Why Businesses Are Rejecting the AI They’ve Asked For: Agency CEO Elias Torres
Elias Torres has been building AI systems since 1999, from chatbots at IBM to co-founding Drift and now Agency. He believes businesses are caught in an expectation mismatch—demanding AI while rejecting it due to imperfection anxiety. Drawing from his experience scaling HubSpot, Elias explains why human-led customer experience doesn’t scale and how Agency is building AI-first solutions that work autonomously. His contrarian approach focuses on the back-end customer experience rather than front-end AI SDRs, aiming to “deprogram the entire business world” from inefficient human-dependent processes.
Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in the episode:
Lookery: David Cancel’s first startup that Elias joined after IBM; shut down in 2009
Performable: Elias and David’s second startup, acquired by HubSpot in 2011
Drift: Elias and David Cancel’s third startup, merged with Salesloft in 2024
Klaviyo: B2C CRM company started by Andrew Bialecki after working with Elias at HubSpot
Secret: Short-lived anonymous messaging app that inspired one of Drift’s early iterations
Tatajuba: Kitesurfing destination in Jericoacoara, Brazil where Elias (briefly) considered retirement
00:00 Introduction
01:50 AI and Customer Expectations
03:36 Managing Emails with AI
07:21 Elias' Personal Journey
11:27 Early Career
14:28 Joining HubSpot and Scaling Challenges
16:31 Hiring Exceptional Talent
18:53 Founding Drift
20:27 Pivoting to Success with Drift
21:41 Drift's Chatbot Innovation
22:09 Challenges and Limitations of Drift
22:37 The Struggle with Customer Knowledge
23:09 Scaling Challenges and Lessons Learned
25:58 Rediscovering Purpose Post-Drift
28:55 The Birth of Agency
29:42 AI's Role in Customer Experience
35:13 Building a Sustainable Business Model
37:06 The Vision for Agency
38:22 Challenges and Opportunities with AI
41:22 Deprogramming and Embracing Change
43:23 Optimism for the AI Future
44:15 Closing Thoughts
20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres
Elias Torres is the Co-Founder and CEO of Agency, the AI agent for customer success teams. Prior to Agency, Elias was the Co-Founder of Drift, a company he sold to Vista for $1.2BN Before that he started Performable, which he sold to Hubspot.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
03:50 Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders: How Backgrounds Shape You
06:23 Speed: Why are Incumbents Slower than Ever
10:00 Quality: Why are Incumbents Worse than Ever
25:34 Why Was Selling Drift For $1.2BN a Massive Failure
33:30 How Did a Cushy Culture Kill Drift
37:01 What They Never Tell You About Selling for $1.2BN
41:08 How to Hire F******* Rockstars
46:52 The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Hiring
54:52 Everything You Think You Know About Working Parents is Wrong
01:02:00 Quickfire
Revolutionizing Customer Success with Agency’s Elias Torres
Today on No Priors, Sarah sits down with Elias Torres, CEO and founder of Agency, an AI agent for customer success teams. Elias shares his journey from growing up in Nicaragua to founding several companies, leading engineering at HubSpot, and selling Drift for $1B. He also discusses his work consulting with OpenAI in 2022, which deepened his understanding of the business opportunity LLMs presented and inspired him to start Agency. In this episode, Elias offers a unique perspective on the future of AI and customer success, explaining how current software has fallen short and his vision for a new generation where customers have direct relationships, spend less time on tasks, and have software working invisibly on their behalf. They also discuss the evolving landscape of hiring as teams shrink, and Elias reveals his ambitious plan to reach $1B in revenue with fewer than 100 employees.
Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com
Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @EliasT
Show notes:
0:00 Introduction
0:34 Elias’ journey to entrepreneurship
2:36 Growing HubSpot to IPO and founding Drift
6:19 Consulting with OpenAI, learning about LLMs, and diving into AI
9:35 Founding Agency to focus on customer success and AI-driven solutions
11:40 What will a customer experience look like in 5 years?
15:48 Company building in an era of AI, as a 5th time founder
18:32 Reducing headcount while raising the bar on hiring
20:35 Key challenges in building Agency and crafting a standout product
23:06 Addressing software flaws and transitioning to an era of intuitive, self-operating solutions
26:27 Timeline for the next-gen software revolution + the power of building from first principles
SaaStr 626: 10 Lessons Learned Scaling to $1B Valuation with Drift Co-founders David Cancel and Elias Torres
Reaching unicorn status is nice validation, but the luster fades when founders can't navigate the hidden challenges that come with uncharted territory. David Cancel and Elias Torres, co-founders of Drift, share their insight on steering a company to a $1B valuation with both the tenacity to problem-solve and a fearlessness to fail. They'll take you through their own personal experiences, from creating a scalable product strategy to building an enduring company that puts people and purpose before profit. Find out how the steps they took not only helped nurture a company's success, but also allowed its leaders to retain a growth mindset long after they hit the $1B milestone.
Full video: https://youtu.be/gGVSaRcZkOs
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976
Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/
Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh
Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8
Growing revenue from zero to eight figures in 24 months with Drift’s Elias Torres
On this episode Abadesi talks to Elias Torres, co-founder and CTO of Drift. He co-founded the company with David Cancel, a longtime collaborator. They have achieved smashing success so far, and Elias’s personal story of moving to the United States from Nicaragua and working at McDonald’s while simultaneously finishing high school and learning English is one you don’t want to miss.
In this episode they talk about...
Elias’s longtime partnership with David Cancel
“He [David Cancel, co-founder of Drift] knew a lot more than I did and that was another good thing. If you look at Paul Allen and Bill Gates, Paul was older than Bill. That experience drew Bill to Paul and that’s something I like about David. He’s built many more companies than me. He’s always been in startups.”
David Cancel is Elias’s co-founder at Drift and this is definitely not their first venture together. Elias talks about how they have been able to work so well across several different companies and how their partnership mirrors that of Paul Allen and Bill Gates. He also talks about the scary moments when he left his job to start a company in 2008 while the stock market was tanking during the financial crisis.
What it was like growing up in Nicaragua and moving to the United States
“It’s people. People have helped me. I look back and in high school I had a teacher who asked me to join math club. That exposed me to kids who were applying to places I heard called Dartmouth and Princeton, but I didn’t know what that is.”
Elias grew up in Nicaragua and moved to the US as a teenager. He suddenly found himself in high school in the United States with a very different set of possibilities open to him. He also talks about how he ended up with his first computer and how that led to him getting into programming. It’s safe to say that when he was young, he didn’t see himself in the position that he is in now. He talks about some of the people who helped get him there and how Drift is giving back to help underprivileged people.
A CTO’s tips on hiring and why he spends an hour a month fielding support queries
“The recruiting process has to be personal. It has to be about conversations. Engineers are the most sough-out profession in the world. So you’re never going to hire someone that applies. You should not be spending your time there. You have to go and find the people you want.“
Elias has a unique perspective on hiring engineers from his perch as CTO at Drift, so he explains how they think about hiring, why diversity is an integral part of their company, and why he looks for engineers who are also extroverted like he is. They are also not afraid to get into the weeds at Drift, with their engineers putting in time talking to customers to get a feel for what the end-user truly needs.
Growing revenue from zero to eight figures in under twenty-four months
“I went into Boston and asked founder friends of mine: ‘do you want to use my product?’ When I was a kid I went out there and sold mangoes from a tree carrying a basket with my mangoes. I went the same way door-to-door asking for twenty dollars. I got my first five to ten customers like that.”
Drift grew from nothing in revenue to eight figures (!) in under twenty-four months. Aba asks how they managed to create such explosive growth and Elias talks about why SaaS businesses are so special and why they are a great way to grow revenue. He shares his best tips for makers looking to earn from their product, including not being afraid to charge, making sure you increase prices, and why to bring in salespeople early.
We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. 😸