ElevenLabs just raised at an $11B valuation. Poetic number, right?

They have the dream GTM “barbell” model. I think you’re going to see this shape in a lot of the hot AI companies. Many of them have the PLG side (Lovable, Gamma, Cursor) and we’re seeing them build the Enterprise side very quickly now.

And with the brand and community momentum, it becomes a flywheel.

Two core motions — PLG and Enterprise. On one side, mass market adoption and touchless revenue. On the other, 6-7 figure deals, enterprise AEs, Forward Deployed Engineers.

Minimal investment in the middle. No gated eBooks. No MQL factory. No mid-ACV sellers.

The hollow middle is a feature, not a bug.

ElevenLabs went from $0 to $330M ARR in 3 years. They're profitable. They just raised $500M from Sequoia at $11B. And they're eyeing an IPO in 2027-2028.

Here's the revenue trajectory:

Revenue per employee is somewhere between $570K and $1.65M depending on whose headcount number you use.

The barbell GTM is one of the ingredients to this success.

The left side of the barbell is pure product-led growth.

The product surface area is massive: text-to-speech, voice cloning, AI dubbing in 30+ languages, podcast generation, sound effects, music, a free mobile reader app. Every surface is a top-of-funnel entry point.

ElevenLabs didn't just build a product — they built a creator economy around it.

Their Voice Library marketplace has 10,000+ voices, with 5,000+ contributed by creators. They've paid out millions to voice creators who earn every time someone uses their voice. It's a two-sided marketplace layered on top of a SaaS product.

ElevenLabs became the default voice engine for "faceless YouTube channels" — creators who make videos without ever appearing on camera. AI-generated narration over stock footage or AI-generated visuals. It's a massive trend: 38% of new creator monetization ventures in 2025 were faceless channels.

A creator called demonflyingfox made "Harry Potter by Balenciaga" — an AI-generated parody that racked up 7M+ YouTube views and millions more on TikTok. Used ElevenLabs for the voices, Midjourney for the visuals, ChatGPT for the script. One YouTube commenter nailed it: "You just created a $2 million ad for probably less than 10 bucks."

You can see this community momentum it in the numbers. 72K Discord members. 206K LinkedIn followers. 163K on Twitter.

Now the right side. While millions of individuals use the free and self-serve tiers, ElevenLabs has simultaneously built a serious enterprise sales machine.

The Revolut case study tells the story best: they deployed ElevenLabs Agents across 4M+ of their 70M global customers. 8x faster time to resolution. 99.7% call success rate. Native-quality voice in 31+ languages.

Co-founder Mati Staniszewski came from Palantir. And the Palantir influence is all over the enterprise GTM:

Forward Deployed Engineers — ElevenLabs is hiring FDEs in two tracks. The FDE-Strategist role is customer-facing: meeting strategic customers, presenting to C-suite, scoping new industries. The FDE-Software Engineer role is the implementation partner: building complex integrations, owning end-to-end execution of major deployments.

The Enterprise AE job posting spells it out: "proven success closing seven-figure deals" in "healthcare, government, and finance." They want 7+ years of quota-carrying enterprise experience. And they're hiring AEs in 10+ geographies simultaneously — US, UK, Central Europe, Spain, Japan, India, Singapore, Mexico, Argentina, Southeast Asia.

This isn't "test a market." They are building a true enterprise motion.

The barbell is the core investment allocation. The brand and community momentum turn it into a flywheel.

PLG builds brand. Millions of users generating content with ElevenLabs = you don't need to explain who you are in an enterprise sales call. Elena Verna calls this "product-led brand" — when your self-serve adoption (and delight) IS your brand marketing.

Brand drives enterprise deals. When millions of people are using your product and participating in the community, you're definitely going to make the short list for enterprise buyers.

Enterprise validates the platform. Big logos (Meta, Salesforce, Revolut) signal trust. Case studies with real numbers signal capability. This feeds back into the community.

Community drives more PLG. 72K Discord members sharing techniques. 10K+ voices on the marketplace. YouTube creators using ElevenLabs as their default tool. Every creator is a distribution channel.

Repeat.

ElevenLabs isn't the only one running the barbell. Cursor, Canva, Vercel, Figma — the fastest growing AI-era companies are running some version of this. And I expect more to follow.

The ElevenLabs playbook has a few specific ingredients worth studying:

The net: $0 to $330M ARR in 3 years. Profitable.

Who else is doing this well?