Building voice-AI infrastructure and scaling go-to-market globally with Carles Reina, GTM @ ElevenLabs & Angel Investor

Happy Wednesday from James Pringle, Hector Mason and the Riding Unicorns team!

In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Carles Reina, Go-to-Market Lead at ElevenLabs, the voice-AI infrastructure powering personalised content, healthcare, and enterprise automation. From his start in Barcelona banking to scaling Uber’s first European team, and now investing in over 70 startups, Carles shares the hard-won lessons that drive both founders and angel investors.

We dive into:

🔄 Career pivot: Leaving banking for Uber at 20 people and discovering the thrill of early-stage impact
📈 Building GTM from scratch: Lessons from Tractable to ElevenLabs—experimenting on ICPs, pricing, and pitches in 30–90 days
💼 Angel investing playbook: How to break in as an operator-investor, source top deals, and add value beyond capital
🗣 Voice AI’s inflection point: Why high-quality speech models are the next frontier—and how ElevenLabs powers voice notes for surgery prep and on-demand customer support
🤖 Robotics meets LLMs: The “GPT moment” in hardware—investing in companies merging industrial robotics with large language models
✂️ Trimming strategies: Locking in gains (10–20%) at Series B/C while staying exposed to upside
🌐 Scaling globally: Personalizing GTM across the US, Europe, Asia, and beyond

This is a must-listen for GTM leaders, startup builders, and aspiring angels looking to roll up their sleeves, experiment at speed, and back the next wave of unicorns.

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Have a great Wednesday,

The Riding Unicorns team