From Chegg to an AI-native startup

Jack McDermott is a growth lead at ElevenLabs, where he leads growth for its mobile products — including the ElevenLabs app and ElevenReader, a consumer app built on top of the company’s cutting-edge voice AI platform. Prior to ElevenLabs, he led growth teams at Chegg, where he focused on the company’s skills growth and product during a period of rapid change as AI began reshaping the education category. He started his career in growth at Panorama Education (YC’13). Jack has developed a strong perspective on building and scaling AI-native products, particularly at the intersection of core product, growth, and monetization.

Key Takeaways

• After being founded in April 2022 and launched in January 2023, ElevenLabs has rapidly grown into one of the largest and most successful AI companies in the world with a Voice AI platform that has already been widely adopted by individuals and companies around the world.
• While the company’s core business is an AI platform, it has started to launch vertical apps on top of this foundation, including the ElevenLabs app for creators who want to use ElevenLabs APIs to generate content and the ElevenReader app for consumers who want to consume audio content with custom voices.
• After the company launched ElevenReader in June 2024, Jack and his team initially found traction through bottoms-up marketing tactics on platforms like Reddit and Discord that were great for attracting enthusiastic early adopters. Once the company got traction, it turned to more scalable channels like TikTok, where it gained rapid adoption among readers in BookTok communities.
• Partnerships have also played a key role in ElevenReader’s growth story. The company did a massive partnership with Melania Trump tied to her new memoir called “Melania,” using ElevenLabs APIs to translate the book into dozens of languages that made it more accessible around the globe.
• More recently, Jack and his team have been experimenting with different approaches to subscription pricing and packaging across both the ElevenLabs and ElevenReader apps. Importantly, they have learned that the optimal monetization strategies look very different across these two products, as well as for users making purchase decisions in their native mobile apps vs. on the web.

Jack McDermott:

• Website: https://elevenreader.io/
• Blog: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/authors/jack-mcdermott
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackrmcdermott/
• X: https://x.com/Jackmc

Phil Carter:

• Website: https://www.philgcarter.com/
• Substack: philgcarter.substack.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/philgcarter
• X: x.com/philgcarter

Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io/