Eleven Labs, an $11 billion AI startup, has a simple message for salespeople: “If you don’t reach 20 times your base salary, you’ve lost.”
On Friday’s 20VC podcast, Carles Reyna, the voice cloning startup’s vice president of sales, spoke about the company’s “ruthless” quotas.
“So, if I pay you $100,000 a year, your quota is $2 million. That’s it. If you don’t meet your quota, you’re expelled, right?” Reyna said. “And we are ruthless in that regard.”
ElevenLabs, which closed a $500 million funding round and was recently valued at $11 billion, is run by a micro-team of five to 10 people, according to CEO and co-founder Matty Staniszewski, who spoke on a separate 20VC podcast episode. In September.
Reyna said he prefers working in smaller teams that meet quotas and pay more.
Small teams are increasingly trending in the tech industry, with AI startups touting their ability to scale with far fewer employees by working with AI agents.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman wrote in January that a team of 15 people using AI is comparable to a team of 150 people without AI.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg said during Meta’s July earnings call that he’s “become a little more confident that a small, well-resourced team may be the best structure to drive frontier research.”
Reyna said on the 20VC podcast that Eleven Labs thrives on “ruthless” quotas, with more than 80% of salespeople hitting their sales quotas.
Eleven Lab did not respond to a request for comment.
He added that the company will pay both account executives and customer success managers if they upsell companies within the first 12 months.
“I’m paying twice as much, but I don’t care,” said Reina. “This makes perfect sense because I’m doing everything I can to help these two guys actually make more money, which is great for me as a company.”
Efforts to improve performance are not limited to AI startups.
Google announced in April that it would restructure its compensation system to increase rewards for top performers. “High performance is more important than ever,” Google’s head of compensation told staff at the time.
