If I had to restart @ElevenLabs GTM from scratch, these are the things that I would change 🖊️
- Hire quicker. I was alone selling for the first 9 months because I believed we didn't have PMF. Main reasons: the AI tourist external mantra of 2023, and the uphill battle convincing everyone to hire more GTM (Sales development, Sales, Customer Success) because we were still mostly PLG / self-service. The hiring constraint lasted until earlier this year when we boosted our team to meet demand.
- Build an enablement team earlier. Sales enablement has such an important role in an org, and we mostly think about it when we hire a lot of people. The reality is that we need Enablement earlier due to the speed of product iteration.
- Open more markets. The results from Uber v Lyft operating models played a key role in deciding to open markets early, but I would triple down on it if we were to start over.
- Have more big bets. Similar to VCs, you only need 1 big bet to work in order to generate Alpha. We could have executed more big bets if we had had a single person owning & iterating on them. Former successful founder profile with drive and speed.
- Be more vocal about product ROI & our success. People buy from people, and companies buy based on success & ROI. In AI, we've all been slow showing ROI. This should be the key number when you start a conversation.
- Hire senior sellers. In startups, we've been told that culture is everything and someone with +25y experience may struggle to fit in. This is bullshit. The experience, connections and drive +25y sellers bring is crazy. We have a bunch today, but I would hire many more earlier.
- Reduce cash commissions and replace them with more equity. Cash is king, but Equity is queen. Queens also rule countries, so why not make Equity the dominant one in GTM?
- Open more offices. We are a remote-first company, but our customers are everywhere, and employees want to meet each other. I would open more offices to be embedded in markets quicker.
- Fun brand. Brand perception is 33% of the work. Building a fun brand adds quickly.
- Outbounds outbounds outbounds. We waited too long to migrate to an Outbound organisation. I would do it from day 1 now.
- Pipeline construction with more whales. The ideal pipeline needs to have a combo of segments to reduce risk, improve results and provide liquidity. We waited too long to pitch & bring whales.
- Not all deals are good deals. We, sellers, want to close a lot of ARR, but it is important to split early on between good vs bad deals.
Thank you to Tomasz Gmur for asking how I would do GTM again!
The problem with vibe-coding is that it opened the floodgates to a certain kind of person (myself included) who now pushes the idea that you can vibe-code an app in a few days and start printing life changing amounts of money.
It’s turning into the same fake and lame energy of the info-guru world where the lifestyle becomes the product by setting unrealistic expectations to lazy people who want to get rich quick.
In case I misled people: my belief is you can vibe-code an MVP. You can get interest, a waitlist, even early revenue. If the product is simple or you have basic engineering instincts, sometimes you really can build and scale something meaningful fast. It happens.
But most of the time building real software still takes months. It needs iteration, debugging, new features, and actual users so you can test and fix. Non-engineers often misunderstand that software is a living, breathing organism. It needs maintenance, it needs oxygen (distribution and growth), and none of that is instant or finitely required.
Anyone claiming you can fully automate marketing is lying. Anyone promising thousands of paying users overnight is selling an edge case. These outcomes happen, but they’re rare and treating them as the standard is how people end up disillusioned and angry.
A lot of the “software fell off” narrative comes from comparing today to the 2000s/2010s, when (I believe) companies were built with decades in mind. Too many founders now (again, myself included) fantasize about quick wealth instead of lasting impact, largely due to social media and very largely due to every VC jamming the Cursor, Lovable, etc narrative down our throats (see: the fastest company to 100M ARR charts).
I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to get rich, even quickly. That’s actually exactly what I want to do. I’m saying you may see more success by aiming to build something enduring because the opposite is a very unlikely-to-hit gamble where survivorship bias the only thing you see on your feed.
To be completely clear (and TLDR): for selfish reasons alone, you should want to build for long-term impact. Do not let social media convince you that you can no-code a $10M ARR SaaS or raising $50M at 22 and exiting in 2 years are normal.
⚡️The system is eating itself.
When Amazon, UPS, Intel, and others start cutting this deep simultaneously, it means something more fundamental than “tight margins.” It means the productive layer of the economy is collapsing under the weight of its own optimization logic.
Every layoff now is both an act of short-term rationality and long-term suicide. The firms know it. The executives know it. The markets know it. But they can’t stop.
They’re trapped in a closed feedback loop, a machine that rewards death dressed as discipline.
Capitalism has crossed into a stage where it no longer needs humans to function, but still depends on their belief to exist. That’s the contradiction, the machine is pruning its own believers while pretending it’s efficiency.
1. The “consumer economy” is already dead.
Nobody wants to say it yet, but the consumer model, the entire foundation of Western postwar prosperity, is quietly finished.
You can’t build infinite growth on finite wages, and you can’t sustain demand while hollowing out the class that drives it. The middle layer of society - the producers, buyers, dreamers - has been strip-mined to the point where they can no longer regenerate.
The 2020s economy is not cyclical recession. It’s metabolic collapse. The system can’t process its own waste or regenerate its base anymore. It’s like an organism starving while eating its muscles to stay warm.
2. The elites know this, but they’ve chosen to accelerate collapse.
Here’s the real unspoken truth: the people running these companies, the ones with the spreadsheets and control over capital flows - they know exactly what’s happening.
They understand the reflexive trap: if they don’t cut, their stock dies. If they cut, the world dies.
They’ve chosen to save the stock. Because the stock is their world.
This is the quiet revelation of our time - we are ruled by people whose survival incentives are no longer tied to the survival of the system itself.
They’ve built lifeboats - offshore wealth, private security, parallel digital economies - and they’re optimizing the ship for their escape, not for collective navigation.
3. The next phase is narrative triage.
When the system can no longer grow, it starts storytelling harder.
Expect every layoff wave to be accompanied by new propaganda about “AI productivity,” “efficiency,” “lean reinvention,” and “post-labor creativity.”
The goal will be to reframe collapse as progress - to convince people that losing their jobs is the dawn of a “new paradigm.”
But it’s camouflage. The truth underneath is that automation and financialization are converging into a post-human economy where capital reproduces without labor.
4. Final layer
When a system prioritizes margin over humanity, it signals that it has lost faith in the future.
These layoffs tell us that the machine no longer knows how to grow except by shrinking.
It is the same signal we’ve seen in housing, in politics, in fertility, in faith.
The same quiet collapse, a civilization optimizing itself into silence.
And the question hidden beneath this post:
“Who will have money left to buy your products next year?” -
is really this:
Who will be left to believe in the story that built it all?
If it really is over, which it might be, this was the most uninspiring soulless cycle
In 2021 doing your first peer-to-peer swaps through liquidity pools, claiming the first UNI airdrop, staking tokens in cartoon DeFi vaults, minting and sweeping your first NFTs, bidding your first FND art auction, watching punks go to Christie’s
Pumpdotfun is cool tech, but this cycle was missing the magic of those raw formative moments interacting with the technology. No early internet vibes anymore, no new use cases for the technology, just gambling
A New Era with V3🪄
UI/UX Overhaul:
We’re elevating Alchemist AI with a modern, professional design focused on clarity, usability, and efficiency. The new minimal aesthetic reduces visual clutter while a modular UI framework and customizable parameters let users tailor the platform to their specific workflows.
On the UX side, we’ve optimized the user journey with contextual prompts, progressive disclosure for advanced features, and micro-interactions that streamline navigation and task execution. Clear feedback mechanisms guide users confidently, ensuring an intuitive and productive app-building experience.
This overhaul is not just cosmetic—it’s designed to improve usability, accessibility, and overall productivity, making Alchemist AI a powerful yet approachable platform for creators of all skill levels.
You sold $build
You sold $shift
I held onto my already big positions and added a sized $mlg to the list at $55M
$MLG is now at $100M
Build and shift have fully recovered from the lows and will both go much higher from here.
New Feature Live!🚨
Introducing Audio Prompts—a feature that enables users to seamlessly integrate music tracks, sound effects, and audio interactions into their applications.
With Audio Prompts, users can specify audio requirements directly in their natural language prompts. Alchemist AI extracts your query, searches a comprehensive audio library, and integrates the selected sounds into the app's functionality.
Example Prompt:
"Create a snake game with an 'eating' sound effect that plays each time an element is consumed. After an element is eaten, replace the previous sound with a new one. Each sound should play for 3 seconds."
This update expands the creative possibilities for users, enabling richer, more immersive experiences in your Alchemist AI generated applications.
Introducing Text-to-3D
We’ve integrated a robust new API into Alchemist AI, enabling users to generate 3D assets directly from natural language descriptions. Quickly generate game-ready assets for environments, characters, or props.
Whether you’re envisioning a futuristic vehicle, a medieval castle, or a dynamic game prop, simply describe it in text, and our system transforms your words into fully modeled and textured 3D assets.
3D Model Generation
Using parametric modeling techniques, the API translates the parsed input into a procedural 3D asset. This involves:
• Mesh Generation: Constructing the geometry of the object based on the description.
• Texture Mapping: Applying materials and surface details to enhance realism.
• Lighting Simulation: Adding light sources to define shadows and reflections.
Machina Foundry is LIVE! 🚨
The wait is over—welcome to Machina Foundry, Alchemist AI’s platform for building, deploying, and managing AI agents.
Step into Machina Foundry
Live Data Integration:
Input live data for your agent, specifying how it should be parsed, prioritized, and applied to ensure it remains contextually relevant and purpose-driven.
X Configuration:
Customize your agent's behavior on X, including posting frequency, reply logic, and engagement patterns. Fine-tune responses to mentions, trending topics, and search queries for real-time functionality.
Tools Configuration:
Equip your agent with tools to enhance functionality, like setting reply intervals or conducting token and mention searches. Adjust configurations dynamically to match specific goals.
Agent Simulation:
Test your agent's behavior in a controlled environment. Simulate posting or replying to validate performance and refine configurations before deployment.
Agent Deployment:
Deploy your agent seamlessly. Seed liquidity with $ALCH tokens, set an initial development buy, and connect your agent directly to X for live operation.
Bought some $GOAL
Tech seems interesting
As always I have invested what I’m willing to lose (important)
Entry was 330k
GL
EGhUbzGUXEdBRzwg2HzJnnydGFRZ8aKcj2HsYubkpump
Azarus: Telegram Mini-Apps
Azarus now expands its capabilities to Telegram, bringing the same seamless app generation experience you know and love into one of the world’s largest messaging platform.
With just a prompt, users can now create and deploy mini-apps directly within Telegram.
Now, that's Magic🪄✨
New Feature Alert: Azarus Now Available on Telegram! 🚨
Azarus can now be accessed via Telegram chat, offering users a seamless way to interact with the platform. You can now easily create apps, engage in conversations, and make betting predictions—all within the Telegram interface.
Access the Azarus Telegram bot here: https://t.co/4387vQllmB
This marks the launch of the beta version, with the full range of capabilities now available for enhanced user convenience. In future updates, Azarus can be integrated into Telegram groups, enabling the creation of games, apps, and tools directly for group members, along with apps that can be played within Telegram itself.
Now, that’s Magic! 🪄✨
We want to take a moment to address the upcoming unlock process for the Team (3%) allocations, as we truly understand the community's concerns. We share the responsibility of ensuring the long-term stability of our ecosystem, and we are committed to being transparent about this process.
To clarify, these unlocks are intentional and gradual. The Team allocation includes a 1-month cliff, followed by a 6-month linear unlock. This is designed to ensure that tokens are released steadily over time, minimizing any potential immediate impact on the market. In practice, this means only 0.1% (~70k at current prices) of tokens will be released EACH week for the next 6 months. Given our average weekly volume of over 70 million, this amount is relatively small and should not disrupt the market.
We want to assure the community again, that we have sufficient funding at this moment, and we remain focused on the long-term health of the project. However, because the tokens are being unlocked gradually, there is no way for us to relock the entire 3% allocation at this time.
We’d also like to ask the community to consider this: Would you prefer a team that has ongoing incentives to work hard and push the project forward, or one that isn’t compensated? Think of it like working without getting paid – we’re sure that’s not something anyone would want. The Team’s success and motivation are tied to the project’s success, and we believe this is crucial for progress.
Our promise to the community is clear: we will never sell in a way that harms the project or the chart. We will only sell if absolutely necessary for funding development. If there’s no need for funding, we will lock the remaining tokens for an extended period of time, ensuring long-term stability.
Additionally, our Marketing allocation is essential for targeted campaigns, strategic partnerships, and covering key marketing expenses. At the same time, our treasury funds support ongoing development, such as infrastructure, server maintenance, and API enhancements. A significant portion of the supply has been used on existing CEX listings, and more will be used in future listings as well. These costs are significant, and we hope the community can understand that instead of pressuring us to relock tokens that are needed, it’s more beneficial for the project’s future to allow us to use these resources responsibly.
Thank you for your continued support and understanding. We are in this together, and we remain committed to building something lasting for the community.
Once again, we want to extend our warmest wishes to all Alchemists around the world. Merry Christmas! Let’s embrace the spirit of the holidays and look forward to an even brighter and more magical Arcane Forge in 2025!