20Sales: Inside ElevenLabs $330M ARR Sales Machine | The 20x Sales Comp Plan Reps Must Hit | How to Land and Expand in a World of AI | Why Product-Market-Fit is BS, Reps Should Not Be in the Office and Outbound is King with Carles Reina

Most sales leaders obsess over product-market fit before building their revenue engine. Carles Reina thinks that's backwards. The VP of Sales at ElevenLabs helped scale the AI voice company from a $20,000 angel investment to $330 million ARR in three years by rejecting conventional sales wisdom at every turn. His approach: shame underperformers publicly, keep salespeople out of the office, and start selling before you've figured out what you're selling.

Reina's contrarian playbook starts with a fundamental rejection of the product-market fit gospel. When ElevenLabs launched in January 2023 and hit one million users within a month, the original plan was to build an enterprise sales team. Instead, they pivoted their entire go-to-market strategy on the fly. "The company ended up like growing so quickly that like we ended up switching it," Reina explains. Rather than waiting for perfect product clarity, they let customer demand reshape their sales approach in real time.

This willingness to build the plane while flying it extends to Reina's most controversial management philosophy: public criticism of underperformers. While most sales leaders follow the "praise in public, criticize in private" rule, Reina actively rejects it. "You need to shame them. Like, if someone hasn't done their job, they haven't done their job. And you need to actually publicly tell them so that, like, they understand that they haven't done their job, and everyone else knows that, like, they're getting shit for it." The logic is simple: public accountability creates learning opportunities for the entire team, not just the individual being criticized.

Reina's second major departure from sales orthodoxy involves office culture. He believes salespeople should never be anchored to headquarters. "If you are constantly in the office doing virtual meetings only with your customers, you're doing it wrong," he argues. His sales team operates with radical geographic flexibility, with reps traveling constantly to meet customers face-to-face. The VP himself embodies this approach, describing himself as "the SDR in chief" who personally outbounds CEOs while traveling globally. This led to meetings with companies like Razer after Reina cold-messaged their CEO during a Singapore trip.

Building sales culture remotely requires what Reina calls ruthlessness. Rather than relying on office proximity to maintain team cohesion, he demands constant travel and multiple customer touchpoints. The approach works because it aligns incentives with results rather than face time. But it requires extra management overhead and a willingness to trust reps who operate with significant autonomy.

The compensation structure at ElevenLabs reflects this results-first mentality. Rather than traditional quota-based commissions, they tie bonuses to net revenue retention metrics. "Once it's over one fifteen, you get commented," Reina explains, referring to the 115% NRR threshold that triggers escalating commission multipliers. Hit higher retention rates and reps can earn 2x, 3x, or 4x bonuses. This structure incentivizes not just landing new customers but ensuring they expand their usage over time.

For founders building sales teams in fast-moving markets, Reina's approach suggests three concrete shifts. First, start selling before you've perfected product-market fit. Customer conversations will teach you what to build faster than internal strategy sessions. Second, embrace geographic distribution for your sales team, but compensate with increased accountability and travel budgets. Third, tie compensation to retention metrics rather than just new bookings to ensure your growth compounds.

The most important insight from ElevenLabs' rapid scaling isn't about specific tactics but about timing. In markets moving as quickly as AI, waiting for perfect clarity before building your revenue engine means ceding ground to competitors who are learning by doing. Reina's $20,000 investment that returned $800,000 in three years happened because he committed to founders who were building in real time, not perfecting their pitch deck. Sales leaders should take note: sometimes the best product-market fit comes from aggressive market testing, not patient product development.