Eric Lay

founder & ceo | b2b gtm for vertical saas

Building virio.ai

A done-for-you content service and AI coworker for B2B companies to turn LinkedIn into their #1 GTM channel.

Founding Partner

Hosting private dinners, socials & events for Toronto's top VC backed founders. Partnerships with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Collision, Elevate, Inovia VC, Forum VC & many more!

ElevenLabs hit $330M ARR by doing something 99% of AI companies still don't understand:

They turned voice AI into human connection at scale.

2022: Two Polish founders started building in a London flat
2025: $330M ARR, millions of creators, Fortune 500 adoption

From day one, ElevenLabs built for multiple languages, while competitors went all in on English markets.

Here is the team behind the mission:

Mati Staniszewski (Co-Founder, 71K followers): Shares what it's really like to be behind the scenes of scaling a tech company and how voice is becoming the new interface. Posts on how voice is the new interface and champions the teams, partners, and customers behind the mission.

Carles Reina (VP Revenue & First Investor, 31K followers): One of the first on the Uber Europe team, then helped scale Tractable AI (a unicorn) globally. Then moved over to ElevenLabs when they had less than 10 people. Now he is running everything GTM and shares everything from hiring to launching in new markets and calling out "Founder-led sales". 

Rohit Sharma (GTM, 23K followers): Travels the world demoing the product to hundreds of people. Shares what it's like to be in a pool of world-class talent 🤝 ambitious mission. 

Luke Harries (Growth, 18K): Previous YC founder now heads up the growth team and shares successful campaigns for ElevenLabs. Works with Alec to share the breakdown of the strategy behind hitting 100k subscribers on Youtube and growing the Instagram company page to 24k in one month. Believes that all mobile design will move towards liquid glass. 😮‍💨

Alec Wilcock (Social Media, 6.4K followers): The guy behind their 100k follower growth on Instagram, and proves the ROI of content. He and the team made a video in English that led to 350k views, then dubbed it in 7 languages using ElevenLabs and hit 150k+ impressions (🚀30%). Proves that doubling down on what's working is a thing.

Other people behind the mission:
Ludovit Nastisin (AI Creative Producer, 16.6K): AI content creator who also partner with other beasts in the tech world: Figma Weave, Runway, Freepik, Higgsfield, Mago.

Chibuzor Oluo (GTM, 6K followers): Driver of the GTM motion.

Ben Budde (GTM, 6.6K followers): Shares team milestones and shares product updates.

Dustin Blank (Partnerships, 7.4K followers): Heading up partnerships as part of their insane growth.

Together, they have:

→ Team posting the latest product insights
→ Millions of creators using the product daily
→ Fortune 500 companies: Deliveroo, Epic, Meta, Square

This is why ElevenLabs dominates.

CEO @ Virio | Content that drives pipeline

🚨 Excited to announce we added $1M ARR in 30 days by turning LinkedIn content into the #1 revenue driver for Fortune 500 companies and the fastest growing AI startups in the world.

The crazy part is this almost never happened…

My gaming startup fell apart a few years ago. I moved back to Toronto thinking a break would help me reset. Instead, I spent months feeling more lost than ever. Just this gnawing sense that I'd wasted years building the wrong thing.

Fast forward to the last 30 days:
- Added $1M ARR
- Onboarded 5 full-time employees in SF
- Sponsored 3 international visa’s
- Spent $14,736 on Doordash

Here's what matters more than the numbers:

We found ways to turn content from just a brand investment to something that's directly tied to revenue. 

To my co-founder Emmett Chen-Ran - After years of failed co-founder attempts, I'd almost given up on finding the right partner. I needed someone who could see what I couldn't, communicate ideas that made mine better, and think in ways that challenged me. Honestly, I couldn't have done this without you.

To our team - I'm so proud of every single person that is part of Virio. No one wants to win more than us. I feel very grateful to have a group of people who are so personally aligned on challenging themselves everyday to be the best at their craft. When you are around people that are willing to dedicate so much to their work, it compounds and is inspiring for everyone.

We're hiring top 1% LinkedIn creators who want to build the number one company in the world.

People share big milestones, and they make it look easier than it is. It may look like overnight success, but this was years of trial and error to get to this point.

Back to building ⚒️

If you're a B2B founder wanting the secret sauce to driving revenue through LinkedIn, this workshop is for you. Here are 5 VIRAL posts from the speakers 👇

Combined: 330K+ followers, and proven systems that turn content into revenue.

1. Me (Virio, 38K followers) - "The most effective GTM playbook ever"

146 meetings with decision makers in 60 days. Multiple six-figure contracts signed. 400K impressions in 2 months. Built a repeatable content + community system.

https://lnkd.in/esY4rsqe

2. Max Rascher (120K followers) - "The 🐐 ChatGPT Cheat Sheet"

Became one of the fastest-growing AI voices by solving real problems with tactical content.

https://lnkd.in/eCvVhmpZ?

3. Tanay Kothari ( Wispr Flow , 53K, growing 150% QoQ) - "Google sent me a cease and desist at 13"

Built 2.5M users while his parents thought he was watching Power Rangers. Now scaling Wispr Flow with the same constraints.

https://lnkd.in/e5sd2b5C

4. Conor Brennan-Burke ( Hyperspell (YC F25), 11K) - "After 7 applications to Y Combinator"

From sleeping in a closet to YC F25. Built paying customers before the acceptance.

https://lnkd.in/eqCUxwK2

5. Josh Sirota ( Eragon, 9K) - "Today I am introducing Eragon"

Turned product launch into pipeline by showing the problem, not just the solution.

https://lnkd.in/e7wa-P9P

This Sunday, we're breaking down the exact systems for you to replicate just this.

If you'd like to attend, like + comment and I will share the registration link 👊

🦄 → 🦄🦄🦄🦄 Synthesia just raised a $200M Series E at a $4B valuation. The team scaled from $42M to $150M ARR in under 2 years by doing something 99% of AI companies still can't understand:

2017: Four AI researchers started building in London
2025: $146M ARR, 60K+ customers, 90% of Fortune 100 clients

Competitors went all in on viral consumer features. Synthesia took a different approach… They built for Fortune 100 compliance teams in 140+ languages.

Here are some of the people behind the mission:

Victor Riparbelli (Co-Founder & CEO, 64K followers): uses LinkedIn to share the growth of Synthesians and shares glimpses of what’s next for video. Fun fact: led a World of Warcraft guild as a teenager, and used a voice changer so people would take him seriously. Genius 🤯

Steffen Tjerrild (COO & Co-founder, 22.6K followers): On stage constantly sharing what Synthesia is building... even presented to Jensen Huang (the AI Godfather). Someone buy this guy another pink unicorn.

Kevin Alster (Strategic Advisor, 15.2K followers): Founded Synthesia Academy to scale customer onboarding. Calls out why traditional LD doesn't work and how companies should tackle this instead.

Jakob Marovt (SVP of Marketing, 12.7K followers): Started as Head of Growth and scaled alongside the company, sharing growth and engineering principles the whole way. Scaling the team now - they're hiring engineers (throw him some intros if you know of anyone talented).

Evan Kelsay (Strategic Accounts, 8.1K followers): Posts about why video beats text 95% to 10% on retention and how Fortune 100 companies are converting boring PDFs to AI video. The guy behind Synthesia working with 70%+ of Fortune 100.

Other people behind the mission:

Cory Snyder (Principle Partnership Manager, 8.2K followers): Recently joined the team, but has a track record of making partner programs and partner orgs. 

Ash Turner (Influencer Marketing, 7.8K followers): Built Synthesia's influencer program from scratch in 10 months... 200+ creator activations, 10M+ impressions globally.

Conrad Riparbelli(Creator Partnerships Manager, 3.4K followers): Scouts out for the best creators to partner with and demo their latest features (Max being one of them 👀).

Together, they have:
→ Work with over 70% of the Fortune 100
→ 60,000+ businesses using the product
→ Amazon, SAP, Xerox, Bosch, Zoom, UiPath, Spotify

Huge congrats on the raise. Excited to see what they ship next!

Brendan Ardagh

Provision

Machine learning has changed the world. It started more than 50 years ago, and has been growing quietly until the release of the ChatGPT product. There is a huge deficit between what we need automation to do, and what it currently does.

Construction loses ~4% of global revenue to contract mismanagement which is ~1600 large hospitals a year. Provision is focused on automating the identification and mitigation of construction risk so we can build more.

Provision needs great software engineers: https://www.workatastartup.com/companies/provision

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Jem HR

An inevitable future for payments is negligible transaction cost, and trustless transfer - meaning you will likely be paid more often and in smaller amounts. This is great because it means we get access to the money we earn more quickly. SmartWage is the first step in that direction, providing anytime access to wages so that employees who are most in need can access their already earned wages. 

I'm responsible for developing the SmartWage technology stack and engineering team, from idea through multiple MVPs and to scaling product. Startups usually require cheap and fast, but in fintech there is the added complexity of quality and security when dealing with money, people care a lot about their money. People who require access to their wages are also at a significantly higher risk because their financial security can be based entirely on a single week's wages. We have built a world-class system managing thousands of transactions a day, and giving flexibility and insight to the team so that the right product ends up in user's hands.

Chief Technology Officer

DigsConnect

SA has a growth problem. Student Accommodation is the most influential (privately controlled) variable in tertiary education graduation rates in South Africa [1]; interestingly it is also mostly a communication issue - everyone just needs to meet everyone else for most of the problem to go away. So we're building the most efficient, and useful communication platform for Student Accommodation.

Education is a core tenant for solving the growth problem in South Africa, and we're moving as fast as possible to provide a meaningful solution.

[1][http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0038-23532014000600015]

RLB Pentad Quantity Surveyors

Assisting Senior Quantity Surveyors with cost consultancy, cost estimating, project management.

Candidate Quantity Surveyor

Humanity's success is not inevitable or automatic. The most exciting thing I can think to do with my ~80 years here is to contribute usefully by building startups that have an impact.

Co-Founder

Machine learning has changed the world. It started more than 50 years ago, and has been growing quietly until the release of the ChatGPT product. There is a huge deficit between what we need automation to do, and what it currently does - Provision is focusing on giving everyday people the power to accelerate their document workflows.

Provision needs great software engineers: https://www.workatastartup.com/companies/provision

taplio

The Battle

Eric Lay

Brendan Ardagh

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taplio

The Battle

Eric Lay

Brendan Ardagh

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Eric Lay's LinkedIn Performance

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