Carles Reina, GTM supervisor at Eleven Labs, shared why he invested in AI firm.
Eleven Labs
The angel investor who backed a billion-dollar AI startup when it was nonetheless in its infancy mentioned he determined to put money into the corporate after simply half-hour of assembly one among its founders.
Carles Reina first determined to put money into AI voice startup Eleven Labs in 2022, when he was a enterprise companion at pre-seed fund Idea Ventures.
Co-founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, Eleven Labs focuses on superior text-to-speech and voice cloning expertise. In its January Collection C funding spherical earlier this 12 months, the corporate raised $180 million at a valuation of $3.3 billion.
Then in September, the corporate introduced it was letting workers promote shares at a $6.6 billion valuation.
Nonetheless, earlier than Eleven Labs even had a concrete product, Reina, who was working at Palantir Applied sciences on the time, determined to take an opportunity on the agency after assembly Staniszewski.
“I met Mati when he was nonetheless at Palantir,” Reina instructed CNBC Make It in an interview. “We began speaking, and inside half-hour of the primary dialog, I instructed him, ‘How a lot cash would you like?'”
Reina defined that earlier than the launch of ChatGPT, voice AI hadn’t garnered a lot consideration as a result of huge tech firms like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all had text-to-speech merchandise, however they hadn’t actually taken off.
“With ElevenLabs nobody was taking a look at voice AI, actually nobody needed to present [them] cash. No VCs needed to really again ElevenLabs, again within the early days on the pre-seed spherical. So these are the kind of industries that I actually like, in order that I can get in earlier than everybody else,” he mentioned.
Reina has made 74 angel investments over the previous eight years, together with Revolut, Volumetric, Elroy Air, and Speckle. He now works for Eleven Labs as a go-to-market supervisor.
He mentioned he all the time tries to determine industries that different buyers are usually not listening to: “I’ve accomplished [invested in] largely AI earlier than it was attractive. I’ve accomplished robotics earlier than it was attractive as properly.”
The No.1 trait to observe for in founders
Reina focuses on investing in pre-seed firms — these with an concept, however usually and not using a absolutely developed product. This implies figuring out key traits in founders that point out a startup will succeed.
“If there’s a product, improbable, but when there isn’t any product, completely effective for me … I really like founders which might be very technical. They’re tremendous sharp,  very sensible, actually attempting to construct a worldwide firm from day one,” Reina defined.
He mentioned he “invests based mostly on thesis,” so if a founder could be very technical, they will have a deeper understanding of the product and the market they’re promoting to.
Reina mentioned he noticed these traits in Staniszewksi, which satisfied him to again ElevenLabs regardless of the voice AI market being very small on the time.
“Nobody desires to speak to AI voices in the event that they sound robotic. That is basically the most important downside that there was proper… so after I spoke with Mati, he talked about each parts, and he had not been out there,” Reina mentioned.
“It was actually fascinating to see he was interested by the issues of the complete ecosystem earlier than even truly having any product or earlier than even truly speaking to any actual potential buyer.”
Staniszewski had a background in arithmetic with a first-class honors diploma from Imperial Faculty London. His imaginative and prescient and technical experience bought Reina, and ElevenLabs turned one of many few startups that he determined to again “actually inside lower than an hour.”
Now, Eleven Labs is planning a worldwide growth, together with constructing new hubs in Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico, in addition to getting the corporate prepared for IPO inside the subsequent 5 years, Staniszewski instructed CNBC in July.
