Articles by Bryan
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Of course they're putting ads in AI
Of course they're putting ads in AI
The internet is a miracle of universal access to opportunity, inquiry and connection. And ads pay for that miracle.
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Bryan Kim reposted thisBryan Kim reposted thisPaid marketing is good. In SV, saying that out loud is almost heresy haha. This week I talked to Nazli Tan. She led growth at Getir ($12B) and now she's building Hilbert, which raised a $28M Series A led by a16z. She says the growth playbook was written in Silicon Valley, for Silicon Valley. It pushes organic growth, with companies like Instagram and Snapchat in mind. Then supermarket and retailer CEOs come to the Valley to learn growth. And go home asking their teams why they're paying for customers instead of growing organically. Nazli explains that 90% of B2C enterprises acquire most of their customers through Meta and Google. They can't just move that volume to organic overnight. Paid can bring in profitable customers. A customer you pay to acquire today could keep shopping with you for the next decade. 🎧 My full conversation with Nazli on how she's rethinking growth with AI at Hilbert: https://lnkd.in/e86h8Bbf
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Bryan Kim shared thisIt's been incredible to see the company grow from 6 people at Series A to today, all the while maintaining (actually accelerating) the pace of innovation and kindness that defines so many of the team members. Forever long 11.Bryan Kim shared thisWe just closed an employee tender offer which values ElevenLabs at $22BN, up 2x from our Series D in February. The tender was led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, and the growth is driven by demand from enterprises to deploy ElevenAgents across sales, support, and operations. In 2022, we raised our first round at a $9 million valuation, which we announced alongside Eleven v1, our first Text to Speech model, and the first model to generate human-level speech. Four years later, as we reach our new valuation, we just released two new state-of-the-art Text to Speech models. Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo are our fastest and most emotive models yet, and are leading independent benchmarks. Alongside models, we have built a full interaction platform for AI. It allows organizations to deploy conversational agents, connected to their knowledge and systems, that interact naturally in any industry, geography, or context. This shift is driving much of our growth, with enterprise now accounting for 55% of our revenue, as businesses adopt ElevenAgents to support their customers and employees. Our technology is now used in daily operations at five of the world’s ten largest tech companies, five of the ten largest insurers, and four of the ten largest telecoms. The round was co-led by Wellington Management and T. Rowe Price, along with participation from Goldman Sachs, GIC, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, EQT Group, Sapphire Ventures, and BDT & MSD Partners. And grateful for ongoing support from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Alkeon Capital, The D. E. Shaw Group, Disruptive, Evantic Capital, ICONIQ, and Lightspeed. Most of all, this round is for the team that built the last four years. We're just getting started!
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Bryan Kim shared thisExcited to be back in Istanbul!Bryan Kim shared this𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱'𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗜𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗯𝘂𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝟭:𝟭. From October 12–14 founders, investors and tech leaders from the US, Europe, Türkiye and MENA will be at Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D. Here are a few of the people I can't wait to have in the room. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 -Kevin WeilKevin Weil led product at OpenAI Instagram and Twitter. Few people alive have shipped products to more users, and I'm curious to hear what he's building next. - Ekin Dogus Cubuk co-founded Periodic Labs after years at Google DeepMind. He's building AI that runs its own experiments to discover new materials. A Turkish founder working at the frontier of science, and I'm proud to bring him home. :) -Laura ModianoLaura Modiano (OpenAI), Stephan von PergerStephan von Perger (Anthropic) and Basil Fateen (NVIDIA) lead how the companies powering this wave work with startups. If you're building on their stack, these are the conversations to have! 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 Ilya Fushman (Kleiner Perkins) ran product and business at Dropbox before investing, so he has sat on both sides of the table. Elizabeth Weil (Scribble Ventures) backed SpaceX, Slack and Coinbase early. Alexandre Momeni (General Catalyst) joins Laura on stage to talk about the founder experience. Evgenia Plotnikova (Dawn Capital) is one of Europe's sharpest B2B software investors, behind Mimecast, Dataiku and Quantexa. Zhenya Loginov (Accel) and Emil Schaefer (Index Ventures) come from two firms that shaped European tech, from Spotify to Revolut. Bryan Kim (Mido Capital) spent years backing consumer founders as a partner at a16z companies like Elevenlabs. They'll be joined by investors from General Atlantic, HV, redalpine, Visionaries Bek Ventures and others. 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸. Once the app opens, you can send 1:1 meeting requests to every investor, speaker and founder attending. Oct 12: Invite-only Investor Day at Sait Halim Paşa Mansion on the Bosphorus Oct 12: Founder Day at Dotshub, with 𝗵𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘀 hosted by OpenAI, Manus AI, fal and Hilbert Oct 13–14: Main event at Rixos Tersane Beyond the stage, there'll be curated founder-investor meetings, roundtables and side events, so there are more ways to engage than the main program alone. We want these few days to be worth it for everyone building here and everyone making the trip to Istanbul. I'm very proud of where we are! Istanbul is the bridge nobody expected. Come build on it. 🌉 Tickets 👉 istanbulslushd.com - Only 2.5 weeks left
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Bryan Kim reposted thisBryan Kim reposted thisYou hear the term “generational company” thrown around a lot in startupland. After studying them for the last year and writing a case about them for my Harvard Business School class (Launching Tech Ventures in the Age of AI), I can say with conviction that ElevenLabs belongs in that elite category. Mati Staniszewski is an extraordinary leader who has made brilliant strategic choices in navigating from 0 —> 800 employees and 0 —> $600m in revenue in just a few years. Earlier this week, our 150 students vigorously debated and deconstructed those choices, particularly his go to market decisions and the debate between a bottoms up product-led growth motion and a top down sales-led growth motion. And through our case method debate, some tremendous insights emerged. Special thanks to the entire ElevenLabs team, but especially Anna Serobyan and Todd Grover for their help. And double thanks to Bryan Kim and Jennifer Li for helping support the case and sharing their perspectives.
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Bryan Kim shared thisHow I thought about Raspberry: 1/ look at what you are wearing right now (answer: clothes) 2/ they need to be concieved, designed and made 3/ the current trend is that the refreshment cycle is getting faster everyday 4/ this is a giant industry that affects everyone both regarding the price and style :) 5/ AI can massively help with this workflow and increase efficiency by order of magnitude Raspberry is executing on this vision and it's very exciting to see the launch of Raspberry Agents!Bryan Kim shared thisToday, we’re launching the new Raspberry. When we started Raspberry 3 years ago, we set out to help fashion teams move faster from an idea to something real. Fashion and retail teams move through complex workflows from researching trends and developing concepts to creating collections, technical designs, campaigns, wholesale materials, and commerce-ready assets. Finally, we created a platform that can work across design, technical, manufacturing, merchandising, marketing, and ecommerce teams in a coordinated effort with the full support of AI Agents. With Raspberry’s Agents, teams can give Raspberry a goal, build a plan together, and execute complex, multi-step workflows across the product development lifecycle. This is the biggest evolution of Raspberry since we started the company. See what a day with the new Raspberry looks like. Read our press release below in the comments.
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Bryan Kim shared thisWas such a pleasure to be at USC Marshall School of Business with Dan Wadhwani and the students. Really grateful for the discussion, questions and the energy in the room! Hope to be back soon ✌🏼Bryan Kim shared thisWhat a thrill to have Bryan Kim visit with the students running USC Venture Capital tonight. Bryan is the founder of Mido Capital, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, an early investor in ElevenLabs, BeReal., and Cluely among other firms, and before that a Senior Director at Snap Inc. He shared how he got into early-stage venture investing, how he builds relationships with promising founders and earns their trust, and a paradox: why he thinks consumer AI is dead, yet why he is so excited about the space. (Hint: opportunities in “neo” consumer AI has never been better.) Jai Choi, Jack Crawford, Megan Aved, USC Marshall School of Business Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies - USC Marshall
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Bryan Kim shared thisNew day for music 🎶Bryan Kim shared thisOur music models were built with artists, labels, and publishers from the start. Today that work goes further with a multi-year strategic partnership with Universal Music Group, our first with a major label. The first product, now in development, is a new AI-powered platform that lets fans create with music from participating artists and songwriters. Remix, mashup, create new interpretations, and add personalized vocals. We'll be building AI audio products for artists and songwriters themselves alongside it.
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Bryan Kim shared thisBest IR job in the world working for a world class team 👇🏼Bryan Kim shared thisWe are hiring on our team! Specifically for Asia capital formation coverage - must be a native Korean or Japanese speaker, extremely well-networked within the Asia LP universe and ideally based in region or in SF. DM for more details and more about our mission here: https://lnkd.in/gdtcZPZhA16Z Investor Relations is now Global Partnerships | Andreessen HorowitzA16Z Investor Relations is now Global Partnerships | Andreessen Horowitz
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Bryan Kim shared thisWhen a world class product becomes part of the culture 🥰Bryan Kim shared thisTed Lasso is sending Partiful invites now! If you're asking the same question that blew up my phone this week: No, we didn't know this was going to happen. When Partiful is name dropped in a show this big, it's because the product is now recognizable enough to just be part of the story. Ted literally says, “Each and every one of you will get a Partiful invite,” and the scene just keeps moving. No explanation of what Partiful is. None needed. It's a rare thing to build a product that becomes part of the lexicon. If you want to be part of creating culture, not just consuming it... we're hiring.
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Congrats Justin!
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Bryan Kim liked thisBryan Kim liked thisPaid marketing is good. In SV, saying that out loud is almost heresy haha. This week I talked to Nazli Tan. She led growth at Getir ($12B) and now she's building Hilbert, which raised a $28M Series A led by a16z. She says the growth playbook was written in Silicon Valley, for Silicon Valley. It pushes organic growth, with companies like Instagram and Snapchat in mind. Then supermarket and retailer CEOs come to the Valley to learn growth. And go home asking their teams why they're paying for customers instead of growing organically. Nazli explains that 90% of B2C enterprises acquire most of their customers through Meta and Google. They can't just move that volume to organic overnight. Paid can bring in profitable customers. A customer you pay to acquire today could keep shopping with you for the next decade. 🎧 My full conversation with Nazli on how she's rethinking growth with AI at Hilbert: https://lnkd.in/e86h8Bbf
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Bryan Kim liked thisBryan Kim liked thisAfter nearly a decade in investment banking, most recently at Morgan Stanley, I'm closing out that chapter of my career. I've been fortunate to have worked with some of the best minds in the business in NY and Silicon Valley. I learned the meaning of excellence and how to tackle problems that don't have a clear playbook, stay steady when the stakes are high and things get difficult, and execute under pressure to turn challenges into opportunities. Along this incredible run, I had a lot of fun with colleagues and clients who made the many late nights worth it. My years leading IPOs, M&A, and financings in technology also gave me a front-row seat to the AI buildout. Working with companies across the ecosystem, from software to infrastructure, made one thing clear: AI compute is becoming one of the most critical technology challenges of our time, and fast inference is the defining advantage in an emerging agentic world. That's what drew me to Cerebras, and I'm excited to share that I've joined as Head of Capital Markets and Treasury. Cerebras is re-architecting AI infrastructure with the Wafer-Scale Engine, making fast inference possible at scale. I look forward to building the capital markets and treasury function as the company continues to grow. Thank you to Bob Komin and Andrew Feldman for the opportunity to join this team and be part of what’s next 🚀🚀🚀
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Bryan Kim reacted on thisBryan Kim reacted on thisJensen Huang is coming to ElevenLabs Summit NYC. NVIDIA has partnered with ElevenLabs since our earliest days, and it's a big part of how we keep pushing what voice and audio AI can do. On November 11, Jensen will join our co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski for a conversation on the future of AI, and what changes as voice becomes a primary way people interact with technology. Attendance is by approval. Apply to join: https://lnkd.in/g8y5fqWw
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Bryan Kim reacted on thisBryan Kim reacted on thisThrilled that Jensen Huang will be joining us at ElevenLabs Summit in New York on 11/11 for a fireside conversation! NVIDIA has been with us since our earliest days, all the way back to 2022 (!), and is a part of how we keep pushing what voice AI and voice agents can do. Beyond NVIDIA being a phenomenal partner, the conversations with their team and Jensen always give us a good sneak peek into the future! This time we'll do it on stage and bring it to everyone: where AI is heading, and what changes when voice becomes a primary way people interact with technology. See you in NYC, Jensen!
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Bryan Kim reacted on thisBryan Kim reacted on thisYour agent can now create editable designs and bring them into motion. No Figma or Canva required. Introducing Tesseract for design. Ask your agent to create a design system with typography, colors, and layouts, then bring it to life with motion, footage, and sound. Keep refining individual layers as you go. One workflow, from the first design to the final editable video. Tesseract is free. Try it with Opus 5.5 or GPT-6 Astra. https://lnkd.in/gKqRn_Gz
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Bryan Kim reacted on thisBryan Kim reacted on thisOur mission is to transform how we interact with technology - moving from keyboards, screens, and coding languages to speech. Enabling us to interact with technology on our own terms. Voice models have always been the core of that work - the better the voice, the more seamless the interaction. That remains true today with the release of our fastest and most emotive text to speech model, v4. It's already benchmarked as the best in the world - huge credit to Piotr Dabkowski and an incredible team for building it. Flavio Schneider Maximiliano L. Anthony Luo Hyeong-Seok Choi Piotr Blinowski Hubert Siuzdak Tim von Känel Ryan Stuntz Ameya Khare Jeremy Baum Ani Janelidze Dan Jasnow
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Bryan Kim reacted on thisBryan Kim reacted on this$22B. Today, ElevenLabs closed an employee tender offer at a $22B valuation. I have only been here 6 months, so the credit belongs to the people who have spent years building the company to this point. But that’s been long enough to see one thing clearly, the ambition inside ElevenLabs is much bigger than the milestones we’ve hit so far. We will celebrate this one briefly, then get back to building for our customers and partners.
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