Carles Reina | 20VC Summary

Participants: Carles Reina (CRO, ElevenLabs; Founder, Baobab Ventures) and Harry Stebbings (20VC)

1. Key Themes

The Death of Traditional Outbound and the Rise of Human-Feeling AI Sales Infrastructure

The conventional AI SDR playbook is broken. Mass outbound, whether AI-generated or not, has collapsed in effectiveness. But the solution isn't abandoning AI — it's deploying AI that feels human and is deeply personalized.

"The majority of these tools track everyone as if they actually want to receive a message. And people hate it. You see the response rates on outbound emails has dropped to the lowest of any point in time. It's like less than 0.01%." 00:06:34

"Outbound is dead unless you do it with humans or unless you do it humanly." 00:07:01

Carles built internal AI tooling at ElevenLabs including an AI inbound SDR, an AI proposals manager that scans the web for RFPs, and an AI customer success manager that drafts hyper-personalized emails per customer.

"We store what we actually sent and what it was originally created and what are the responses are to actually fine tune. So each one of the customers ends up getting a slightly different message with a slightly different tone... That works. And that has closed deals for us already." 00:08:00

Customer Success as a Revenue Generation Engine, Not a Satisfaction Function

Carles takes a strongly contrarian stance against the prevailing "CS as support" model, especially in the AI era where competitors can spin up in days.

"Customer success needs to be a money generation function for the business that works for the customer but also works for the business to incentivize growth, expansion, cross-sell." 00:14:59

"In the world we are in today with AI, that doesn't make any sense because fundamentally like anyone can spin up a competitor of your product in the next two days. So fundamentally like your customer success, you need to actually like go as deep as you can as early as possible." 00:15:22

Corporate VCs as a Distribution Strategy, Not Just Capital

ElevenLabs has deliberately used corporate VC investment as a structured distribution channel, tying allocation to revenue commitments — a highly non-obvious GTM motion.

"For every million dollars that you want to invest you need to actually like bring X amount of revenues in the next 12 months or 24 months whatever time frame you want... 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." 00:56:53

Investors include Waffen Capital (Toyota), Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Liberty Global, KPN, NTT, and KDDI (NTT Docomo).

"We've proven with 11 Labs that like we dedicate time to actually partner with like Waffen Capital from Toyota with the Deutsche Telekom guys with the Telefonica guys with Liberty Global that actually join our cap table all of those pieces like that is a fantastic distribution strategy." 00:55:17

2. Contrarian Perspectives

20x Sales Quota Is Not Too High — It Creates the Right Culture

While most companies set quotas at 6-8x OTE, ElevenLabs runs 20x. Two reps hit their full-year quota by February.

"I put a message in Slack saying these two people have reached the Mount Olympus of sales at Eleven Labs because in two months already like did their quota." 00:10:11

"Good sales people, they want to be the best ones. They want to actually, they'll move it by the coin. They'll move by the fact of like, like a big challenge ahead of them. If you don't put that challenge, they're just going to be like slacking." 00:10:44

The accelerator structure starts at 5% commission, then multiplies for every additional year of contract value sold over quota, incentivizing long-duration deals.

Hiring 20-25 Year Veterans Into Startups Is Underrated, Not a Culture Risk

The tech industry's bias against experienced enterprise sellers is, according to Carles, fundamentally wrong.

"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 like that person is not gonna fit the business and I think it's bullshit I think it's full wrong. Fundamentally someone that has 20 years experience in sales and has been selling for the past 10 years to the same like financial services firms in the city or in the US has so much wealth so much knowledge that it can propel the entire business." 00:17:07

"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 have I know the vision I know how to properly like pitch it let me call all of my friends that have been interacting and all of my stakeholders that have been interacting for the past 10 years 20 years now we just go directly to the C-level." 00:18:05

Don't Go One Market at a Time — Parallelize From the Start

The conventional VC playbook of going deep in one market before moving to the next is called out directly as outdated.

"The traditional method has been like oh you open one market you go deep you win the account you show like the value then you go to the next one and then you go to the next one and so on. And there's like the bullshit advice that like VCs have been giving like for many years... instead of actually parallelizing and trying to do multiple bets at the same time then it's just counterintuitive." 00:16:40

Forecasting Is Impossible in High-Experimentation Companies — and That's Okay

Traditional sales leaders pride themselves on 3-5% forecast accuracy. Carles reframes that as a product of low ambition.

"It's impossible but it's impossible if you think about it from an experimentation perspective and I always tell my team like I want us to test as many things as possible I only need one of those ones to work really well to give me another hundred million dollars in revenues or two hundred or three hundred." 00:25:34

Powering Your Competitors Is a Strategic Advantage, Not a Risk

ElevenLabs knowingly powers Sierra, Deck, and other voice AI competitors via its API and foundational model layer — and treats this as a strength, not a vulnerability.

"We power all of them so we actually make money of like literally customer support with our agents platform but also we make money from our API foundational model layer across the board." 00:29:23

"I called the biggest platforms agents platform that were operating in our platform and I told them like guys FYI in the next couple of months we're gonna be launching our agents product we're gonna be competing with you just wanted to make sure that like you're okay with this." 00:30:22

3. Companies Identified

ElevenLabs AI voice and agents platform; one of the fastest growing AI companies globally. Scaled from $0 to $350M+ ARR. Context: The primary company discussed throughout; Carles is CRO. Customer success fastest-growing revenue product. Competing with and powering voice AI competitors simultaneously.

"It's like the fastest product in terms of revenues that we've ever had. It's just insane." 00:29:23

Cursor AI coding assistant. Mentioned as one of only three companies (alongside OpenAI and Anthropic) that have achieved true enterprise brand status — the "no one gets fired for buying IBM" equivalent in AI.

"Cursor have killed enterprise unbelievably well yeah they've done super well it's fantastic like those are the three like brands that are like blue chip organization right now in the procurement like teams perspective and IT teams perspective." 00:39:12

Revolut Global fintech; Carles was an early investor. Mentioned as a benchmark for brand-driven international expansion and for the ElevenLabs F1 sponsorship partnership.

"We are ODA Revolut F1... we were very impressed but it took us a while to actually be comfortable with the entire concept." 00:49:30

Theker Robotics (T-H-E-K-E-R) Spanish robotics company focused on manufacturing and warehouse automation.

"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 uh like warehouses and all of that stuff absolutely the most geniusest guys that I've seen in robotics space ever like amazing." 00:15:25

Ashby ATS/recruiting platform. Called out specifically as the tool Carles uses for real-time interview notes and candidate evaluation.

"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." 00:45:48

Gong Revenue intelligence/call recording platform. Mentioned as mandatory for all ElevenLabs sellers and integrated with Salesforce for automated pipeline data.

"We use Gong and then automatically fills out our like sales force and so we try to automate as much as possible." 00:46:38

Lob (described as "Lobo") Referenced as having built the best CRM Carles has ever seen — a company that built its own internal CRM platform.

"Lobo has the best CRM that I've ever seen those guys have really smashed it like shout out to them... Loboable ended up building their own platform where like can you imagine if they didn't." 00:46:38

Sindana Capital Carles's anchor LP for Baobab Ventures. Mentioned for their partnership quality and pragmatic LP relationship.

"I call my NLP which is absolutely fantastic like Sindana Capital they're really amazing guys." 00:58:52

4. People Identified

Matti (ElevenLabs CEO) Co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs. Praised for his decision-making approach: listening first, deciding fast, and acknowledging mistakes immediately.

"What makes him so good is like 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." 00:18:12

Jason Lemkin Founder of SaaStr. Mentioned as a real ElevenLabs customer who flagged the cost escalation risk — his concern that users will try best-in-class AI products then substitute with cheaper alternatives.

"One of my dear friends is Jason Lemkin who 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 so amazing fuck it was expensive." 00:31:34

Daniel Dines Founder of UiPath. Referenced as validation for the difficulty of entering Japan as an enterprise market.

"My friend is Daniel Dines from UiPath he told me before how hard Japan... it's a major market for them now and it's phenomenally successful but it's hard to spin up." 00:27:27

Chris Dagnon Former CRO at Snowflake (zero to $4B). Referenced for the opposing view that Customer Success is unnecessary — "complete bullshit" — in favor of paid professional services.

"He's like, CS is complete bullshit. Complete bullshit. You have professional services, pay for it and we'll make you great." 00:15:22

5. Operating Insights

Pipeline Construction as Portfolio Construction — A Weekly Ritual

Carles runs a dedicated recurring calendar block called "pipeline construction" — explicitly borrowed from VC portfolio theory — to design the ideal pipeline mix per market and segment.

"I have this placeholder in my in my calendar every single week that is called pipeline construction and that pipeline construction it's like similar to like portfolio construction... how do I design the perfect pipeline for any given market and segment... each one of my account execs needs to have the ability of like closing big whales specifically on the enterprise segment but also having like liquidity in the pipeline so that they don't lose their confidence." 00:34:56

The insight: mixing "whale" enterprise deals with smaller, faster-close deals isn't just pipeline hygiene — it's confidence management for your sellers.

Don't Pay Commissions on Pilots — Only on Signed Annual Contracts

A simple but powerful comp design choice: commissions are only paid when value is proven and a real contract is signed, not on exploratory pilots. This prevents reps from chasing easy wins that don't compound company value.

"We don't pay commissions on pilots. Because why? Like it's not adding to our valuation as a company... 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 you the commission." 00:12:45

Executive Dinners Massively Outperform Conferences on ROI — and Competitor Presence Drives FOMO

When evaluating paid marketing channels, Carles found dinners with ~15 ICPs to be the highest ROI activity, with trade shows among the worst.

"If I go to a trade show the majority of them don't have good ROI... you're inviting competitors... those guys are going to know that you are actually talking to these other guys so there's a FOMO that ends up being created in place and it just pans out really well." 00:51:05

Implication for operators: deliberately invite competing procurement decision-makers to the same dinner to manufacture competitive urgency.

Only Deploy Feet on the Ground After Closing Deals Centrally First

Carles will not hire a local rep until the market has been seeded and revenue proven from HQ — making the first local hire essentially self-funding.

"I look at like what are the enterprises what are the companies in the market 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... then that's the moment that I actually can get a team on the ground." 00:01:39

Pay AI-Generated Commissions Like Human Commissions — It Retains Top Talent

When the AI customer success manager closes an upsell, Carles pays full commission as if a human closed the deal. This aligns the team to embrace AI rather than resist it.

"Any upsells, any contracts that the AI agent ends up closing, I will pay those commissions as if like a human actually closed it. And I'm very happy with that. But also that means that like the people that we want to retain and have are going to be extremely top talent." 00:09:14

6. Overlooked Insights

The "Labs" Entity as a New Revenue Model: Becoming a Top-Line Growth Consultant for Enterprises

Carles briefly mentioned a model he's personally spending a lot of time developing and testing — a co-branded "Company X Labs" entity where ElevenLabs acts as a consultant helping enterprises build AI agents that generate new revenue lines, not just automate costs.

"How do we figure out a way to partner with a company and create a labs area so it's company x labs so that we can figure out a way for them to generate new revenue opportunities for them... how do we prove that the idea of labs for companies where we essentially are their consultants and help them build those agents that will generate top line revenue with new ideas new products is actually something that we can scale and generate like hundreds of millions." 00:26:38

This is significant and underexplored in the conversation. The model is: ElevenLabs embeds inside large enterprises as a "labs" co-venture, not just a vendor. If this scales, it's a completely different GTM than selling API access or agent seats — it's a strategic partnership model that could command dramatically higher ACVs, create true lock-in, and generate equity or revenue-share arrangements. The CEO of an airline told Carles he receives 100+ pitches per week on customer support automation. The labs model sidesteps that commoditized category entirely. No other AI voice company appears to be pursuing this.

Corporate VCs Are Now Gatekeepers to Enterprise Sales — and Most Founders Don't Know to Target Them

Carles mentioned almost in passing that corporate VCs (CVC arms of telcos, banks, automotive companies) were "not sexy" 18 months ago, but ElevenLabs deliberately targeted them as distribution vectors by tying allocation to revenue commitments.

"They were not sexy up until like a year and a half ago two years ago they were not sexy it was like returns were not there as we know right like CVC getting returns is like really difficult and they were just like trying to like fight to get a location in the best companies but like it's just not possible." 00:54:47

"We dedicate time to actually partner with like Waffen Capital from Toyota with the Deutsche Telekom guys with the Telefonica guys with Liberty Global that actually join our cap table all of those pieces like that is a fantastic distribution strategy." 00:55:17

The non-obvious insight: the best AI companies right now have essentially turned CVC arms into commissioned enterprise sales agents. A CVC that invests $1M and is contractually obligated to bring in a proportionate revenue commitment becomes a deeply motivated internal champion inside a Fortune 500. Most founders view CVC money as dumb money with strategic optionality — ElevenLabs has restructured it as a GTM channel with financial teeth. Any founder selling into regulated industries (telco, automotive, banking, healthcare) should consider this framework immediately.