AI companies aren’t only innovating at the cutting edge of tech, but they also seem to be innovating in terms of their organizational structures.
Mati Staniszewski, the co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the AI voice platform valued at $6.6 billion, has made a bold management decision that runs counter to conventional corporate wisdom: eliminating all job titles across the company. In a recent interview, Staniszewski revealed that this unconventional approach, implemented a year ago, continues to deliver positive results for the fast-growing startup. The decision reflects a broader trend among AI companies toward flat organizational structures, but ElevenLabs has taken the concept further than most of its peers.
When asked about the company’s flat organizational structure and its no-title policy, Staniszewski explained: “We removed titles a year ago, and it’s going well. It still works.”
He acknowledged that ElevenLabs wasn’t entirely pioneering this approach, noting that many AI companies have adopted similar practices. “I thought a lot of AI companies kind of do it too already, with ‘member of technical staff’ being the usual piece you have for engineering,” he said. “And then in a lot of the go-to-market, you are just go-to-market, not VP of sales or other roles. So I think it’s actually a pretty common pattern.”
However, ElevenLabs has implemented this structure with a distinctive twist, organizing its 250 employees into approximately 20 micro-teams of five to 10 people. Staniszewski elaborated on the company’s approach: “In our case, we had a small team approach where you have an extremely small amount of people, usually five to 10. And we wanted to make it very clear that every team we create, those teams, you have six months to prove it. If it’s proven, that team will stay and continue working.”
The philosophy behind this structure is fundamentally meritocratic. “The moment you join, you can have any impact on the company,” Staniszewski explained. “So you can have any role in that team. The tenure will not define your position in the hierarchy. If you are smart and quick and passionate, you can elevate yourself very quickly.”
Interestingly, Staniszewski also addressed an unexpected challenge that emerged from this transparent, flat structure. The company discovered that unlimited access to information can actually hinder productivity. “Which was interesting learning,” he noted, “where if you put a person into all the Slack channels and give them transparency, they actually get frequently distracted because then they read all the messages. You can still choose not to read them, but they still do. So you kind of need to cut the access to a lot of those pieces to force the attention, and that kind of works.”
He concluded by emphasizing the effectiveness of their approach: “All those small things work really well.”
The Broader Trend of Flat Structures in Tech
ElevenLabs’ approach aligns with a growing movement in the tech industry, particularly among AI-focused companies. Research-driven organizations like OpenAI and Anthropic have adopted the “Member of Technical Staff” designation, which originated at Bell Labs and emphasizes collective expertise over rigid hierarchies. This title reflects a culture that prioritizes innovation and problem-solving rather than strict role definitions.
Companies like Valve have taken flat structures to an extreme, where employees work without titles and can join any project they choose, provided they can secure funding and build a team. Similarly, Zappos experimented with holacracy, organizing 1,500 employees into around 400 different circles where people could hold multiple roles without traditional managers or job titles.
The rationale behind these structures is compelling: reduced operating costs through fewer management positions, improved communication due to fewer intermediaries, and increased employee motivation through greater autonomy. However, critics argue that flat structures can become impractical in larger organizations and may lead to power struggles without clear hierarchies.
For ElevenLabs, which has experienced explosive growth since its founding in 2022, the elimination of titles appears to be working in tandem with other unconventional practices. Staniszewski personally interviews every hire alongside his co-founder, even as the company has scaled to 400 employees, maintaining a hands-on approach to culture and quality control that complements the flat structure. Whether this approach will continue to work as the company grows beyond 1,000 employees remains to be seen, but for now, Staniszewski’s experiment in organizational innovation appears to be paying dividends.