According to Business Insider, ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski revealed the AI audio startup’s highly unconventional hiring strategy that deliberately avoids LinkedIn and traditional tech hubs. The company, which recently hit a $6.6 billion valuation through employee share sales, found one of their “most brilliant researchers” working at a call center while building impressive open-source text-to-speech models on the side. Both cofounders have Polish roots and credit their European background with inspiring the company’s creation after observing cheap movie dubbing in Poland. The company maintains a completely flat structure with no job titles and limits employee access to Slack channels to prevent distraction. They’ve expanded with physical offices in six global cities including New York, San Francisco, and Warsaw despite their remote-first approach.
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The hiring revolution nobody saw coming
Here’s the thing about traditional hiring: it’s designed to find traditional candidates. But what if the best people aren’t on LinkedIn polishing their profiles? Staniszewski basically said they looked where nobody else was looking – and found gold in a call center employee who was secretly building cutting-edge AI models. That’s wild when you think about it. How many brilliant minds are stuck in jobs that don’t challenge them because nobody bothered to look beyond the usual channels?
And this isn’t just about one lucky find. The whole philosophy of hiring across Europe and Asia rather than just Silicon Valley speaks to a broader shift. Tech talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t. By casting a wider net, ElevenLabs tapped into pools of talent that bigger companies overlook because they’re too busy fighting over the same Stanford grads.
Why European roots matter
Staniszewski made an interesting point about how ElevenLabs probably wouldn’t have even been created in the US. Their inspiration came from watching cheap movie dubbing in Poland – a problem that Silicon Valley types might never notice or care about. That outsider perspective gave them a unique advantage. They saw a problem that affected real people in their market, not just theoretical tech challenges.
Now they’re building on that advantage by continuing to focus on European talent. It’s smart – why compete with Google and Meta for the same expensive Bay Area engineers when you can find equally talented people in Warsaw or Bangalore? The cost savings alone must be substantial, but more importantly, they’re getting different perspectives and problem-solving approaches.
The culture experiment that’s actually working
No titles? Limited Slack access? This sounds like management heresy, but ElevenLabs is making it work at a $6.6 billion valuation. The flat structure means new hires can have immediate impact without waiting for permission or climbing corporate ladders. And the Slack channel restriction? Honestly, that’s genius. How many of us waste hours reading conversations that have nothing to do with our actual work?
But here’s what really stands out: they’re coupling remote work with physical offices strategically. They realized that new employees need spaces to absorb company culture and connect with colleagues. It’s a hybrid approach that actually makes sense – remote flexibility with intentional in-person collaboration. Unlike companies that just went fully remote and called it a day, ElevenLabs is thinking about how people actually work best.
What this means for everyone else
ElevenLabs’ success with this approach could seriously disrupt how tech companies think about hiring. If a $6.6 billion AI company can find its best researchers outside traditional channels, why can’t everyone? We might be seeing the beginning of a major shift away from credential-based hiring toward actual demonstrated ability.
And the flat structure combined with focused work environments? That could be the antidote to the burnout and distraction plaguing so many tech companies. By limiting context and eliminating hierarchy, they’re creating an environment where people can actually focus on doing great work rather than playing corporate games.
The real question is: how many other brilliant call center workers, baristas, or retail employees are out there building amazing things in their spare time? If ElevenLabs’ approach catches on, we might finally find out.
