] You can always, and Salesforce has done it extremely well. They had the reference on this: they built a partner ecosystem where they get deals from Salesforce, but they send deals to Salesforce. [SPEAKER_00] Right. And in some cases, in the markets where they cannot be billing the customer, they actually do send the deal. [SPEAKER_00] You're my partner. You will be billing the customer and then I will bill you independently. [SPEAKER_00] Right. [SPEAKER_00] That's a fantastic ecosystem to be building. [SPEAKER_00] How do you think about the justification of rep time across account? [SPEAKER_00] And what I mean by that specifically is any company that's very large could spend a large amount of money. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] deals from Salesforce, but they send deals to Salesforce. Right. And in some cases, in the markets where they cannot be billing the customer, they actually do send the deal. Oh, you're my partner. You will be billing the customer and then I will bill you independently. Right. That's a fantastic ecosystem to be building. How do you think about the justification of rep time across account? And what I mean by that specifically is any company that's very large could spend a large amount of money. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And with PLG, everyone tends to start small and then the hope is they expand bigger and bigger and bigger. How do you think about what ACV is large enough for reps to spend significant time on trying to get it? [SPEAKER_01] A thousand dollars a month. When you start spending a thousand dollars a month as a business, your brain completely switches because you don't want to put it anymore in your credit card. And at that point you start believing I'm spending a lot of money in there. And with that software, I do have high expectations. At that point, if you have emotion from a sales perspective that is fast enough, then it doesn't really matter. Are you ready for a weird one? One of my favorite sayings I've heard recently is fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And you need to take the step to realize it's not as scary as you think. Where have you thought the thing was very scary and difficult where it actually wasn't once you did it? I had a very clear conviction that at 11 labs launching India was going to be extremely difficult. And we might fail. And what I ended up realizing is I didn't know enough about the market to realize that if you do it well, you can make a ton of money and also generate a ton of value and generate a lot of ROI. Do you have to send OG team members to every market you open? No, but we do it centrally, right? We always try to build a market centrally from HQ trying to close some deals so that it is free for me. It's free to actually deploy a single person on the ground. Sorry, how is it free to deploy a single person on the ground? Because I'm already making revenues. I'm profitable. I'm making revenues in that market. I've proven that it is a market that is getting traction. So you only go into new markets when you've already got a lot of customers and you can see the PLG? [SPEAKER_00] No, not on the PLG. I don't even look at the PLG numbers. I don't care about those ones. I look at what are the enterprises? What are the companies in the market? How is my portfolio construction in that market? And how can I close some of those companies to get to a certain level of revenues? At the moment that I get to that certain level of revenues for me, I've nailed a product idea that needs to grow and needs to prove that it can scale and it can have product market fit. But at least I've proven that I can start selling in there. Then that's the moment that I actually can get the team on the ground. What market are you not in today? Geography or sector that you would most like to be in? We are everywhere these days. Literally everywhere. Everywhere. I have teams all around the world. Some of them have been announced, some of them have not been announced, but we have teams all around the world, yes. [SPEAKER_00] Where are you weakest? [SPEAKER_00] I think in general, we've been weak in some of the languages and some beliefs, and that is entirely my fault, on believing that you could sign contracts, everyone in the world speaking English only. And then you realize later on that that's just not possible. And don't get me wrong. I opened Japan by myself without speaking Japanese. Japan's hard. It's really hard. Japan's hard. My friend is Daniel Dines from UI path. And he told me before how hard Japan is a major market for them now. And it's phenomenally successful, but it's hard to spin up. It's really hard. And I started doing it two years ago, going myself to Japan constantly and meeting companies and we started generating motion. It was great. And then I hired my first rep, Sang Wong doing a fantastic job. He's killing it. And then I hired the GM, Jim and the rest of the team. But that was a really hard market. And you could not sell in English, everyone in the world, but you could also not sign contracts that are always in English. So if you end up having a team that is mostly had experience in the US, their belief is that you can repeat that anywhere in the world. [SPEAKER_00] The reality is you look at Latin America, less than 5% of the population speak English. If you want to open France and launch in France, good luck if you're only going to be speaking English, right? Good luck if you didn't offer French law in your contracts, no one's going to be signing it. Right? So there's some of these learnings that we've had that are really tough. There's we wanted to actually sell in France and well, I was not speaking French, then let's get someone that speaks French, right? So there is some of those things that we've learned by doing. It's my entire fault, but it's also part of the experimentation, I think. [SPEAKER_00] If you think about South Korea is hard. We are there, we have an office. Yes. It's really, really, really tough. But also the benefit of Korea, and that's why I was saying earlier, you need to have a thesis on why you're launching a specific market. [SPEAKER_00] But the thesis on Korea was they produce a ton of content. They're very innovative when they want, and they're producing products and services, not for the local market, but for the international market. So in reality, yes, you need to be selling in Korean, but the majority of your usage will not be in Korean, will likely be for the international market. So how do you support and map those languages they care about so that you can target those companies, at least for us? But also the benefit of Korea, and that's why I was saying earlier, you need to have a thesis on why you're launching a specific market. [SPEAKER_00] The thesis on Korea was they produce a ton of content. They're very innovative when they want, and they're producing products and services, not for the local market, but for the international market. So in reality, yes, you need to be selling in Korean, but the majority of your usage will not be in Korean, will likely be for the international market. So how do you support and map those languages they care about so that you can target those companies, at least for us? Are you happy to be powering the decline of Hollywood? And I don't mean that horribly, but there was a brilliant article the other day on the permanent decline of Hollywood, and I think it was a Wall Street Journal article, but it essentially said the democratization of content creation and what that's done to consumer attention and hence the decline of Hollywood that's producing less and less content. You are in large part powering that. I can paint a very positive case for democratization, income equality, equalizing content, and also declining Hollywood. Is that a good thing? I don't think that's how I would put it. I think Hollywood is declining in this model that they have today, with very big budget productions that require a ton of people and a lot of different things. And I think they're going through a crisis, but I actually think Hollywood will come out even stronger than this. And I think at the end of the day, imagine that you get a startup and the startup tells you, I need a hundred million dollars. I need 50 million dollars pre-seed just for this idea, and then it's going to take me five years to get it out. I don't know who's going to buy it. [SPEAKER_01] What are you going to say? Like, why don't you raise a million dollars? [SPEAKER_01] Right. That's going to be like raise a million dollars, prove some points and then start going there. And I think that's the problem with Hollywood right now. I don't think it's AI voices. I don't think it's AI video. I think those are additional solutions to make sure that you're democratizing it and you're reducing your cost of launching new ideas to the market. But that is going to be part of the solution. It's actually why I find defense so hard to invest in, which is it takes five years and 200 to 250 million dollars before you can make your first dollar of revenue on a defense product. Quoting from Matt Statman, who's the president of CBO of Andro. So I think he knows his stuff. [SPEAKER_01] Yep. That's just tough for me as a seed venture investor to get on board with that cost curve to dollar gain. [SPEAKER_01] And that's what needs to change for them. And there's how do we create content that takes less money dollars to actually be created? You start very slowly, but also then you run once you realize that actually there is product market fit in that content. And I've spoken with a lot of studios over the past three years. I've spent a lot of time in L.A. in the industry. And my pitch always to them is, hey, let's try to create content that will capture people's attention across the channels that they operate today. And if it works well, let's scale it. Then you have the 50 million dollar budget. And I think where AI can benefit a lot? Because you can iterate a lot, you can create content that is personalized. You can create content that is engaged by people. And then we were talking yesterday about this idea of cost per engagement. [SPEAKER_01] Why don't we use exactly the same framework? How much is the cost for every single person that gets engaged in your content? And that content can essentially expand to be extremely high quality as you're proving that fundamentally dynamic changes. Right. You mentioned a couple of times about also investing as well. A fantastic investor. Obviously, we've invested a lot together. A fantastic investor. Should more operators be investors at the same time? [SPEAKER_01] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It should always. No, no, no. But it should my thinking here is because founders want to be backed by other founders. They want to be backed by the best operators. They also want to be backed by the best investors. So if you are an operator and you are willing to deploy time, not money, time, to help a company navigate and try to be successful, at some point you will end up realizing why not to actually do it with institutional money? Okay, because the flip side, when you take institutional money, it's a great responsibility taking on someone else's money. And you have already made a promise to your employer that you will devote your best efforts and all of your energy to making them successful and the company successful. If you're suddenly looking at defense companies at seed, you are not doing that job to the best of your ability. [SPEAKER_01] I don't think so. I think that you can do both things in parallel and one contributes to the other. I don't think there is any conflicts in there fundamentally. I don't think so. I think you can because you have reached an echelon that you can. But I don't think otherwise. Honestly, if I was one of your sellers and I was going home and in the bath time reading about next generation drone companies and the cost curve to launch drone companies, you'd be like, dude, your fucking turf is France and it's media. You could ramp that instead. [SPEAKER_01] I would be saying that if I was you. A hundred percent. And I would understand that, I feel. [SPEAKER_01] No, but I'm getting the best out of myself by doing that. But the interesting thing is, I think you put it really well in the other podcast, which is you are the hardest working person in the office, right? [SPEAKER_01] I am the same. Honestly, if I was one of your sellers and I was going home and in the bath time reading about next generation drone companies and the cost curve to launch drone companies, you'd be like, dude, your turf is France and it's media. You could ramp that instead. You could ramp that instead. [SPEAKER_01] I would be saying that if I was you. A hundred percent. And I would understand that I feel like— No, but I'm getting the best out of myself by doing that. But the interesting thing is, I think you put it really well in the other podcast, which is you are the hardest working person in the office, right? I am the same. And if you want to do both things at the same time, you need to prove every single day that you are the hardest working person in the office. And I think that's when it works. Fundamentally, you will work really hard for the company, but also you will work really hard for your investors and your LPs. And when I was negotiating my LPA with my LPs, we got stuck in one clause. You know, you always get stuck in clauses and things like that. And it was a clause I can't even remember, but there was a clause which was, for me, absolutely silly. And I was pushing back and for them, it was core to them. I called my main LP, which is absolutely fantastic. Like Sindana Capital, they're really amazing guys. But I remember calling them and saying, guys, we need to get over this. If we are fucked, if I don't return the money and I don't do all of these things, we're all fucked. It doesn't really matter how we see it, right? It just doesn't really matter. So let's move on. Let's close this thing. Let's make sure that I start deploying the capital. And then we will celebrate. And if it doesn't work out, I'm fucked. I'm accountable for all of this. I lost all of this money. We'll figure it out. But I don't think I will lose your money. I think I will do a 10X and I'm happy with it. And we ended up moving on. What fund would you be happy with? What do you say to a master? I would be very happy with a 10X. I'd be very happy with a 6X. I'd be very happy with a— [SPEAKER_01] I think for me, it's the way I thought when I was raising a fund. I will be very happy at the moment that I actually have seven unicorns in my fund. Seven. It has to be seven. Seven. I'm not going to be happy. Why seven? I don't know. It's a number that I had. Just like David Beckham? Don't watch football. Soccer, sorry. Okay, well, he was number seven, which is why. [SPEAKER_01] No, but I think that's the key. People that want to achieve something that is different have a very clear idea of what is the actual vision that they have? How could you feel seed only? I don't care. You don't care? I don't care. [SPEAKER_01] Because you do the A of 11 Labs with 350k, you'll make a ton of money. [SPEAKER_01] Sure. I did the pre-seed. No, I get that. No need to brag, mate. It's okay. I got you. I got you. I did the pre-pre-seed. No, but I think at some point unit economics also matters, but also I think it's important to stay within your lane as well, right? I get a lot of A's and amazing companies. I just know my area of expertise as a fund investor and that's not what I'm going to have a lot of fun as an investor. Is it? No, not for me. I love the scrappiness. I love the crazy ideas. I love the companies where the founders are like, no one wants to back them. I those ones. I love things that are not obvious. We just did a deal together. And it wasn't, for me, it was very obvious. For your team, it was Kira and for you, it was pretty obvious. But I also talked to a lot of other VCs and they were like, no. And I'm like, how is this a no for you? I don't understand it. [SPEAKER_00] Those are the things that I really. [SPEAKER_00] My favorite though is when we did it, then they had 10 people call and be like, by the way, super interested to speak about the round. Did you know? That happens a lot. No shit. That happens a lot. Oh wait. So you were not interested a week ago and now that you know that 20VC and blah, blah, blah, are doing it, then you're interested. Fuck you. No, thank you. You need econ. Does it matter early? You said there it does. A lot of the time with AI companies, it's inverted and actually, if your unit econ is good, it almost means that no one's using your product. I don't think it matters in the early days. [SPEAKER_01] I don't. I think it's more how do you get speed? [SPEAKER_01] But if you're building an entire brand new market from scratch, I think you have a power of deciding the pricing and that pricing will help you grow quicker or will help you a lot in terms of unit economics. [SPEAKER_01] So the key item is, are you building something from scratch? [SPEAKER_01] And if so, then you have pricing power. [SPEAKER_01] If you're not, and you're only looking at building something that other people already have, then you're going to get screwed. And then you will have to figure out how to actually go deeper to be able to charge more. [SPEAKER_01] I don't think it's more about how do you get speed? [SPEAKER_01] But if you're building an entire brand new market from scratch, I think you have a power of deciding the pricing and that pricing will help you a lot. grow quicker or will help you a lot in terms of unit economics. [SPEAKER_01] So the key item is are you building something from scratch? And if so, then you have pricing power. If you're not, and you're only looking at building something that other people already have, then you're going to get screwed. [SPEAKER_00] And then you will have to figure out how to actually go deeper to be able to charge more. [SPEAKER_00] What's your single biggest advice for me? [SPEAKER_00] And pretend I'm an operator at a company. [SPEAKER_00] I'm a head of sales. [SPEAKER_00] I'm a head of product, a head of growth, any of the coveted people that you're born on a cap table. [SPEAKER_00] And I'm thinking about angel investing. [SPEAKER_00] What would your advice to me be having done all that you've done? [SPEAKER_00] Be helpful. [SPEAKER_00] The money that you're investing is not worth it. [SPEAKER_00] It's just not worth anything for any company. [SPEAKER_00] If you put a 5k check or you put a 10k check or you put a 50k, it's not going to make or break the company. [SPEAKER_00] And you need to be very clear that in your mind that that's not the case. [SPEAKER_00] One of the most common ways companies need your help. [SPEAKER_00] What's the number one way? Go to market, hiring people. Sales hiring. [SPEAKER_00] For me, I go into customer calls with my portfolio companies and absolutely love it. [SPEAKER_00] I ask them to send me their decks, their pitch, record themselves pitching and I give them feedback. [SPEAKER_00] And I love it because then I can figure out essentially what, how potentially we can change it. [SPEAKER_00] How are we in the right market? [SPEAKER_00] Are we not? Are we getting the right traction or not? I absolutely love it. And I think you can be helpful with your portfolio companies in your own way. Just forget about the money. Do small checks. It doesn't really matter. But be helpful. I always say do the same size check every time. Do not do the whole, oh, I think this one's great. I'll put 50. This one, I'm not sure I'll do 10. No, no, no, just do 25 every time or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01] I think there are different variations and methods. [SPEAKER_01] I've not done it in my life. [SPEAKER_01] I essentially, as my wealth kept increasing, then fundamentally started doing bigger checks. And that's okay. And sometimes, of course we fool ourselves saying this is the company. And the majority of times that we do it, you end up getting disappointed, but we get disappointed, but also we would do it again. What's your biggest investing mistake? I've done a few investments where I was committed on the market, I was convinced on the founders, but I did not check how hungry they were to actually go to market. And I ended up finding out that yes, they were very hungry to build product, to execute, but they were not hungry to actually iterate on the go to market. How do you test hunger on go to market specifically? I think it's very difficult. For me, it's if in the first conversation, I want to understand how are they thinking about go to market already. And if they tell me, sorry, I'm just thinking about building research and doing all of these things, fantastic. I love your product. This is great. It's fantastic. Your mindset, your ideas, it's just not for me, because then you're going to be fighting with them for go to market. And I have a bunch of my portfolio companies that actually are that way. And it's great. Don't get me wrong. They're doing super well and I love them and I'm as helpful as I can. But at some point the party ends and if the music ends and you're stuck without having a product where you're monetizing it and you're stuck with the idea that we can always make more money later on, then you're going to get screwed. You can invest all of your money into one company that you've backed. Which company? [SPEAKER_01] ElevenLabs for sure. [SPEAKER_01] Obviously it can't be. [SPEAKER_01] Okay. [SPEAKER_01] It cannot be ElevenLabs. [SPEAKER_01] It cannot be the revolution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that there's a company in Spain called Theker Robotics, T-H-E-K-E-R. They're doing robotics for the manufacturing industry and services industry and warehouses and all of that stuff. Absolutely the most genius guys that I've seen in robotics space ever. [SPEAKER_00] They're amazing, amazing. [SPEAKER_00] I would just dump all of my money in there. [SPEAKER_00] How quickly do you think you know a company is good? [SPEAKER_00] Was it obvious very quickly that ElevenLabs and... Yes. Yes. Yes. ElevenLabs. I mean, I saw the magic for 30 minutes and I committed. Because for me, one of my best from Fund 1, I think was Linear. [SPEAKER_01] Yes, I knew Sequoia and very early in that space. [SPEAKER_01] It all looked great, but it wasn't what it is today for a couple of years. [SPEAKER_01] Actually, it was a bit of a slow burner. [SPEAKER_01] Do you believe in slow burners anymore? Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Not everyone learns at the same pace. Not everyone's market grows at the same pace. And I think that's okay. Life is not perfect. Why would we want to have perfect companies in our portfolio? No, let's do the tough things always. I think the reality is for my LPs, I always tell them guys, we're going to get it right. [SPEAKER_01] Actually, it was a bit of a slow burner. [SPEAKER_01] Do you believe in slow burners anymore? Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Not everyone learns at the same pace. Not everyone's market grows at the same pace. And I think that's okay. Life is not perfect. Why would we want to have perfect companies in our portfolio? No, let's do the tough things always. I think the reality is for my LPs, I always tell them, guys, we're going to get it right and we get it wrong. And that's okay. If I invest in a founder that doesn't work out and the founder wants to do another company, I believe the first time, why not the second time? So literally, you are trying to fall in the same place multiple times. Yes. And I will, because I believe in people and I believe that they can do something, learn from those mistakes and execute and move quicker and quicker and quicker. I think that's okay. I'd love to do a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Okay. The reason I look dazed and confused there is I was trying to remember this brilliant quote and it's, what would you need to achieve to be happy in 2026? For me, if I get three unicorns and 11 labs crosses a billion dollars in revenues, I would be very happy. [SPEAKER_00] Wow. [SPEAKER_00] Three unicorns for the fans. [SPEAKER_00] I would be very happy. What's the single hardest thing for you today? Time. It's. That's not an answer. It is. I love you. [SPEAKER_01] It is. I don't have the time and I love to spend. [SPEAKER_01] But this is a job interview. I work too hard. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it is not. And I think the problem is if you don't have enough time for certain things, then you're sacrificing your partner, your friends, all of that. And that's the hardest thing for me. It's I choose to actually work. The amount of hours that I work and work for 11 labs and work for my funds and for my LPs, but there's a choice. And then you're choosing to do things, putting aside all the things that are equally important. What's your escape? Plants. Gardening. I absolutely love it. I talk to my plants. [SPEAKER_00] I have so many plants at home. [SPEAKER_00] I talk to them all the time. [SPEAKER_00] I water them. I take small scissors and I chop them. [SPEAKER_00] It's so nice. [SPEAKER_00] I really like it. And that's when I'm really stressed and I don't understand how to fix a thing. Then I started spending an hour, two hours, looking after my plants. I can spend time looking at them and not doing anything, just talking to them. That gives me back energy. [SPEAKER_00] Fucking weird. [SPEAKER_00] It's very, very strange, but it is. [SPEAKER_00] No, no, there's no such thing as strange. [SPEAKER_00] I think we all need to be a bit more strange. What is the thing that makes Matty so good? What makes him so good is I think his ability of listening to people and then making a decision, regardless of whether he gets it right or wrong. And he will acknowledge if he got something wrong and then change it immediately. And I think that's what I value, because you get CEOs that will tell you most of the times I need to get it right and then make some mistakes in there. And for me, it's actually the opposite. It's you should be always getting it right or 99% right in 5% of the things that are really mega important. In the 95% remaining things, you should be getting it mostly wrong. And I think that's what Matty is trying to do. And he's very successful at that, allowing people to experiment and get it wrong and then push back, but also run with their ideas. And if there's a thing that he believes is fundamentally something that needs to happen in a specific way, he will say it and he will live it and everyone needs to be aligned. [SPEAKER_01] And he has that ability of combining both things in different moments in time. And it works really well. We've seen it at 11 labs. Final one for you. What are you most excited about when you look forward to the next 24 months? I am actually looking forward to the next wave of foundational model companies. [SPEAKER_01] Huh? [SPEAKER_01] What the? [SPEAKER_01] Yes. [SPEAKER_01] What? [SPEAKER_01] I believe that there is a brand new wall of opportunities that we are unlocking or that is going to be unlocked with a new wave. [SPEAKER_01] And What are you looking at? Next generation of OpenAI? Next generation of OpenAI. But I actually think OpenAI and Anthropic will end up and Google will end up buying and 11 labs will end up buying all of the new foundational model companies that will be popping up and creating research and paying just a few billion here, a few billion there, and just swapping them in. And I think exactly. Would you rather buy OpenAI at 830 or Anthropic at 500? Anthropic. And I've put it online multiple times. I think I love OpenAI. Don't get me wrong. They're amazing. [SPEAKER_01] Pushing the boundaries. [SPEAKER_01] But I really how. [SPEAKER_01] Do you think they are? [SPEAKER_01] Are they still? [SPEAKER_01] I think they're still pushing it. [SPEAKER_01] And I think they're trying to do good things for the world, but they were spread too thin. Exactly. Would you rather buy OpenAI at 830 or Anthropic at 500? [SPEAKER_00] Anthropic. [SPEAKER_00] And I've put it online multiple times. [SPEAKER_00] I think I love OpenAI. Don't get me wrong. They're amazing. [SPEAKER_01] Pushing the boundaries. [SPEAKER_01] But I really like how. [SPEAKER_01] Do you think they are? [SPEAKER_01] Are they still? [SPEAKER_01] I think they're still pushing it. [SPEAKER_01] And I think they're trying to do good things for the world, but they were spread too thin. [SPEAKER_01] And I think that's the problem, even us at 11 Labs we're facing. [SPEAKER_01] And Anthropic is facing. Sorry, Anthropic is facing. Everyone is facing. When you start being very successful, you want to do too many things and then you end up getting too stretched and then not doing anything correctly. Right. It's how do you do less and then do it really well? But do you not think that it's been stretched too thin for too long and the Anthropic acceleration has been too great? Yes. They need to start from scratch. And for me, the key item is how do they start building the experimentation thinking: yes, we're still number one. We make all of this money. But at the same time, let's go back to the basics. What do you use? [SPEAKER_00] Anthropic. [SPEAKER_00] I use Claude. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] And I'm very happy. Claude is my best friend. [SPEAKER_00] It's actually true. [SPEAKER_00] I use it all the time. What do you use for personal and everything? Personal, for fund, 11 Labs, everything. [SPEAKER_01] Biggest advice to someone who hasn't got it set up, who needs to? [SPEAKER_01] Oh, probably I'm the worst one of all of them. [SPEAKER_01] I like the Claude skills, for instance, and all of that. [SPEAKER_01] It's really amazing. [SPEAKER_01] But I see some of my team members and they just nailed it. [SPEAKER_01] I'm just an amateur. [SPEAKER_01] They're professionals at all of this. [SPEAKER_01] And I would love to actually be like, what if I fuck all of this. I'm going away for an entire month and I'm going to be a pro at all of this stuff. I would love to do it. And hopefully one day that happens. Dude, I've so enjoyed this. Thank you so much for putting up with me. [SPEAKER_01] You've been fantastic. [SPEAKER_01] And I actually preferred the second time, if I can say that. [SPEAKER_01] Really? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Nice. Good. I look at like what are the enterprises? What are the companies in the market? How is my portfolio construction in that market? And how can I close some of those numbers, some of those companies to get to a certain level of revenues? At the moment that I get to that certain level of revenues for me, I've nailed like a product idea that needs to grow and needs to prove that like it can scale and it can have like product market fit. But at least I've proven that actually can start selling in there. Then that's the moment that I actually, I can get the team on the ground. What market are you not in today? Geography or sector that you would most like to be in? We are everywhere these days. Literally everywhere. Everywhere. I have teams all around the world. Some of them have been announced, some of them have not been announced, but we have teams all around the world, yes. Where are you weakest? I think like in general, like we've been weak in some of the languages and some, and believing, and that is like entirely my fault, on believing that like you could sign contracts, everyone is in the world, everyone in the world speaking English only. And then you realize later on that that's just not possible. And don't get me wrong. Like I said, I opened like Japan by myself without speaking Japanese. Japan's hard. It's really fucking hard. Japan's hard. My friend is Daniel Dines from UI path. And he, he told me before how hard Japan is a major market for them now. And it's phenomenally successful, but it's hard to spin up. It's really hard. And I started doing it like two years ago, going myself to Japan, like constantly and meeting companies and we started generating motion. It was great. And then I hired my first rep, Sang Wong doing a fantastic job. He's like killing it. And then I hired the GM, Jim and the rest of the team. But like that, that was a really hard market. And you could not sell like in English, everyone's in the world, but you could also like not sign contracts that are always in English. Like, so if you end up having a team that is mostly, has mostly had experience in the US, their belief is that like it, you can repeat that or anyone in the world. The reality is like, you look at Latin America, less than 5% of the population speak English. If you want to open France and launch in France, good luck if you're only going to be speaking English, right? Good luck if you didn't offer like French law in your contracts, no one's going to be signing it. Right? So there's some of these learnings that we've had that are really, really tough. There's like, we wanted to actually sell in France and well, I was not speaking French, then let's get someone that speaks French, right? So there is some of those things that we've learned by doing. There's my entire fault, but it's also like part of the experimentation, I think. If you think about South Korea is fucking hard. We are there, we have an office. Yes. It's really, really, really tough. But also like the benefit of Korea, and that's why I was saying earlier, like, you need to have a thesis on why you're launching a specific market. But the thesis on Korea was they produce a ton of content. They're very innovative when they want, and they're producing products and services, not for the local market, but for the international market. So in reality, yes, you need to be selling in Korean, but the majority of your usage will not be in Korean, will likely be for the international market. So how do you support and map those languages they care about so that you can target those companies, at least for us? Are you happy to be powering the decline of Hollywood? And I don't mean that horribly, but like there was a brilliant article the other day on the permanent decline of Hollywood, and I think it was a Wall Street Journal article, but it essentially said about the democratization of content creation and what that's done to consumer attention and hence the decline of Hollywood that's producing less and less content. You are in large part powering that. I can paint a very positive case for democratization, income equality, equalizing content, and also declining Hollywood. Is that a good thing? I don't think that's how I would put it. I think like, I don't think, I think Hollywood is declining in this model that they have today. We're like very big budget productions that require a ton of people that require a lot of different things. Right. And I think they're going through a crisis, but I actually think Hollywood will come out like even stronger than this. And I think at the end of the day, like it's like, imagine that you get a startup and the startup tells you like, you know what? I need a hundred million dollars. I need 50 million dollars pre-seed just for this idea. And then it's going to take me five years to get it out. I don't know who's going to buy it. I don't. What are you going to say? Like, why don't you raise a million dollars? Right. That's going to be like raise a million dollars, prove like some points and then start going there. And I think that's the problem with Hollywood right now. I don't think it's like AI voices. I don't think it's AI video. I think those are like additional solutions to make sure that you're democratizing it and you're reducing your cost of launching new ideas to the market. But and that is going to be part of the solution. It's actually why I find defense so hard to invest in, which is like it takes five years and 200 to 250 million dollars before you can make your first dollar of revenue on a defense product. Quoting from Matt Statman, who's the president of CBO of Andro. So I think he knows his shit. Yep. That's just tough for me as like a seed venture investor to get on board with that cost curve to dollar gain. Do you know what I mean? And that's the that's that's what needs to change for them. And there's like, how do we create content that is like takes less money dollars to actually be created? You start very slowly, but also then you run pub once you realize that actually there is product market fit in that content. And I've spoken with a lot of studios over the past like three years. I've spent a lot of time in in L.A. In the industry. And my pitch always to them is like, hey, let's try to create content that will capture people's attention across like the channels that they operate today. And if it works well, let's scale it. Then you have the 50 million dollar budget. And I think like what's where AI can benefit a lot? But you have and because like you can iterate a lot, you can create content that is personalized. You can create them that is like is engaged by people. And then we were talking yesterday or like this idea of like cost per engagement. Why don't we use exactly the same framework? How much is the cost for every single person that gets engaged in your content? And that content can essentially expand to be extremely high quality as you're proving that like fundamentally dynamic changes. Right. You mentioned a couple of times about also investing as well. A fantastic investor. Obviously, we've invested a lot together. A fantastic investor. Should more operators be investors at the same time? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It should always. No, no, no. But it should like my thinking here is like it is because like founders want to be backed by other founders. They want to be backed by the best operators. They also want to be backed by the best investors. So if you are like an operator and you are willing to deploy time not money, time to help a company like navigate and try to be successful, at some point you will end up realizing the like, why not to actually do it from with institutional money? Okay, because flip side, when you take institutional money, it's a great responsibility taking on someone else's money. And you have already made a promise to your employer that you will devote your best efforts and all of your energy to making them successful and the company successful. If you're suddenly looking at defense companies at seed, you are not doing that job to the best of your ability. I don't think so. I think that you can do like both things in parallel and one contributes to the other one. Like, I don't think there is any conflicts in there fundamentally. Like, I don't think so. I think you can because you have reached and I'm your friend, but you've reached an echelon that you can. But I don't think otherwise. Like, honestly, if I was one of your sellers and I was going home and in the bath time reading about next generation drone companies and the cost curve to launch drone companies, you'd be like, dude, your motherfucking turf is France and it's media. You could ramp that instead. I would be saying that if I was you. A hundred percent. And I would understand that like, I feel like- No, but I'm getting the best out of myself by doing that. But you know what, but the interesting thing is like, I think you put it really well in the other podcast, which is like, you are the hardest working person in the office, right? I am the same. And if you want to do both things at the same time, you need to prove every single day that you are the hardest working person in the office. And I think that's when it works. Fundamentally, like you will work really hard for the company, but also you will work really hard for your investors and your LPs. And I was, when I was negotiating my, my LPA with, with my LPs, I mean, we got stuck in one clause, you know, like always you get stuck in clauses and things like that. And it was a clause. I can't even remember, but like, and I remember like that clause, which was like, for me was absolutely silly. And I was like pushing back and like, for them, it was like core to them. I was like, I call my, my, my main LP, which is absolutely fantastic. Like Sindana capital, they're really amazing guys. But like, I remember calling them and be like, guys, like we need to get over this. Like, if we are fucked, if I don't return the money and I don't do all of these things, we're all fucked. It doesn't really matter how we see it. Right? Like, it just doesn't really matter. So let's move on. Let's close this thing. Let's make sure that I start deploying the capital. And then we will celebrate. And if it doesn't work out, I'm fucked. I'm accountable for all of this. I lost all of this money. We'll figure it out. But I don't think I will lose your money. I think I will do like a 10X and I'm happy with it. And we ended up like moving on. What fund would you be happy with? Like, what do you say to a master? I would be very happy with a 10X. I'd be very happy with a 6X. I'd be very happy with a... I think like for me, it's like the way I thought when I was raising a fund is like, I will be very happy at the moment that I actually have seven unicorns in my fund. Seven. It has to be seven. Seven. I'm not going to be happy. Why seven? I don't know. It's a number that I had. Just like David Beckham? Don't watch football. Soccer, sorry. Okay, well, he was number seven, which is why. No, but I think that's the key. Like, people that like want to achieve something that is different have a very clear idea of like, what is the actual like vision that they have? Like, how could you feel seed only? I don't care. You don't care? I don't care. Because you do the A of 11 labs with 350k, you'll make a fuck ton of money. Sure. I did the pre-seed. No, I get that. No need to brag, mate. It's okay. I got you. I got you. I did the pre-pre-seed. No, but I think like at some point like unit economics like also matters, but also like I think it's important to stay within your lane as well, right? Like I get a lot of like A's and amazing companies. I just know my area of expertise as a fund investor and that's not what I'm going to have a lot of fun as an investor. Is it? No, not for me. I love like the scrappiness. I love the crazy ideas. I love the companies like the founders are like, no one wants to back them. I like those ones. I love things that are like not obvious. We just did a deal together. And it wasn't, I mean, for me, it was very obvious. For your team, it was like Kira and for you, it was like pretty obvious. But I also like talked to a lot of other VCs and they were like, no. And I'm like, how is this a no for you? I don't understand it. Those are the things that I really like. My favorite though is when we did it, then they had like 10 people call and be like, by the way, super interested to speak about the round. Did you know? That happens a lot. No shit. That happens a lot. Oh, wait. So you were not interested in a week ago and now that you know that 20VC and blah, blah, blah, are doing it, then you're interested. Fuck you. No, thank you. You need econ. Does it matter early? You said there it does. A lot of the time with AI companies, it's like you're inverted and like, actually, if you're a unit econ is good, it almost means that no one's using your product. I don't think it matters in the early days. I don't, I think it's more of like, how do you get speed? But if you're building an entire brand new market from scratch, I think you have like a power of deciding the pricing and that pricing will help you a lot grow quicker or like will help you a lot in terms of unit economics. So the key item is like, are you building something from scratch? And if so, then you have like pricing power. If you're not, and you're only looking at like building something that other people already have, then you're going to get screwed. And then you will have to figure out how to actually go deeper to be able to charge more. What's your single biggest advice for me? And pretend I'm an operator at a company. I'm a head of sales. I'm a head of product, a head of growth, any of the kind of coveted people that you're born on a cap table. And I'm like, I'm thinking about any more investing. What would your advice to me be having done all that you've done? Be helpful. Like the money that you're investing is not worth it. Like, I mean, it's just not worth anything for any company. Like if you put like a 5k check or you put a 10k check or you put like a 50k, it's not going to make or break the company. And you need to be very clear that like in your mind that that's not the case. One of the most common ways companies need your help. What's the number one way? Go to market, hiring people. Like getting sales hiring. Sales hiring. For me, like I go into customer calls with my portfolio companies and absolutely love it. I do interest for them. I ask them like to send me like their decks, their pitch, like record themselves pitching and I give them feedback. And I love it because then I can figure out essentially what, how potentially we can change it. How like, are we in the right market? Are we not? Are we getting the right traction or not? I absolutely love it. And I think that's, you can be helpful with your portfolio companies in your own way. Just forget about the money. Do small checks. It doesn't really matter. But be helpful. I always say do the same size check every time. Do not do the whole, oh, I think this one's great. I'll put 50. This one, I'm not sure I'll do 10. So no, no, no, just do 25 every time or whatever it is. I think there's like different variations and methods. I've not done it in my life. Uh, I essentially, as my wealth kept increasing, then fundamentally started doing bigger checks and that's okay. And you know, like, like sometimes, like, of course we fool ourselves saying this is the company. And you know how, like the majority of times that we do it, like you end up getting disappointed, but we get disappointed, but also like we would do it again. What's your biggest investing mistake? Um, like I've done a few investments where like I was committed on the market, I was convinced on the founders, but I did not check how hungry they were to actually like do go to market. And, um, I ended up finding out that like, yes, they were very hungry to build product, to execute, but they were not hungry and actually like iterate on the go to market. How do you test hunger on go to market specifically? I think it's very difficult. I think it's like, for me, it's like if, uh, in the first conversation, I want to understand like how are they thinking about go to market already. Um, and if they tell me like, sorry, I'm just like, I'm only thinking about like building research and doing all of these things like fantastic. I love your product. This is great. It's fantastic. Your mindset, your ideas, it's just not for me, because then you're going to be fighting with them for like go to market. And I have a bunch of my portfolio companies that actually are like that. And it's great. Don't get me wrong. They're doing super well and I love them and I'm as helpful as I can. But at some point the party ends and if the music ends and you're stuck without having a product where you're monetizing it and you're stuck with the idea that like, we can always make more money later on, then you're going to get fucked. You can invest all of your money into one company that you've backed. Which company? 11 labs for sure. Obviously it can't be. Okay. It cannot be 11. It cannot be the revolution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that there's a company in Spain called Teke Robotics, T-H-E-K-E-R. They're doing like robotics for like the manufacturing industry and like services industry and like, sorry, like warehouses and all of that stuff. Absolutely the most genius guys that I've seen in robotics space ever. Like amazing. They're amazing, amazing. I would just dump all of my money in there. How quickly do you think you know a company is good? Like, was it obvious very quickly that 11 and... Yes. Yes. Yes. 11. I mean, like I stopped the magic for 30 minutes and I committed. Because like for me, like, you know, one of my best from Fun 1, I think was Linear. Well, I, yes, I know Sequoia and very early in that area. It all looked great, but it wasn't what it is today for a couple of years. Actually, it was a bit of a slow burner. Do you believe in slow burners anymore? Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Like not everyone learns at the same pace. Not everyone, like not everyone's market like grows at the same pace. And I think that's okay. Like life is not perfect. Why would we want to have like perfect companies in our portfolio? No, let's do the tough things always. I think like the reality is like for my LPs, I always tell them like, guys, we're going to get it right. And we get it wrong. Like, and that's okay. Like if I, if I invest in a founder that like, it doesn't work out and the founder wants to do another company, I believe the first time, why not to do the second time? So like, literally, like you are like trying to fall in the same place multiple times. Yes. And I will, because I believe in people and I believe in like that they can do something that they can do, like learn from those mistakes and execute and move quicker and quicker and quicker. I think that's okay. I'd love to do a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Okay. The reason I look kind of dazed and confused there is I was trying to remember this brilliant quote and it's like, what would you need to achieve to be happy in 2026? Oh, I mean, for me, like if, uh, if I get three unicorns and 11 laps crosses a billion dollars in revenues, I would be very happy. Wow. Three unicorns for the fans. I would be very happy. What's the single hardest thing for you today? Time. It's like, it's. That's not an answer. It is like, I love you. It is like, it is. It's, I don't have the time and I love, I love to spend. But this is like a job interview. I work too hard. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it is not. And, uh, I, I think like the problem is like, if you don't have enough time for certain things, then you're sacrificing like, like, uh, your partner, your, like, uh, your friends, all of that. And that's the hardest thing for me. Like it's, I choose to actually work. Um, like the amount of hours that I work and work for 11 labs and work for my funds and for my LPs, but there's a choice. And then you're choosing to do things, putting aside all the things that are so equally important. What's your escape? Plants like, um, like gardening. I absolutely love it. I talk to my plants. I have so many plants at home. I talk to them all the time. I water them. I like, I take like small scissors and I chop them. Like, it's so nice. I really like it. And that's when I'm really stressed and I don't understand like how to fix a thing. Then I started essentially like spending an hour, two hours, like looking after my plants. I can like spend time like looking at them and not doing anything, just talking to them. That gives me back energy. Fucking weird. It's very, very strange, but it is. No, no, there's no such thing as strange. I think we all need to be a bit more strange. Um, what is the thing that makes Matty so good? What makes him so good is like, I think his ability of listening to people and then making a decision, um, regardless of whether he gets it right or wrong. And he will acknowledge if he got something wrong and then change it immediately. And I think that's what I value, because like you get CEOs that will tell you like most of the times I need to get it right and then make some mistakes in there. And I, for me, the, it's actually the opposite. It's like, you should be always getting it right or like 99% right in like 5% of the things that are really mega important. Like in the 99, 95% remaining things, you should be getting it mostly wrong. And I think that's what Matty is trying to do. And he's very successful at that, like allowing people to like experiment and get it wrong and then push back, but also run with their ideas. And if there's a thing that he believes like it is like fundamentally, like it needs to happen in a specific way, he will say it and he will live it and everyone gets to be, needs to be aligned. And he has that ability of like combining both things in different moments in time. And it works really well. We've seen it at the level labs. Final one for you. What are you most excited about when you look forward to the next 24 months? I am actually looking forward to the next wave of foundational model companies. Huh? What the? Yes. What? I believe that like there is a brand new wall of opportunities that we are unlocking or that is going to be unlocked with a new wave. And What are you looking at? Next generation of open AI? Next generation of open AI. But I actually think like open AI and Anthropic will end up and Google will end up buying and 11 labs will end up buying like all of the new foundational model companies that will be popping up and creating research and paying just like a few billion here, a few billion there, and like just swapping them in. And I think like exactly. Would you rather buy open AI at 830 or Anthropic at 500? Anthropic. And I've put it online like multiple times. I think like I love open AI. Don't get me wrong. They're amazing. Pushing the boundaries. But I really like how. Do you think they are? Are they still? I think they're still like pushing it. And I think that they're like, they're trying to do things like good things for the world, but they were spread too thin. And I think it's the problem, like even us at 11 labs we're facing. And Anthropic is facing. Sorry, Anthropic is facing. Everyone is facing. Like then when you start being very successful, you want to do too many things and then you end up like getting too stretched and then not doing anything correctly. Right. It's like, how do you do less and then doing it really well? But do you not think that it's been stretched too thin for too long and the Anthropic acceleration has been too great? Yes. They need to start from scratch. And for me, the key item is that it's like, how do they start building the experimentation thinking like, yes, we're still number one. We make all of this money. But at the same time, like, let's go back to the basics. What do you use? Anthropic. I use Cloth. Yeah. And I'm very happy. Like Cloth is my best friend. Like it's actually true. I use it all. What do you use for personal and everything? Personal, like fund, 11 labs, everything. Biggest advice to someone who hasn't got it set up, who needs to? Oh, probably I'm the worst one of all of them. But like, I mean, I like the Claude skills, for instance, and all of that. Like it's really amazing. But I see some of my like, like team members and they're like, they just nailed it. I'm just like an amateur. They're professionals at all of this. And I would love to actually be like, you know what? Fuck all of this. I'm going away for an entire month and I'm going to be a pro at all of this stuff. I would love to do it. And hopefully one day happens. Dude, I've so enjoyed this. Thank you so much for putting up with me. You've been fantastic. And I actually preferred the second time, if I can say that. Really? Yeah. Nice. Good.