ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota
Carles Reina, CRO of ElevenLabs, shares the playbook for scaling a hypergrowth AI company from zero to 350M+ ARR by treating sales like venture capital—testing multiple distribution channels in parallel, embedding AI agents throughout the revenue org, and setting aggressive quotas (20x) paired with uncapped commissions to attract elite performers. He challenges conventional wisdom about outbound SDRs, market sequencing, and customer success, arguing that success in the AI era demands complexity over shortcuts and willingness to compete with your own customers through a strategic partner ecosystem.
Key takeaways
- • Outbound email is dead—response rates have fallen below 0.01%—unless it's humanized and AI-powered at scale; the best alternative is AI agents that handle inbound intelligently by understanding each lead's preferred channel (email, phone, events, LinkedIn) rather than blasting everyone.
- • Set aggressive 20x quotas with uncapped commission accelerators (starting at 5% and scaling to 1.5x+ for overperformance) to attract driven sellers; pay commissions on pilot-to-contract conversions and expansion deals, not pilots alone, to align incentives with company value creation.
- • Deploy portfolio construction thinking to go-to-market—test 100 ideas (channels, verticals, products, geographies) expecting 3-5 to work well, rather than going deep in one market at a time; this is especially critical in AI where competitors can emerge in weeks.
- • Brand dramatically reduces enterprise sales cycles—OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cursor are the only AI natives that are "blue chip" in procurement today; invest heavily in your own events (not conferences) to build brand and create FOMO, and design content that feels non-salesy.
- • Corporate venture capital partners (e.g., Salesforce Ventures, Woven Capital from Toyota, Deutsche Telekom) can become distribution channels if you align incentives—require them to bring pipeline revenue for every dollar invested, with buyouts if they miss targets.
- • Verticalize sales teams late, not early—segment too soon and you'll depress revenue; instead, start horizontal with portfolio-constructed account lists, close deals weekly for team morale, then segment once you have proven demand and pipeline density.
- • Only expand into new geographies after proving revenue centrally from HQ; language, legal frameworks, and local hiring are non-negotiable—don't assume English-only sales work anywhere (France, Japan, Korea, Latin America require full localization).
Recommendations (9)
"Absolutely the most geniuses guys that I've seen in robotics space ever. They're amazing. I would just dump all of my money in there."
Carles Reina · ▶ 1:17:29
"we use Salesforce. but for some other applications like I mean why wouldn't you do it?"
Carles Reina · ▶ 46:50
Mentioned (11)
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