ElevenLabs grew from 10 people to 400 in 3 years: Victoria Weller, Operations at ElevenLabs
Victoria Weller breaks down how ElevenLabs scaled from 10 to 400 employees in three years while maintaining their culture through controversial decisions like eliminating job titles entirely. She argues that hypergrowth companies must ruthlessly screen for ego and prioritize impact over individual recognition, revealing how their hiring philosophy shifted from convincing AI evangelists to join to filtering through massive application volumes after their $11 billion valuation announcement.
Key takeaways
- •Screen heavily for ego in every interview—candidates who prioritize personal glory over outcomes will destroy hypergrowth culture
- •Eliminate job titles to attract people who want impact rather than power and status
- •Build teams that are hyper-competitive externally but humble and collaborative internally
- •Every late hire puts company goals in jeopardy when operating in a limited time window to become generational
- •Throw high-potential people into critical projects outside their experience—like running SOC 2 compliance solo—to accelerate both learning and execution
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Best moment
ElevenLabs went from 10 people to 400 in under 3 years—and they're hiring to reach 900+ by end of 2025. The secret? They screen heavily for ego in every interview, immediately filtering out anyone who puts personal glory over outcomes.
I joined almost three years ago. We were 10 people at the time. Now we're at 400 and haven't stopped scaling. We want to be at 900 and above by the end of the year, not just by projecting the headcount growth and saying this is how fast we're scaling, but actually looking at what are the products we wanna build, what are the markets we wanna conquer, and who do we need to make that happen as lean and performant as possible. And we have so much on the agenda that we we need 900 plus people by the 2026 to make that happen. So on the talent acquisition side of operations, there will be a lot going on. The
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