ElevenLabs was a commercial version of 15.ai. It's crazy, because 15.ai could have had the venture-scale outcomes if he'd fundraised and turned it into a SaaS product. He was in the right place, right time, with tremendous attention, but missed the opportunity.
The other "labs" followed the trend. The {number}labs / {number}.ai domains all quickly got squatted.
I was in the same space and watched it happening. I launched FakeYou about the same time as 15.ai, but 15 had the backing of 4chan and a better model. I still made it to 7M MAU and a million in revenue despite that.
Just last year, Fish Audio picked up where 15.ai / FakeYou / UberDuck / Weights.gg left off and made it to $20M ARR, which is a lesson about abandoning under-served markets when you still have tremendous gravity.
This world of cheap (vc) money, huge private equity sells and high revenue early in the products development phase is so distant to me(geographically and even more so, mentally), I need some help deciding what to do with my project and I'd really appreciate if you could DM me
Rebranding a domain with traction is a mistake, in retrospect. I think Magnific is learning this lesson now after undergoing a change from the popular FreePik.
I'm a filmmaker and I wanted to get into video models, and FakeYou felt more like a pivot to UGC video (vo.codes was too audio centric) that I could ultimately swing me into cinematic video. I was too slow and that was not a good choice.
But Higgsfield and Bytedance showed you can be late and still win a lionshare of the market.
My video product launched in February and is at $5M ARR / 67% MoM growth.
A long time ago I used "23 Labs" as a funny name relative to my username. Fast forward many years and I considered actually using it. Apparently "[Number] Labs" is a very popular idea now...
Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
[Hitchhiker convulses]
Hitchhiker: No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Ted: That - good point.
Hitchhiker: 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
I was trying to remember the actor/comedian who delivered this pitch. It was Harland Williams. I most remember him as the Pennsylvania state trooper from Dumb & Dumber.
Fwiw, ElevenLabs doesn't make any sense as a firm, considering its TTS offerings are extremely overpriced by an absurdly large factor. A large user would be far better off using local models.
https://www.twelvelabs.io/blog/introducing-the-multimodal-ai...
> Twelve Labs and ElevenLabs are co-hosting the 23Labs Hackathon
Best comment so far
Tried to register sixsevenlabs, too late unfortunately...
All of them copied 15.ai
ElevenLabs was a commercial version of 15.ai. It's crazy, because 15.ai could have had the venture-scale outcomes if he'd fundraised and turned it into a SaaS product. He was in the right place, right time, with tremendous attention, but missed the opportunity.
The other "labs" followed the trend. The {number}labs / {number}.ai domains all quickly got squatted.
I was in the same space and watched it happening. I launched FakeYou about the same time as 15.ai, but 15 had the backing of 4chan and a better model. I still made it to 7M MAU and a million in revenue despite that.
Just last year, Fish Audio picked up where 15.ai / FakeYou / UberDuck / Weights.gg left off and made it to $20M ARR, which is a lesson about abandoning under-served markets when you still have tremendous gravity.
I got 99 labs but bringing value to society ain't one
well played sir.. well played..
This world of cheap (vc) money, huge private equity sells and high revenue early in the products development phase is so distant to me(geographically and even more so, mentally), I need some help deciding what to do with my project and I'd really appreciate if you could DM me
You were a year behind 15.ai with FakeYou. I know, because I was six months ahead of you and didn't execute in time. Momentum is everything.
I wasn't after them, I just changed my product's name. They had monumentally better distribution.
I launched as vo.codes (and two prior names) before 2020 and later rebranded to FakeYou.
https://thenextweb.com/news/celebrity-voices-deepfake-ai-app
Rebranding a domain with traction is a mistake, in retrospect. I think Magnific is learning this lesson now after undergoing a change from the popular FreePik.
I'm a filmmaker and I wanted to get into video models, and FakeYou felt more like a pivot to UGC video (vo.codes was too audio centric) that I could ultimately swing me into cinematic video. I was too slow and that was not a good choice.
But Higgsfield and Bytedance showed you can be late and still win a lionshare of the market.
My video product launched in February and is at $5M ARR / 67% MoM growth.
damn, what a rollercoaster you had there, man
SixSevenLabs btw seems really cringe, see https://www.67lab.ai/catalog/clawnexus
A long time ago I used "23 Labs" as a funny name relative to my username. Fast forward many years and I considered actually using it. Apparently "[Number] Labs" is a very popular idea now...
Oh well
What I’m seeing is there are 29 available startup names just waiting…
After that we’ll have to expand to 3 digits, which will open the possibility of naming your company after hip area codes.
Yeah! 50 labs is still available. I know what I’m getting myself for my 50th birthday!
kennywinkerlabs
I used to work for a startup called 1026 Labs!
Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
[Hitchhiker convulses]
Hitchhiker: No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Ted: That - good point.
Hitchhiker: 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
Ted: Why?
Hitchhiker: 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!
I was trying to remember the actor/comedian who delivered this pitch. It was Harland Williams. I most remember him as the Pennsylvania state trooper from Dumb & Dumber.
why did he fire the guy who now obviously will go and make the 6-minute abs he proposed?
I see someone is implementing FizzBuzz in “startup funding rounds”.
Three score and ten labs
Three score and seven labs /s
Finally, a periodic table of labs
All those cool domain names are gone now - the power of the hn frontpage!
Ironically (or maybe unironically?) I just started working with a friends company called fifteenlabs lol. Still pretty new.
Hugged I think, no archives (org/today).
There's always some kind of popular dumb naming scheme. I remember when it was prefixing "Zen-" to your startup. Some things never change
Remembr when it was missng lettrs out of wrds
miss.ng lett.rs
dot com?
Zen-Eleven labs.
eZenElevenLabsify.io
buying up all domains right now, thanks for making me rich
I did myself try a few increments above 11 once, but this takes it to the next level. Quality stuff.
HN Hug of death
Yup. The site doesn't load.
Fwiw, ElevenLabs doesn't make any sense as a firm, considering its TTS offerings are extremely overpriced by an absurdly large factor. A large user would be far better off using local models.
gotta wonder if any inspired by Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's 12, Ocean's 13
I think the inspiration was the Arabic numerals.
No it was the word eleven and the word labs.