Founder stories
Browse Stories
AI voice generation platform that creates realistic, human-like voices for content creators, publishers, and enterprises.
How Mati acquired customers
Tools used to build ElevenLabs
Mati and Piotr, childhood friends from Poland, built ElevenLabs to fix robotic AI voices and reached 1M users in 5 months after beta launch.
Piotr and I first met as teenagers at Copernicus High School in Warsaw, Poland. We were both frustrated by the same thing - AI voices that sounded obviously robotic.
Growing up in Poland, we experienced terrible film dubbing where one person voiced every character in a monotone voice. We knew AI could do better.
After high school, our paths split. I studied mathematics at Imperial College London and worked at Palantir. Piotr went to Oxford and Cambridge, focusing on AI and machine learning.
Instead of using existing models, we conducted our own research to understand what makes human voices sound human. We built everything from scratch - capturing natural pauses, laughter, conversational fillers.
By June 2023, five months after launching our public beta in January that year, we had attracted over one million users. The market validated our vision immediately.
By late 2024, we had raised over $350M and were valued at over $1 billion. We're now working with publishers like HarperCollins to create audiobooks at scale.
Build your own research instead of relying on existing models
Solve a problem you personally experience deeply
Childhood friendships can become powerful co-founder relationships
Focus on what makes technology feel human, not just functional
Compare relevant founder accounts, then adapt one into an editable 7-day experiment for your product. Set an offer, a reachable buyer and a spending limit.
No account or credits required. Nothing is sent to prospects. Download a file to keep your work.
For deeper research, Premium includes full Founders' Paths. Explore Premium research
Inspired by Mati's journey? Generate a business idea in the AI / ML space using AI and real founder data.
Mati achieved 3 milestones on the path to $100K ARR
$50,000
$1,000,000
Mati Staniszewski & Piotr Dąbkowski reached $10K MRR in 8 months, faster than 71% of the 295 documented $10K journeys (median 12 months). The amber bar is this journey.
The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone
See the complete breakdown: launch strategy, validation methods, startup costs, expert analysis, replication playbook, and more actionable insights.
Upgrade to PremiumInstant access to all founder journeys
Founders with similar journeys or strategies
In 2013, I sold all my possessions, packed a backpack and a laptop, and flew to Thailand to begin my digital nomad life. I was once a lost musician ea...
On March 1st 2023, OpenAI announced the ChatGPT API. Right on that day, I came up with the idea to create a new UI to solve my own pain points with th...
My journey took me from being a Paris waiter to an $80,000/month solopreneur over seven years of persistence. After 17 failed projects, I found succes...
Get more founder journeys like this delivered to your inbox every week.