Anna Makovnikova

when you scale as fast as ElevenLabs every offsite feels completly different. here’s 4 takeaways from day 1 yesterday: - hypergrowth continues. new faces (many!), more traction, new regions, new verticals. - voice is becoming the new interface, not just a cool feature - Ben Budde's energy is contagious - scaling isn’t just more of the same. it’s learning to move faster without losing the why.

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When thinking about how to scale a company, I find it helpful to use a tool I call the Market Box. Like a normal box, the Market Box has 6 sides that define a footprint in a market. When a company starts out, the first challenge is to reach product-market fit. For product-market fit, you work on the product to make it fit a market, but which market? The 6 sides of a Market Box are:  1. Market breadth: addressed verticals 2. Market reach: addressed sectors 3. Go-to-market approach: e.g., direct or indirect, OEM, PLG, marketplace 4. Geographies:, e.g., London, UK, Europe 5. The problem you solve, e.g., payroll, payments 6. The market tier you address, e.g., Enterprise customers, SMB Each of these sides can be of different sizes or not there at all. For instance, a company may choose to focus on the UK (small Market Box side) or the entire world (no Market Box side). As you scale, you must enjoy Market Pull. Market Pull is when you grow without having to pay too much for your growth, e.g., you benefit from a superior product at the right price point, from partnerships, from integrations with growth products, from your reputation, etc. When product-market fit is achieved for the initial Market Box, this box often must have all 6 sides in place with relatively small sides. One measure of product-market fit is whether Market Pull is in place or how easy it is to acquire new customers (ROI from sales and market efforts, sales efficiency). When companies run into issues with scaling, seen by a too low sales efficiency; lack of Market Pull, it is very often because their Market Box is too big for them to enjoy the benefits of Market Pull. If this is the case you need to zoom in by making one of the Market Box sides smaller. After you regain Market Pull you can make the Market Box side bigger again or remove it completely. I call it to zoom out/zoom in when you make a Market Box side bigger/smaller. The shape of a Market Box for a European company is very different from a US company and this is exactly why it is much easier to scale in the US. For most markets in Europe, you have to zoom out relatively early, much earlier than in the US and every time you zoom out you risk losing Market Pull. When you compete against someone who successfully addresses a bigger Market Box than you, many times the best approach is to go deeper with the problem(s) you address. All of this is why it is so difficult to scale a company in Europe. One solution for Europe is to have more capital available to fund expanding Market Box sides 1, 2 3 and 4. Most of the VC and PE funds addressing this part of the scale up journey are relatively small and they cannot think big enough when they support companies. To address this either requires VC/PE market consolidation to make the funds bigger or more syndication between the funds such that they can pool resources and think much bigger when they have a winner on their hands.

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Is your company really product-led or just using the label? Being product-led isn’t about intentions. It’s about actions. Alignment. Consistency. Let’s test where you stand. Take 5 minutes. Answer 10 questions. → “Yes” if it’s fully true → “Partially” if it’s sometimes true, not consistent → “No” if it rarely happens This isn’t a pass/fail test. It’s a mirror for your product maturity, highlighting both strengths and growth gaps. 💡 10 Questions to Reflect On 1. Is product your growth engine? (Driving acquisition, retention, expansion not just sales/marketing?) 2. Can users immediately see the product’s value? (Free trials, freemium, or seamless demos?) 3. Are decisions powered by product usage data? (And is it actually being acted on?) 4. Are all teams aligned around product success metrics? (User outcomes over vanity metrics?) 5. Do PMs truly own growth and user experience? (Or are they stuck in backlog mode?) 6. Is user feedback your north star? (Real needs over internal assumptions?) 7. Is self-serve onboarding smooth and effective? (Can users succeed without hand-holding?) 8. Are friction points actively removed? (Do you track and fix where users get stuck?) 9. Does leadership champion the product? (Not just approve it, believe in it as a growth lever?) 10. Is long-term user value prioritized? (Relationships over short-term wins?) Now what? 👉 Count your “Yes” answers. 8–10 → Strong product-led culture 5–7 → Progressing, but needs reinforcement 0–4 → Likely still sales/marketing-led Then ask: What’s the ONE area we need to focus on next? Drop your score below 👇 And share one insight that surprised you. #ProductLedGrowth #ProductManagement #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement #CustomerCentricity #SaaS

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It’s been a busy summer at MindStudio, and as we move into Fall, I wanted to share a recap of some of what we shipped over the past three months.  𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀   - 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀: vibe code fully-customizable user inputs and assets. If you can imagine it, you can build it.   - 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (NodeJS + Python): install packages, run data analysis… anything you can do in code, your agent can now do.   - 𝗗𝗲𝗯𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝟮.𝟬: breakpoints, mock data, state diffs, auto-generated insights, chat-to-fix, and more. I believe the MindStudio Debugger is THE most powerful test bed for building and understanding AI agents.   - 𝗭𝗲𝗿𝗼-𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗴 𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀: instantly turn your agents into MCP tools for use in other AI apps.   - 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: Guest Access, Signed URLs, and seamless AI Agent embedding on your own domains.   - 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗨𝘀𝗲: define your own tools (no code needed) and give agents smarter function-calling abilities.   - 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁: scaffold new agents in minutes, no code required.   - 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗢𝘄𝗻 𝗞𝗲𝘆𝘀: plug in your own model and service provider credentials.   - 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿-𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲: manage state and data persistence via user variables.   - 𝗭𝗲𝗿𝗼-𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘁 𝗛𝗧𝗠𝗟 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: create emails, docs, and assets instantly.   - 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 (𝗠𝗦𝗖𝗥): connect to any API or third-party service.   - …and a lot more under the hood.  𝗕𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀   - 𝟭𝟵𝟱 𝗔𝗜 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 available with zero setup, spanning text, image, video, and audio.   - 𝟭𝟬𝟵 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 in the MindStudio Standard Library.   - 𝟲𝟲𝟯 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 to third-party services (and counting, with new ones added weekly).  Thanks for being with us on this journey and we're excited to keep building :)

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It's easy to get distracted by the headline here - $120M in ARR in 7 months (yeah yeah yeah, quite impressive) - but this exchange was the highlight and a nuanced perspective that is getting lost amongst all of the shiny conversations re: agentic commerce & payments: Harry Stebbings of 20VC "What would you most like to do now that you aren't doing or can't do?" Anton Osika of Lovable "So I would like to rethink how the applications are built. Like, what is the best way to build an application... All of those software applications are going to have some sort of AI, and they are going to have completely seamless payment and checkout flows." I wish I could say we had the foresight to see this coming in 2021 when we first started building Basis Theory (we didn't) but we knew *something* was going to change and it would be dramatically impactful. Today, some of the most interesting payments flows are distributed or embedded. Tomorrow, they will be agentic. Agnostic, flexible and modular payments infrastructure is required for all of it 🙌 Check out the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gqPTZJD9

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