{"id":486983,"date":"2026-02-18T02:15:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/486983\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T02:15:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:15:25","slug":"11b-ai-startup-elevenlabs-sets-ruthless-sales-quotas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/486983\/","title":{"rendered":"$11B AI Startup ElevenLabs Sets ‘Ruthless’ Sales Quotas"},"content":{"rendered":"

At $11 billion AI startup ElevenLabs, the message to sales reps is simple: Hit 20x your base salary, or you’re out.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the 20VC podcast on Friday, Carles Reina, VP of sales at the voice-cloning startup,<\/a> talked through its “ruthless” quotas.<\/p>\n

“So if I pay you $100,000 a year, your quota is $2 million. That’s it. If you don’t achieve your quota, then you’re going to be out, right?” Reina said. “And we’re ruthless on that end.”<\/p>\n

ElevenLabs \u2014 which was recently valued at $11 billion after closing a $500 million funding round \u2014 operates in micro-teams of five to ten people each, according to CEO and cofounder Mati Staniszewski, who spoke on a separate 20VC podcast episode in September.<\/p>\n

Reina said he prefers to operate in smaller teams that hit their quotas, and pay them more.<\/p>\n

Small teams have become a growing trend<\/a> in tech, with AI startups touting their ability to scale with far fewer employees by working alongside AI agents.<\/p>\n

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman wrote in January that a team of 15 people using AI<\/a> can rival a team of 150 who aren’t.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg said on a Meta earnings call in July that he has “gotten a little bit more convinced around the ability for small, talent-dense teams<\/a> to be the optimal configuration for driving frontier research.”<\/p>\n

Reina said the “ruthless” quota has been successful at ElevenLabs, saying on the 20VC podcast that more than 80% of reps hit their sales quota.<\/p>\n

ElevenLabs did not respond to a request for a comment.<\/p>\n

He added that the firm compensates both the account executive and customer success manager if they upsell a company within the first 12 months.<\/p>\n

“I’m paying double, but I don’t care,” Reina said. “It makes perfect sense because then I have these two people busting their ass to make sure that they actually can make more money, which is fantastic for me as a company.”<\/p>\n

The push for higher performance isn’t limited to AI startups.<\/p>\n

In April, Google said it was restructuring its compensation structure to increase rewards for top performers. “High performance is more important than ever,” Google’s head of compensation told staff at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At $11 billion AI startup ElevenLabs, the message to sales reps is simple: Hit 20x your base salary,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-486983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}