Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company

Elias Torres 0:00 ... Drift is the biggest failure in my life. Like, I wanted to build something great. I wanted to build something sustainable, right? To walk around in your own company and you don't matter anymore, right? You bring a new CEO, you bring new management, it, it hurts the ego, right? And you created this, and then you're no longer relevant. I would have a public company right now if, if, if I, if it wasn't for, like, all those carrots that I gave, and, and candy bars and, and, and trophies. It's sad to, to, to be nobody.

Harry Stebbings 0:29 Ready to go? Elias, dude, I cannot wait for this. Listen, Julian Beck, Pat Grady, two of my closest buddies said, "This is the show that we have to do." I'm so thrilled that we can make it happen in person, so-

Elias Torres 0:51 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 0:51 ... thank you for joining me.

Elias Torres 0:52 No, absolutely, no pressure.

Harry Stebbings 0:54 No pressure at all. But I wanted to start actually on something that you tweeted before, but it just really kind of hit home for me. You said, "I don't care a lot. People hear this and many versions of that phrase often from me. The reality is that I pretend I'm a nihilist to cope with the fact that I actually care, care way too much." I wanted to start with this 'cause at a, at a Jordan Peterson event, someone asked, "The depths of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel so very deeply?" I know it f- feels like a deep start. (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:26 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:26 But how do you think about that?

Elias Torres 1:29 It is a great quote, right? I think, (laughs) it's funny 'cause yeah, I, I, I tweet not that much, and, and when I do, Brian Halligan tells me, "Why are you tweeting? Get back to work," right? And so I, I kinda don't wanna tweet 'cause it's, it's hard for me. But uh, I really think it's a paradox. I think life is a paradox, right? It's like we always want just one answer. And, uh, in my case, I just find myself saying that a lot. Like, "I don't care," right? "I don't care." And people are like always doubting, like, do I care or do I not really care? What am I doing? Uh, and, um, just something that I found, maybe it's something later in my life now and, and the success that I've gotten, and the, my family, and all the things that I've been able to accomplish and, and so far, you know, I'm close to 50 now, that allow me to realize what I care and what I don't care about, right? And so it's been, it's been easy. A- another thing is that the life of an entrepreneur is really hard. Most people don't wanna be rejected, right? Most people don't wanna be told no. And so I've been said no to so many times. I have had many people quit on me. I have many people, you know, churn as a customer. So you get beaten up so much that you just realize it's, it's just going to be okay, right? And so when I say I don't care, it's not that I don't care. I do care, but I know it's, it's okay, it's going to be fine, right? And so I, I just don't, don't care a lot anymore, (laughs) uh, but I, but I do care. You see how

Elias Torres 2:54 complicated it is?

Harry Stebbings 2:54 I, I, I totally do. Do you care less with more money?

Elias Torres 2:59 You care less about some things, yeah. Uh, yeah, absolutely, right? It's, it's, um, there's so many things that we s- we, we worry so much about. Like, you know, the, the plumbing broke, you know, the car has, you know, you n- do you need new tires? Um, you know, it's like, oh, this, this trip got canceled. You have to pay this fee. So that is a huge release, you know, of stress that I just don't care about that stuff anymore. So that just takes, like, I don't know, one-third of the problems. And I'm just like, "Okay, I don't care. Just pay it," you know? Move on.

Harry Stebbings 3:30 I interview many incredible founders like you, and often I say, "What would you most like to tell your 21-year-old self?" And so many say, "I wish I could tell myself that it would all be okay."

Elias Torres 3:41 Exactly.

Harry Stebbings 3:42 And I think that's terrible advice. Because the fear that it won't be okay drives you to succeed.

Elias Torres 3:48 I, I think what I, the ad- my advice that I would give is different, right? I, I, I do think it is true that things are gonna be okay. M- m- meaning that wherever you end up, it's going to be okay. It's about complacency is, is the secret of happiness, right? I, I would say that, what I would tell my old self is that things are not as hard as they seem. That's what I would tell my, my old self, my young self.

Harry Stebbings 4:11 What do you mean by that?

Elias Torres 4:13 I think we put our, we put ourselves through so many roadblocks. We, we're like, "I can't start a company, it's too hard," right? And we're like, "No, it's actually not that hard." Starting it, (laughs) finishing it and exiting is different. But uh, I, I think we, we think everything's too hard. Uh, it's like if I tell a random person on the street, "Uh, you can build an LLM yourself," everybody's gonna say, "It's too hard." Is it too hard? It's really not that hard. The code fits on a, like a page on the screen. It's really that small. And so, uh, it's just, that's the thing. It's like everybody thinks it's so hard, it's so hard, it's so hard. It's not that hard. I guess maybe it's because I grew up in a communist country, (laughs) you know, with nothing and no future, no hope, that everything that I've done, I'm like, "Shit, that wasn't that hard." Like-

Harry Stebbings 4:57 (laughs)

Elias Torres 4:58 ... like for example, people at my companies in the past, like, we, we get them gifts, we get them food, we get them, like, free lunch, and they go and complain. They're like, "This coffee's not that great." And I'm like, "It's free. If you don't like it, go buy your own." They complain... See, the things that people complain in the United States are, are like not that hard compared when you li-... I just came back from Cairo last night. It's tough. You see the slums, you see all these areas. It's, it's hard to live in, in, in, in, in countries like that. I'm from Nicaragua, so like, life is not that hard for us in, in, in the United States. You know what I mean?

Harry Stebbings 5:32 Have we lost the grit in the US, in the UK, where we have the WeWorks and we have the Nice Cultures?

Elias Torres 5:38 Yep. I think that's why, that's why immigrants do well in startups, right?

Harry Stebbings 5:42 I do wanna go to that. You mentioned that obviously growing up in Nicaragua. I spoke to Pat, my big bro, before this, and when he gives me advice, I've learnt just to take it. Um, he told me I had spent a good amount of time on growing up actually and the move to the US. When and why did you come to the US?

Elias Torres 5:58 Uh, I came to the US because the home that we lived in was not even ours.... so there was a revolution. You know, people... my mom, we, we lived in somebody else's home because they left because of the revolution in '79.

Harry Stebbings 6:10 How old were you?

Elias Torres 6:11 Uh, uh, uh, I was three in the re- during the revolution, right, uh, in '79. And so, uh, we lived in this home. And then after the, the communism, you know, the communist government toppled, like, then they, people came back and they wanted their property back. And so I had nowhere to live. I was literally homeless. I was just graduating high school. Uh, and luckily, because of my grandmother, she crossed the river, an immigrant into the Unite- United States. After being there for so many years, right, she was able to get us a green card, apply. And it was the perfect timing. We lost our home, the green card came in, we had to come to United States. We had no choice.

Harry Stebbings 6:49 What was it like coming in for you, having grown up in Nicaragua?

Elias Torres 6:53 I was excited. You know, in Nicaragua it was like I could not have... I could never have a car, I could never have a job. I didn't... you know, there was no, no hot dogs, no burgers. You know, you come to United States and you're like... I was, I was so, I was so excited because it was the land of the opportunity, right? I was chasing the American dream. Uh, so I, I could not be happier to give everything I had to that, right?

Harry Stebbings 7:15 Do you think it's still the land of opportunity?

Elias Torres 7:17 Absolutely. It still is, 100%. It is the place where there is just more and more chance for you to accomplish all of your dreams.

Harry Stebbings 7:27 And for $5 million even I can buy a green card. (laughs)

Elias Torres 7:31 I would. (laughs) Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 7:32 Honestly, I'm contemplating it. (laughs)

Elias Torres 7:33 Yeah. It's like, "Why not?"

Harry Stebbings 7:35 Uh, how did you find tech for the first time?

Elias Torres 7:37 Uh, I found tech, um, when, um, I, I lived in LA. I lived in LA with my dad for two years. I never, I never spent time with him except for this time, right? It was a, an emergency. In Nicaragua there was a, um, a, a, a forced draft. You had to go to the... to fight the war. Like, we had a, like, an internal war, civil war. Um, and so my mom called him up and she's like, "You have a dad." And was like, "I'm gonna send you to LA so you don't, you don't get, uh, taken to fight." And so I was like, "I don't wanna go to the mountains to fight, and I get to meet my dad (laughs) , let's go, and I get to go to United States." Uh, and so I met him. Uh, and so I spent there about two years. And, um, he bought, like, a stolen computer, like people came and sold him, you know. And so I... he put it in the garage and, and, uh, and he said, "Go play with it." And so that's... it's like an IBM computer, like, you know, in the '80s. And I would be typing my homework in this printer in WordPerfect and using Lotus 1-2-3. That was the beginning. The, uh, I think that planted the seed that I was just attracted to this device and what it was able to do. I just enjoyed it.

Harry Stebbings 8:45 Do you think entrepreneurs who are brought up in wealthy families are advantaged because they have connections, because there is some forms of nepotism sometimes available? Or do you think actually having nothing shows you how bad it can be and how much you want it?

Elias Torres 9:01 Greed is everywhere, right? It's, it's not distributed only to the people who have nothing. We just get beaten up so much that we, we develop it, uh, in, in, in, in larger quantities. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, my kids are gonna grow up different, right? They're gonna have, uh, ability to work with my, my companies. They're gonna have my network, they have my access, they have my money. Uh, and sometimes... I wrote a post on LinkedIn when I said, "Quit now your company, big company. It's time. I don't... don't worry about that bonus, don't worry about that title, don't worry about that salary." And then my, my daughter's like, "Dad, why are you posting such things? Not everybody has the luxury that you have today." I didn't have the luxury that I have today when I first started, right? I have the right to post that. I'm not making stuff up. And she goes, "Yeah, the problem is me." I can't say those things 'cause I had those all, those things from the beginning.

Harry Stebbings 9:53 I speak to many very successful people-

Elias Torres 9:55 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 9:55 ... we're jumping around, but I, I'm loving this. And they all say that one of the biggest challenges is how do you bring your children up wi- when you have a lot of money to be as hungry and as gritty as, uh, we had to be?

Elias Torres 10:06 Yeah. Uh, I, I just try to manufacture adversity. That's all I can for them. The good thing is that I've had s- I had success when they were older 'cause I had my kids so young. So they're only starting to get spoiled now.

Harry Stebbings 10:18 (laughs)

Elias Torres 10:18 Like, you know, we're in London here, the whole family, and I said, "You guys wanna go to Cairo for the weekend?" And they're like, "Yes, we wanna see the pyramids." "Then we go hard," they said.

Harry Stebbings 10:28 (laughs) I love that. Um, you mentioned, uh, typing away on a little IBM computer in the, in the garage. IBM was your first job, I believe.

Elias Torres 10:35 Yeah, absolutely.

Harry Stebbings 10:36 Talk to me about that and how that impacted you.

Elias Torres 10:39 You know, it's like IBM was... I, I worked in a very special group, right? This is, this is the group that put, uh, ibm.com on the internet, right? Uh, we were doing, uh, crazy stuff. Ve- ve- it was like an advanced internet technology group. Um, I was building applications using HTML and JavaScript in 1998, '99, right? Uh, we were building browser-based apps, uh, with open source projects and stuff like that. It was insanity what we did. Uh, I learned so much from these, you know, crazy visionaries. But what I learned was that a 400,000 person company just can't move as fast. Uh, Lou Gerstner was the CEO at the time and wrote a book called, like, Why Elephants Can Dance, right? And I don't think... I disagree with him. Uh, elephants can't dance, you know. It's, it's a really... it's... I, I don't, I don't buy it, right? They, they claim they're dancing, but they don't. They can sing maybe.

Harry Stebbings 11:34 L- listen, the best interviewees, or interviewers, sorry, are able to move with schedules and be very plastic around how they take conversations. I wanted to touch that at the end, but dude, you give me like, "Elephants can't dance."

Elias Torres 11:48 It's like, let's go.

Harry Stebbings 11:48 Let's go.

Elias Torres 11:48 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 11:49 Uh, have we not seen bluntly over the last year or two years that elephants can dance? Adobe have moved incredibly fast on product. Uh, Google, um, moving incredibly fast in terms of integration of LLMs and building. Uh, we're seeing the biggest incumbents move at speeds that we've never seen them before. Do you not... how do you think about that?

Elias Torres 12:07 I completely disagree.... I, I think that this, I think these elephants are just talking. They're singing. Th- they're talking a big game. It's mostly talk. I mean, it's like, Google fucked it up. You know what I mean? It's like... Can I curse here? Is that-

Harry Stebbings 12:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%.

Elias Torres 12:19 Okay, great.

Harry Stebbings 12:19 This is Britain. (laughs)

Elias Torres 12:20 Oh, oh. (laughs) There you go. Bollocks. Uh, and so I, I think that, um-

Harry Stebbings 12:24 Bollocks was the first one.

Elias Torres 12:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 12:26 You get wanker, then you're really British.

Elias Torres 12:28 Okay, great, great. Uh, we get there. And so I think that, um, I mean everybody, everybody's talking about how Google is struggling. Uh, uh, Google is just, Google just dropped the ball, right? They invented this Transformers paper, and everything they put out doesn't work. Like NotebookLM, the great one, like, it's already dead, right? The project. So i- it's like they're trying so hard but they can't do it. Um, Microsoft Copilot, I, I felt like Microsoft, I was really impressed. I, I felt like Microsoft was moving, uh, they, you know, in- the investing in OpenAI was genius. I mean, Satya is like, as a businessman, like, respect, right? Respect that. Can I do like, uh, uh, like a shot here or something-

Harry Stebbings 13:07 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Elias Torres 13:07 ... like that, right?

Harry Stebbings 13:07 Do you want this video-

Elias Torres 13:08 I would g-

Harry Stebbings 13:08 ... as well?

Elias Torres 13:08 I would love to say, (laughs) and say like, "I always wanted to say that in London." Uh, so I think that, um, Satya is the man, no doubt. Uh, and, and being that early, dropping all that money on OpenAI was genius. Changed the world, right? I mean, that, that, that is r- respect. And they had the advantage to adopt a- all of this early, but Bing, you know, Search, you know, they actually dropped the ball, right? Copilot, everybody was like, they're just ahead making all the money first, uh, because people... The problem is people are, they, they just have so much hard time trusting someone, right? And so they're reaping the benefit of being early, but nobody's using the product, right? It's like, it just doesn't work. It's, uh, you know, it's, um, it's tough. The king is ChatGPT, right? That's the one that everybody's adopting, uh, and using it every day, but that's not the real solution. That's not the future. Uh, Copilot, Cursor are s- second, distant second, right? Uh, but the, the elephants are not dancing. They're trying to dance.

Harry Stebbings 14:08 Okay. I mean, I, I've gone-

Elias Torres 14:09 Would you agree or disagree?

Harry Stebbings 14:10 Uh, so I'm just gonna take one by one. Otherwise, I'm not gonna have any coherent structure.

Elias Torres 14:14 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 14:14 Google, I completely disagree with you. I think the fundamental thing is access to consumers and distribution, and when you look at all the endpoints they have to consumers, is the product there today? No, 100%. But their ability to access billions of people with-

Elias Torres 14:31 You s- you said, uh, they're moving. I did not argue with distribution. Yes, we're in agreement. Distribution, they win, right? Uh, they, they can. And the other one is they have the points, they have the data too. So, those are great assets that they have. But it's been like three years, it's been like five years since we had GPT.

Harry Stebbings 14:50 Totally agree with you there.

Elias Torres 14:51 So, so is that a fact?

Harry Stebbings 14:52 No, I, uh, no, and so I, I completely agree with you there, and I will accept that one. I'm forward-looking, bye. (laughs)

Elias Torres 14:58 Oh, okay, okay. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 14:59 Forward-looking, bye. Uh, Microsoft, I think actually Microsoft, I completely agree with you in terms of, um, Copilot. Um, I think they will get amazing adoption though. I think it's very much like Teams where it's like, "Mm, but actually, fuck it." In large enterprises, people just take it 'cause it's part of-

Elias Torres 15:14 Distribution. I, I agree. No, the, I, I d- I... Distribution is, is the biggest advantage that the incumbents have.

Harry Stebbings 15:21 But does it matter then moving fast if actually you can be slow as long-

Elias Torres 15:27 Mate, mate, you asked me if it was speed. I responded to the speed question. I don't think they're moving as fast as we think they are. It looks fast but, but it's, it's not yet, right?

Harry Stebbings 15:37 But does speed matter then is my question.

Elias Torres 15:38 1000%. I mean, it's like-

Harry Stebbings 15:40 Why-

Elias Torres 15:40 ... that's the only thing that we can, they hear.

Harry Stebbings 15:41 ... why? If it, if we can just wait for someone else to build it, could... Technology commoditizes, and then we can embrace it into our distribution advantage.

Elias Torres 15:49 Speed is everything. Speed is what creates the American dream, right? (laughs) It's, it's, uh, uh, it's the opportunity. Speed creates the opportunity for others to win.

Harry Stebbings 15:57 Why did you think ChatGPT wasn't the answer?

Elias Torres 16:00 I wanna give you this insight, right? I think software that has been built in the past 20, 30 years had the assumption... It was built kinda like, like we build cars. We build the car all around and we build the entire environment so a human goes and drives the car, right?

Harry Stebbings 16:20 Mm-hmm.

Elias Torres 16:21 It requires an operator. The future is not going to require operators. So we... It's gonna be building like driverless cars. They're completely different, right? Except that we are stuck with the roads and the signals and all this stuff. And so imagine when we can ch- could- com- completely change tran- uh, transportation, right? What we're thinking is that we need to be building software with the assumption that I don't wanna know how to drive the car or do all this effort. I just wanna tell it where do I wanna go and when I wanna go and maybe choose the route.

Harry Stebbings 16:52 If we just start on a, a little bit of cau- uh, I love-

Elias Torres 16:54 You see that, right?

Harry Stebbings 16:55 I, I totally get that.

Elias Torres 16:55 So ChatGPT still assumes that I have to use it.

Harry Stebbings 16:59 It totally does.

Elias Torres 17:00 I'm the operator.

Harry Stebbings 17:01 Is it not... I, I'm asking here, not saying. Is it not a step function-wise? So moving towards that.

Elias Torres 17:07 Oh, absolutely. It's like the levels of a- of autonomous driving, right?

Harry Stebbings 17:10 So it has to start here-

Elias Torres 17:11 It has to start there.

Harry Stebbings 17:11 ... and we've seen with operator now-

Elias Torres 17:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:12 ... it does more and more of that full workflow process.

Elias Torres 17:15 Right. That's the future that I'm, like, visualizing, right? How do we get to, like, a, you know, truly agentic world, right, where, where, where the LLM is doing the work for me?

Harry Stebbings 17:24 I, I just wanna start on a little bit of causation there. Why can elephants not dance? I saw a recent post from Owen at Intercom who's a friend, and he was like, "Everything I know about management is just, like, fucking wrong."

Elias Torres 17:35 Yeah, I used to think that, of course, of course, of course. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 17:37 Um, and why can't elephants dance?

Elias Torres 17:40 The number of people. Humans, we're, we're, we're, we're the blockage, right, in, in, in terms of adopting AI in technology. It's, um... You know, my last company at Drift before we sold to eq- uh, to, to Vista Private Equity, right, it was 800 people. I was consumed. I mean, I know big companies that have, you know, 1,000 product managers. You know what I mean? It's like, imagine, I don't even know like how much Microsoft has or, or like just try to picture that sales force, right? Uh, most of those people... Like, nobody gets fired for saying no.... right? So everybody, like, will not buy the right product or will not build the right thing, right? Uh, it's easier to just coast. Uh, when you start spending all this time, f- all these people focus on, on, on promotions, on, like, "I gotta go home. I'm working too hard. I have to send an email at the end of the week saying five things I did this week." It's like, you're toast. You can't, you can't move. That's why they don't move fast, 'cause you have to get all these approvals. You know, when you're a CEO of a public company and you spend all this time reporting and, and analysts and press and all this other stuff, how much time are you spending with the customers? How much are you spending building the product? Who has the vision? Who makes the big decisions?

Harry Stebbings 18:55 What conventional management lesson that we're all told do you think is most bullshit?

Elias Torres 18:59 One-on-ones.

Harry Stebbings 19:01 Why?

Elias Torres 19:02 Uh, because it's like if you're not working with the person every day, why do you need the special time to go talk to this per- I, I hate it when, when, wh- when somebody says, "Elias, can we talk?" Oh my God. Don't you know that's not good, right?

Harry Stebbings 19:16 They're the worst messages ever.

Elias Torres 19:17 And then when you're going to those one-on-ones, nothing happens.

Harry Stebbings 19:19 (laughs)

Elias Torres 19:20 Why didn't you fucking tell me, like, when you, when we were in that one-on-one?

Harry Stebbings 19:23 (laughs)

Elias Torres 19:23 And so, like, if my, if my whole schedule is filled with one-on-ones, shoot me.

Harry Stebbings 19:27 Why?

Elias Torres 19:27 Like, right now at Agency, I have no meetings with anybody, right? We're like 15 people. We have one meeting for the whole company, for the whole team. "Show me what you did yesterday. Show me what you're gonna do today." That's all we do in that meeting. The rest of the time, I'm selling or I'm helping customers.

Harry Stebbings 19:45 But at some point, that doesn't scale. When you have 50 people, you can't do that.

Elias Torres 19:49 Well, we, we just create, you know, five groups of 10.

Harry Stebbings 19:52 And that works?

Elias Torres 19:53 Absolutely. How do you think I built HubSpot, you know, with the team? We created a small teams that you go operate in. You own that product. You go, you're, you're responsible for that product.

Harry Stebbings 20:03 We're, we're gonna get to the recruitment side, uh... Why can't elephants become cheetahs? And what I mean by that is when we look at, say, Twitter, massive reorganization of the structure of teams, uh, the size of the company. Why can't elephants transition to this new world?

Elias Torres 20:17 Uh, well, that's, that's what they're kinda like in a pretzel, right? Like, every generation, industrial, uh, commercial, internet, SaaS, Web 2.0, whatever, right? It always assumed that larger was better, right? Everybody's dream was, "I wanna build a large company." We're entering a new world where the new proposition, smaller is better. I mean, we always known that smaller is better, uh, but because we couldn't achieve billions in revenue without more people, we had no choice. Every big company today started small.

Harry Stebbings 20:58 So we will have much smaller companies with billions in revenue?

Elias Torres 21:01 That's, that's the potential.

Harry Stebbings 21:02 That's the potential, and that is agent fueled, 'cause we have to fill the void.

Elias Torres 21:05 It has to, right? Because if not, like, you can't keep hiring... I had 800 people. I had 200 in CS. You know how hard that was? I have companies, I have public companies, friends of mine, right, that they're like, "Elias, help me with Agency because, you know, I'm spending 30 million on CS." And it's not even the money. I have the money. We can kinda make it profitable. I can't fi- hire fast enough and train them to support our customers. And then layers in managements and benefits and recruitment and onboarding. You understand how that just bloats all, all that up? If you could train an AI to do that job, and just have straight compute do it 24/7, which one do you prefer?

Harry Stebbings 21:49 Of course.

Elias Torres 21:50 And so that's gonna lead naturally to what? Smaller teams. People-

Harry Stebbings 21:54 Absolutely.

Elias Torres 21:54 So, it was not possible before. Now we have a hope. We are optimistic that that is possibly the future. Maybe it doesn't work out that way, right?

Harry Stebbings 22:02 And people say those AI providers will be actually larger than previous software providers because you are transitioning the budget from a kind of tool budget-

Elias Torres 22:11 To labor.

Harry Stebbings 22:12 ... to a labor budget.

Elias Torres 22:12 Absolutely.

Harry Stebbings 22:13 Do you stand by that, or do you think actually traditional companies will not accept that transition from tool to labor budget?

Elias Torres 22:20 It's gonna take time, because the people making the decisions, like, if the person at the top is making the decision, you know what they're going to decide. But when you're dealing with everybody in between, I get a lot of rejection right now. They're, like, interested. CEOs are making a big mistake right now. They're like, I talk to them and they're like, "Yes, this is what I want. I'm down. Elias, let's get Agency in here right now." And then they pass me down to the next person and to the next person, like, I'm just telling like it is, right? I'm just, you know, this is my future customers. But ch- I want CEOs to be held accountable, right? They say they wanna make their company better and more efficient, take care of the customer, but then when, when the decision trickles down... I, I'm an enterprise sales guy, right? I'm a, I'm an engineer, but, you know, turned sales. And so like, I'm navigating the enterprise, right?

Harry Stebbings 23:05 So what should they be doing? They should be owning that?

Elias Torres 23:07 They should be owning that decision, and they should make sure that they drive it. But that's why I'm telling you, the... if I see that in a company that has 2,000 people, what do you think is gonna happen in a company that has 4,000, 10,000, 20,000, 40,000?

Harry Stebbings 23:19 And you get resistance when you are pushed down to the people you're replacing.

Elias Torres 23:22 All the way down, I get resistance, right? And then when I bring it back to the CEO, they're like, "Ah, yeah, I told the team to focus. It's too many things. Yeah, yeah, I'll get back to you next quarter." So that's why those companies are not going to last if they don't change fast enough.

Harry Stebbings 23:36 And just going back to a statement you said earlier about kinda smaller teams really dominating the future. I'm a venture investor. Smaller teams means less funding required in a lot of cases.

Elias Torres 23:46 In a lot of cases, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:47 Does this threaten the traditional venture model or change it in a way?

Elias Torres 23:51 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we, we'll have smaller teams, but we still need more compute. I mean, we're just really trading people for compute. And so, uh, so maybe not, right? Uh, I, I think it's, it's gonna be a way of, if you-

Harry Stebbings 24:04 If you're trading people for compute, does that change your equity to debt desire? And what I mean by that is-

Elias Torres 24:09 Yeah, absolutely, of course, of course, you know. 'Cause a, a lot less equity will be spent on, on, on the team, right? Uh, because you're not gonna need rounds and rounds and, and, and, and distributing equity after every round to hundreds and hundreds of people.

Harry Stebbings 24:23 Which is interesting, so then it's like early financing remains, but growth financing becomes actually debt financing on more predictable revenue bases.

Elias Torres 24:30 Absolutely.

Harry Stebbings 24:31 In a world of AI, what changes about the way that you start companies?

Elias Torres 24:36 Oh, everything needs to be done faster, right? And the assumption is, um, the skillsets that you need, right? The people that you're looking for, uh, is very different, right?

Harry Stebbings 24:46 I totally agree with you. I have to ask, when you said that kind of B2B changes dramatically, what in B2B will change most significantly in your mind?

Elias Torres 24:56 It's that notion that you need operators. Like all this B2B software was designed to require operators and it's like, it just kills me, right? Like it's the real- I mean, I've been guilty of this. I built a lot of this software out there.

Harry Stebbings 25:08 How do you respond to the common suggestion that actually we'll just do different things, we'll find more ways to be productive, creative, and actually we won't reduce workforce, we'll just be more productive?

Elias Torres 25:18 That's bullshit, right? I just, I just, it's just... You have had some guests here that I love and respect, but they're like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna get larger, you know, in five years." And I'm like, "What?" I just saw something, you know, somebody posted on Twitter was like, "Oh, we're gonna hire 1000 new sales reps." (laughs) I'm sorry. It's like, if we're building the promise that we're gonna, you know, AI is gonna do the work of humans. Like, I think that humans are gonna do things differently, but at different companies, maybe their own companies. It's like, why don't we go serve other people? Why we all have to be focused on all the B2B companies in the United States? There's the whole world out there. There's so many niches, there's so much things that need to be built to improve the lives of other human beings. Why we all focus on the same market, right?

Harry Stebbings 26:03 So you do not worry about the future of human labor and productivity?

Elias Torres 26:07 No, let's go travel. Let's go feed, let's go farm. Like I would go plant, you know what I mean? If I wasn't building Agency, like I'll go have a farm and like plant some like, you know, beans and just watch them grow, right? There's other things we could do with ourselves. I wanna learn how to paint. I just was at the Grand Egyptian Museum, like, I wanna go study that stuff. I wanna learn it, I wanna have fun. I wanna think about different pharaohs and kings. There's so much we can be doing, right?

Harry Stebbings 26:33 I love the way you-

Elias Torres 26:33 I'm not gonna be like, "Let me take another job at Salesforce." That's great. You know? No.

Harry Stebbings 26:38 You don't want a job at Salesforce?

Elias Torres 26:40 No.

Harry Stebbings 26:40 I was hoping to set you up after this.

Elias Torres 26:42 You got connections? You know anybody there?

Harry Stebbings 26:43 You know, me and Mark go way back, you know, I had to email him 53 times to get him on the show. He... I got him.

Elias Torres 26:49 I like it. Great.

Harry Stebbings 26:49 I got him.

Elias Torres 26:50 Thank you.

Harry Stebbings 26:50 I could be, uh, you know, brilliant sales rep. I spoke to so many of our mutual friends. You mentioned the 15 people that you now have with Agency.

Elias Torres 26:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 26:57 I spoke to Halligan, obviously I spoke to, um, Dharmesh, I spoke to Pat. They all said that you are literally the best they know when it comes to recruiting, which I thought was really interesting to have that one commonality from all three as your single biggest strength. And so I have to start, you recruited Andrew at Klaviyo, Whitney, who's now HubSpot CTO, Chris O'Donnell at Day now. What is your hiring criteria?

Elias Torres 27:20 Everybody wants to know the secret, right?

Harry Stebbings 27:22 Mm-hmm.

Elias Torres 27:22 I think my higher criteria... My hiring criteria is high agency. You have to have IQ, you have to have grit, you have to have execution speed. You have to be obsessed. The way that I recruit, I'm a weird engineer. Like, you know, people do/done all the psychology tests on like, my teams that I built, and they're all like, "This is the most extroverted engineering team I've ever seen in my life," right? And it's like, they're all so intense. They all talk to the customers and so I don't... I tend to not hire like that many introvert engineers, right? What happens is that the way that I recruit is so intense, I'm so in your face, I need you to make a decision now. Uh, I'm gonna ask you to go on the most dangerous expedition ever gone. You know, we gotta take HubSpot public, you know, we gotta build Drift from scratch. You know, we have to create, you know, a fastest blah, blah, blah, this, to $100 million in revenue. And so that just scares so many people. I just rub so many people the wrong way during my interview process.

Harry Stebbings 28:27 What do you think rubs 'em up the wrong way? The fact that you challenge them?

Elias Torres 28:30 I'm just too intense. I'm too intense. Like, people are like, "Calm down." People go put Glassdoor reviews, right? It's like, "I hate an interview with this guy at HubSpot. I hate an interview with this guy at Drift," right?

Harry Stebbings 28:39 How does your intensity show itself though? It's like the speed of your questions you don't have to be-

Elias Torres 28:43 The speed of my questions is the how I probe. Show me, open up your computer. I wanna see your git right now. Show me what you've committed. Show me your code. Let's discuss that. Did you really build that? Who was it? So I'm just like, I don't care about my questions. I just go bang, bang, bang, bang. I wanna see it.

Harry Stebbings 28:59 Do you worry that that in some cases will not get the best out of the person for someone who is maybe shyer?

Elias Torres 29:04 That's the test. That's the test that I do. If they can handle me and they wanna work with me, then that's just what has made the teams work that I attract.

Harry Stebbings 29:13 Do you think you need to change your management style to get the best out of different people? What I've learned is, you know, we often say kind of this is the culture and like cultures are like this homogenous, unified thing, and actually some people benefit from the carrot, some the stick. And I need to change who I am as a leader to get the best out of them.

Elias Torres 29:30 Good luck.

Harry Stebbings 29:31 Why?

Elias Torres 29:32 I don't want... I'm done changing for people, right? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 29:35 (laughs)

Elias Torres 29:36 I don't care. It's like, it's like, you know what, uh, screw all that. You know what I mean? It's like, look at Drift. We had 800 people. It was like, I hired coaches, watch me, give me feedback. You know, Elias, you should be more carrots here, more this. And that's why I would have a public company right now if I, if it wasn't for like all those carrots that I gave and candy bars and trophies.

Harry Stebbings 30:02 Unpack that. What do you mean you'd have a public company if you hadn't had the carrots and candies?

Elias Torres 30:05 Like I sold the company to private equity, right? You know, why wouldn't I wanna have a public company? I don't know. Maybe I don't want a public company.

Harry Stebbings 30:11 Do you consider Drift as shortened, short of its success?

Elias Torres 30:16 Drift is the biggest failure in my life.

Harry Stebbings 30:19 What do you mean by that?

Elias Torres 30:20 Like, I wanted to build something great. I wanted to build something sustainable, right? Uh, enduring, right? That the customers could be using, keep using and getting value out of the product, right?

Harry Stebbings 30:29 Why did that not transpire?

Elias Torres 30:32 ... too many people. My problem, my fault on the product, not growing it, not making it better. You know, you wanna make a product that the customers receive value right away, right?

Harry Stebbings 30:43 What did you not do with product that you wish you had done?

Elias Torres 30:45 Speed, execution, the timing was off, right? I was so close to the LLMs being there, right? To, to transform like what I'm doing now. So I'm, I'm excited. I'm excited for what I'm doing now, right? I get to start from scratch. And, and that's really good in a way. I, I wouldn't necessarily wanna be transitioning to a, a, a large ship right now. But, uh, um, it was tough. I, I don't, I don't think it was my greatest accomplishment, right? It's like I let people down, I let my customers down. I don't wanna do that again.

Harry Stebbings 31:15 Why was it not salvageable? Why was it not a case of, "We can transition this into a public company"?

Elias Torres 31:20 (sighs) It's the way that we built companies. They're too big, too inefficient, right? Like, to, to be able to make things salvageable, like you said, right? Uh, uh, these big companies that, that are, that are now, right? If they do what Twitter did, if they reduce themselves to 20% and build an amazing product and are willing to break all their pricing models and revenues and change all of that, then they will survive.

Harry Stebbings 31:42 Talk to me then about s- the sale process. Was that difficult for you?

Elias Torres 31:47 I told you that nothing is hard. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 31:50 (laughs)

Elias Torres 31:50 It, it, it was not difficult. I, I, it's like-

Harry Stebbings 31:52 But accepting that-

Elias Torres 31:53 ... I'm an immigrant. Yeah. I'm just saying, but I'm, I'm just such a realist, right? I, I accept what it is. I don't let my pride try to, you know... I mean, my pride gets the best of me a lot of times. But I'm not going to be... I think that that was the smartest thing I did, right? Is not be emotional about it. A lot of people, uh, uh, even my investors would be like, "Andy, you're worth a billion now. You could be worth two or four." And they multiply my equity times that, and say like, "You know, look at all the other companies that are growing and s-" 'Cause I, I did this in September of 2021, right? And so there's a lot of peers of mine that were like, "4 billion valuation," or stuff like that. And, and so we started a little bit earlier from some of those waves, so they were getting crazy valuations like Hopping, you know, or other companies, right? And so, like, um, Outreach Manni is a good friend of mine, right? He's, he's in London. And so you see all the stuff and that, like, affects your ego. Like, "Why am I not being valued when, when I'm a similar company?" SalesLoft was valued at two, right? And so...

Harry Stebbings 32:53 How much did you sell it for?

Elias Torres 32:54 1.2.

Harry Stebbings 32:55 1.2?

Elias Torres 32:56 Right.

Harry Stebbings 32:56 Can I be super blunt? How much did you get take from that?

Elias Torres 32:59 (laughs) I'm not, I'm not saying that.

Harry Stebbings 33:00 (laughs)

Elias Torres 33:00 I say enough, it changed my life. Fuck you money, for sure.

Harry Stebbings 33:03 Okay. So fuck you money. How do you think about that relationship to money?

Elias Torres 33:07 It is, uh, like I said, it's, it reduces a lot of the physical and material stress. Such a blessing from an immigrant that had nothing, to not worry about like, you know... I, I focus on the small stuff, right? Just get a car whenever you need it, you know, um, do, um, you know, stay at whatever hotel you want, fly to wherever you want, eat wherever you want. That's just like, that's like the basics. You know, it's, it's great not to worry. I believe, uh, a lot in assistants.

Harry Stebbings 33:34 Mm-hmm.

Elias Torres 33:34 You know, eventually we'll have them with AI. Like, you need help. I think people are wasting their time trying to be all frugal or this. I wanna focus my time on the customers, right? And, and my team and my people. I don't wanna do anything else, right? So those are the nice luxuries.

Harry Stebbings 33:49 Uh, before we go back to-

Elias Torres 33:50 By the way, you throw me all these questions that were not on the list. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 33:52 Oh, don't mind. It's cool. Uh, oh, uh, I shouldn't... I always do this, don't I? (laughs) You clearly haven't seen all the shows. Um, oh, we're gonna go to customers, but I do just wanna stay on the hiring. Um,

Harry Stebbings 34:01 is there a process, and has the process changed over time?

Elias Torres 34:05 Yes, big difference. Um, so I used to be intense. It was a numbers game, right? And we wanted more, more, more, more. And so like, I had to go really fast and I would force people and convince people and, and I would, I would convince more people than I should've. I could convince anyone. I'm, I'm a good recruiter, right? But I realize now that that's not the same, right? Now this time, um, I'm pushing back. More people know me now, more people know my reputation, more people wanna join. Uh, but it's like, it's, it's important to not fall for, for this. There was people that would reverse engineer my process, and they would know how to talk to me in a way that would just touch the right points. Now, doesn't matter what you say to me, I have to reject, reject, reject, push back, push back, push back, right? And so like if you don't, if you don't handle the pushback... Uh, I do a lot of contracting now. You have to work for me part-time. Um, so either you're available or you're not. I, you need to show me your grit. How much work can you do while you're doing something else? I used to hire fast, fire slow-ish, right? Now I'm hire slow, fire fast, right? And so people never fire fast enough. Like, every time I fire someone, right, even though I'm a good firer now, right, it's like, I would always like, everybody knew, right? Ah, it was so hard, and it just became harder and harder. So think about the, the large incumbents, how long it takes them to, to, to fire people.

Harry Stebbings 35:35 (sighs)

Elias Torres 35:35 Exactly. Years. Years, right?

Harry Stebbings 35:37 I mean, in, in like Germany, it's almost structurally impossible to fire somebody as well.

Elias Torres 35:40 Well, that's why Europe... No, no, let's not talk about Europe. We're in Europe.

Harry Stebbings 35:42 (laughs)

Elias Torres 35:42 But in the United St- even in the United States-

Harry Stebbings 35:44 It's not like we're in Europe. (laughs)

Elias Torres 35:46 (laughs) Yeah. But that's true, sorry. We can say anything we want about Europe.

Harry Stebbings 35:48 Let's not talk about Europe. (laughs)

Elias Torres 35:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 35:50 We're only sitting in the middle of London.

Elias Torres 35:51 Exactly. It's, uh... And so what happens is that, um, really is, um, people just need to be more careful. I think my advice I give to early founders is that... (laughs) That's the problem with early founders, right? They have so much more to learn of like, they have all these high hopes for all these people that they hire and don't realize that most likely, they're gonna be let down because it's gonna take a long time to develop that intuition for recruiting. And so now I just like, you know, I had a guy working for me like, you know, tried one week. Then he's like, didn't get anything done in a week. I had a whole bunch of, uh, young kids that I hire out of college and they all started early, right? I hired five kids from Northeastern in one day. Before, all my companies, I've built them on the backs of Northeastern students. They're amazing people. They're the best. I love the university. All my kids are going there.... and so, like, I used to hire one or two every time. My co-founder was Northeastern. He was early in founding engineer at Drift. This time, I saw one, I was like, "Great. Who's your friend? Oh, let me see that GitHub. Oh, who's your other friend? Let's see that GitHub." And so I made five offers. They all started working. Then I hired-

Harry Stebbings 36:56 How do you onboard five new people in a day? Wh-

Elias Torres 36:59 I just, I just tell them, "Come to my house. I have a chef. We cook them lunch. And then we ship all the laptops to the house, and then we just ship code that day."

Harry Stebbings 37:09 Wow. And that doesn't cause dysfunction, misalignment when there's only 15 people?

Elias Torres 37:15 No. That was like, we're like, "Okay, we're gonna do, like, two or three times more than we did last week this week, because these people are here. And whoever doesn't make that, goes."

Harry Stebbings 37:24 And they know that coming in, that it's kind of like-

Elias Torres 37:26 Absolutely. (laughs) Seriously.

Harry Stebbings 37:29 (laughs) I, I wanna unpack a couple of elements. How quickly do you know when someone's not good enough?

Elias Torres 37:34 In reality, most people should know, like, within the first week or two. It's just, they just reject those, those signals.

Harry Stebbings 37:39 Can you get rid of someone after a week or two without it-

Elias Torres 37:41 You should.

Harry Stebbings 37:42 You should?

Elias Torres 37:42 Like, I'm getting rid of people during the interview process in the first week or two weeks, uh, because they're interviewing, but-

Harry Stebbings 37:48 Well, the hard thing for people often is they hire someone. Two weeks in, they're like, "They're not good enough. But it looks so bad if I get rid of them after two weeks. I mean-"

Elias Torres 37:55 Ego.

Harry Stebbings 37:55 "... I've barely given them a chance."

Elias Torres 37:56 Ego, right? And so they, those people that are making those decisions are not changing their process. They either have to do more research, more interviewing, more testing, or finding the right talent, or doing the right reference checks, right? Or they need to be willing to do that, or be more upfront. And that's why I, I tell people, "I'll pay you a contract, uh, an hourly rate. Just work." And, and I, and I let them be, right? Show me what you got.

Harry Stebbings 38:22 Are the best hires always obvious?

Elias Torres 38:25 Yes. Um, no, not true. I mean, wha-... Because I've hired thousands, right? It's like, there's so many people that you are like, "Wow, this, what a gem. What, what a, what, what a diamond in the rough," right? So there's a lot of those. Uh, yeah, but I mean, it's like, I, I have time to find 'em.

Harry Stebbings 38:44 I actually find that often boring people in interview processes tend to be the best hires, because they actually tend to never be as boring as they actually are in an interview process.

Elias Torres 38:52 Oh.

Harry Stebbings 38:52 It d-

Elias Torres 38:53 I never say anything about boring. Uh, uh, boring is great, right? I've had people that, that my team interviews, right, and they're like, um, "Elias, this, this guy is not good." And I'm like, "Hmm, let me go back in." I go in. Really quiet, really shy, but they had grit, right? They got shit done. They showed me their code. And I go back to the team, and I'm like... By the way, the way that I ran interview at, at HubSpot and at Drift, everybody I would help, I have a panel of people interviewing, but I would always interview myself. I will do the informal, I will do the formal. I bring 'em in, and then I do the closing, but I let them interview and have fun and tell me what they think, right? And so they're like, "No, no." And then I just do whatever I want. I just make the hiring decision regardless of what the panel says, right? And so I'm always like, "Nope, we're hiring this person." And then, uh, many times, they'll be like, "Yeah, that was really good," right? And they're better than the people that we're interviewing. So, those are the compromises I was making before, right? And so, like, now, I'm getting leaner and leaner, and, like, just finding the best

Elias Torres 39:58 of the best.

Harry Stebbings 39:58 When you've made mis-hires, what did you not see that you wish you'd seen?

Elias Torres 40:03 The biggest failure in the mis-hires was myself. I saw it, but maybe I was desperate. I needed people. I needed to build things. You know, I needed help. And I convinced myself that it was gonna be okay.

Harry Stebbings 40:19 A lot of SaaS founders will listen to this and go, "I, I get it, Elias, but you know what? I need some fucking sales reps."

Elias Torres 40:25 I know, I know. That doesn't-

Harry Stebbings 40:26 "And I'm gonna, I need to hit my numbers, and my, uh, this VC's telling me that I need this, and I need to hit the quarter. So like, they're good enough, but are they perfect?" What do you say to them in that position?

Elias Torres 40:37 I'm saying, "I've been there. I hear you. I feel you. I've done that mistake, right? Don't do it. It, it, it is not worth it." And then I tell them... You know, I invest ƒ2000000 in everything, right? So I, I... And then, you know, founders come to me for advice, and I tell them, "Don't do it. It's the wrong person." And then when they hear my... I hate giving advice, right? Be- I don't even... "Don't..."

Harry Stebbings 40:59 Well, other than me, on a podcast. (laughs)

Elias Torres 40:59 Anyone listening to this... (laughs) Yeah. (laughs) It's... Whatever I'm saying, don't listen to it, right? But it's like... They're like... I tell them, "Don't hire that person." And they're like, "No, no, but I need to hire this person." And so I just see people living this lie, right? That they're, like, convinced themselves they're gonna still do it, and then they hire this person, and they keep them for two years. You know, people that I let go, right? People that I made a mistake on, uh, and then they go, someone else takes them, and they just... The whole, the whole industry just keeps taking these people over and over, and I'm like-

Harry Stebbings 41:26 It's unbelievable. They go, "Oh, well, they worked at Drift before, so it must be good."

Elias Torres 41:28 Right. But nobody says this on a podcast. No, exactly.

Harry Stebbings 41:30 And I say, "Do you reference?" (laughs)

Elias Torres 41:31 Do you ever call me? Call me, right? If you call me, you'll hear the truth, 'cause I don't wanna lie to a founder, right? But then people do it. I'm just saying this is how the industry works, but here I- I'm saying here the truth.

Harry Stebbings 41:42 So, so one of the things I hate when I look at CVs/LinkedIns is bounces, I call them, which is like two years Drift, two years HubSpot, two years, two years, two years. It's like-

Elias Torres 41:50 At, at least two years is better than, like, a year.

Harry Stebbings 41:53 Uh, for-

Elias Torres 41:53 People are hiring people that are bouncing every year.

Harry Stebbings 41:55 For you Americans are incredibly promiscuous when it comes to jobs. Uh, but, like, do you agree with me in terms of hating that bounce, bounce, bounce?

Elias Torres 42:03 1000%.

Harry Stebbings 42:03 And anything else that's a real red flag when you're looking it at people's tracks?

Elias Torres 42:07 Everything is a red flag. If you stay there for a long time, it's a red flag too.

Harry Stebbings 42:11 Why?

Elias Torres 42:12 What's your slope in there?

Harry Stebbings 42:14 Well, I mean, you can see if there's title acceleration.

Elias Torres 42:16 Exactly. That's what I'm saying, but, but, I mean, but even title acceleration doesn't mean anything. It's a... That's why you have to probe deep when you're interviewing. What did you do?

Harry Stebbings 42:25 I always find great people use data. (laughs)

Elias Torres 42:27 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:27 Not great people use stories. (laughs)

Elias Torres 42:29 Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 42:30 Um, you said title acceleration doesn't mean much. I saw on your Twitter that you're not a fan of titles, and you think titles will be removed.

Elias Torres 42:37 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 42:38 Why do you think that, and why are titles not useful?

Elias Torres 42:41 Because we just...... ego-driven humans, right? We just wanna build empires. We just want... Uh, everybody's obsessed. I mean, how many, how many young people I've hired, right? That they pull me aside and they said, "Eliaz, can I get a shot at being a VP at your company?" Like, you know, early days. I'm like, "You just graduated college. Back off." You know what I mean? And so the thing about it is, like, um, we're just obsessed with all that stuff, right? And so I'm looking for people that don't really care about that, right? We have to change the way we, we reward the team, right? Whether it's gonna be profit sharing, revenue sharing, right? Whether it's gonna be more equity, just higher salaries, right? These are things that I'm thinking about constantly, right? If I'm gonna have 100 people, a billion dollars in revenue, right? How am I gonna compensate them? How am I gonna retain them or not? They can't handle the first, you know, they... Maybe they burn out after two years, then take a break. Here, take your equity. It's gonna be worth billions, you know, millions, right? Maybe billions. And so we go and we say... And then, uh, go start something else, right?

Harry Stebbings 43:41 I am a founder today, starting a company in this age, and I'm listening to you. What can I do to change the rewards/incentives structures of companies to make it better for my teams?

Elias Torres 43:52 Well, first of all, it's like, all the companies I've been at and I participated, I, maybe I was naive, but it wasn't... I was never calculating how much money I was going to get. I was doing it for the love of the game, right? I mean, to me, just being in that world and, and creating, compared to my IBM days, right? And, and being frustrated for not being able to do anything and people just leaving at five o'clock and not caring. "Oh, I'm an SDSM, I'm a distinguished engineer, and I get to go home and ma- you know, do some pottery." Kill me, right? It's like, I wanna, I wanted to be in this, right? And so creating, building impact, talking to my customers, busy all day working for them, working with... Having experiences with my team. Uh, and so, like, if you don't wanna be in that, don't do it. If you're in it for the money, forget about it, right? And so, um, uh, and so let's go, let's join, join the party and come and create value, and then the rest will, will take care of itself.

Harry Stebbings 44:50 How do you think about that distribution of profits effectively? As you said, that you've got the equity, you also have, um, profit distribution, you can do dividends. What do you think that is most effectively?

Elias Torres 45:00 Let's get to profitability, right? Let's see how we build this company, right? Do we, do we build it? Let's see what Pat supports, right? What Sequoia wants.

Harry Stebbings 45:07 Is your mindset towards profitability in the journey different from what it was in previously?

Elias Torres 45:12 Yes, yes. We, we... It was something that we were taught not to worry about it, right, in, in the past. It's like it's ZIRP, right? It's like... And, and probability was never a discussion. I mean, Pat gave me a class on, on free cashflow, uh, at one point in time, you know, 'cause there were some, some big players in the Sequoia portfolio doing things like that. But, uh, now I think about a lot more, right? I'm thinking more about enduring company more than anything else, right? Whatever that takes, right? If I can make this profitable for 100 people, and then I can make something last longer, you know, I'm more driven about legacy now than I am about money.

Harry Stebbings 45:46 How do you think about the, uh, focus on profit today reducing the growth potential of tomorrow? That you will make trade-offs in resource allocation to hit profitability earlier that will hamper your growth?

Elias Torres 45:58 Like David Cancel says to me all the time, it's always both. It's a paradox, right? It's like-

Harry Stebbings 46:03 He told me-

Elias Torres 46:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 46:04 ... "I had to ask you both." (laughs)

Elias Torres 46:06 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 46:06 Uh, so, uh, what does this mean?

Elias Torres 46:09 The problem is that, you know, so the, the, uh, the, the... Uh, I was his sidekick and he would be always like, and he's like, "Just build me another CRM or build me another marketing automation platform at Drift." And I'd be like, "Which one do you want? Do you want CRM or do you want a map? Do you want a chatbot or do you want this?" You know, I would always, like, make him choose, and he would always be like, "I want both." I go, "Do you want a, a, a quick product or you want a great product?" You know, engineers always wanna, like, we go back and so, you know, as the co-founder and we... It's like, "Do you want this or do you want that?" And his answer was always both. And it took me a long time to learn that, right? That, yeah, you have to focus, but there's not a simple clear answer. You have to do more than one thing, uh, uh, uh, at once. And so the same is with companies, right? It's like, I want profitability, right, but it doesn't mean that... The rules are changing, right? Uh, the success of a company depends on its brand, depends on its product, differentiation. Those things don't change, right? Um, how do we scale it and how do we grow it? There's not one, one company to rule them all, right? It's like we're, we're not... Cursor is great because it could grow so fast, unbelievable, but that's a different style of products, right? It's something, but you can ei- you can gain it easily and you can lose it easily.

Harry Stebbings 47:23 One thing that I'm worried about, actually, is tr- funding cycles for traditional enterprise companies. And what I mean by that is w- we... Well, you know, I am a little bit younger than you but I still grew up in a similar kind of SaaStr days, so to speak, of, like, triple-triple, double-double. And the expectations revenue-wise on founders were m- kind of those. Now, we have several companies, as we've seen, go to 50, 100 million in revenue in a year, two years, and the revenue expectations have now changed so much. I worry that there is a generation of SaaS companies that will not get funded-

Elias Torres 47:57 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 47:58 ... because they don't meet the Macaws, the Midjourneys, the you name its.

Elias Torres 48:02 It's really bad, right? 'Cause there was a moment in time where we were worried about profitability (laughs) , you know, past ZIRP, right? Where we were like, "Now we're gonna build better companies." And now we have Cursor and now everybody's like, "I want the same." Uh, and so, luckily, I'm not falling into that peer pressure, right? Uh, what, what I really care is how do I gain the distribution of lifetime customers, right? How do I get that... Like, uh, remember, I'm B2B. Like, let's not confuse. Like, consumer, let's not conf- con- consumer tag, or personal data, or shopping, or e-commerce. This just different spaces. I, uh, I'm a B2B SaaS guy, right? And so, like, I'm talking about I wanna help businesses achieve those dreams, right? Of having high efficiency, profitability with small teams.... and they can serve their customer better. So, you have to gain their trust for them to share your, their data with you, right? And you have to, um, build a relationship. And so I- I'm working on doing that at scale with a small team. That's what I'm out here to prove, right? Uh, the cursors and all that stuff, like, you can easily switch to, like, Windsurf, and you can switch to this, and you can go back to co-pilot, and, like, so that revenue could disappear. This is a brand new phenomenon, and we do not know how it plays out.

Harry Stebbings 49:20 Do you think a lot of VC money is burnt in this wave?

Elias Torres 49:24 VC money is always burnt.

Harry Stebbings 49:26 (laughs)

Elias Torres 49:26 It's, uh, I mean, VC, VC is a small asset compared to the rest of the stuff that happens in the world. Go to Dubai and go to all these other places. Uh, it's an exciting place, right? It's like, it's American dream.

Harry Stebbings 49:37 You said something that I need your advice on (laughs) . You said that you've got good at firing. It's not a nice thing to do. I think it's hard for especially younger founders. What would be your biggest advice to me on bluntly how to get good at letting people go?

Elias Torres 49:50 I've learned to not make big promises that I cannot fill, fulfill, right? You know, people don't realize when I'm speaking how accurate I am because I've had so many conversations before. So I'm not promising shit to anyone, right? I'm like, "I don't know. Uh, all I promise you is, like, a lot of work and me yelling, you know? That's it. I promise you that."

Harry Stebbings 50:10 Do you enjoy fundraising? Hiring and firing is a crucial part of being a CEO. Do you enjoy fundraising?

Elias Torres 50:16 Not really, right? I mean, I think I like deals, right? I, I, I, I like, you know, whether it's I'm hiring someone, close the deal, whether I'm hiring a customer, you know, like closing the deal. Whether it's fundraising, yeah, closing the deal, right? Whether it's, um... I love that. I love that excitement, you know? When we were selling, uh, to pri- to, to private equity, right, I was, we had some bankers that, that the board asked me to hire, but I, I didn't really need them. But, no, I mean, I was like, "I like this job. This would be, this would be great." Like, just every month it's just like having two or three deals on flight. So I like doing deals, but then reality, I'm a relationship guy, right? And so I, I, I care more about what happens after. I care more about the relationship I have with the VC after. Like, I love Pat. I love, you know, Ezar from CRV, Fialka, Larry Bond from, from General Catalyst. Those are my Jewish uncles and, like, you know what I mean? I, I, I like people. I like being with people. Uh-

Harry Stebbings 51:11 I love Fialka. Um, is selling a company what we are told it is?

Elias Torres 51:17 There's pros and cons. Um, it was, uh, like I said, it w- it, it's sad to, to, to be nobody, right? To b- to walk around in your own company and you don't matter anymore, right? You bring new CEO, you bring new management, it, it hurts the ego, right? And you created this, and then you're no longer relevant, uh, or that you couldn't take it further. And so it was a great experience for me to be... The post-Drift days, I spent, like, seven, 10 months, you know, traveling and trying to find myself (laughs) . It w- it was a tough journey. There's p- people that done some nice graph of what happens in the depression and the sadness, and you're nobody, you have no job, you have no meetings. Uh, but it was great. I needed that break.

Harry Stebbings 52:00 Do you think you still have an ego?

Elias Torres 52:02 Of course. (laughs) Everybody has an ego.

Harry Stebbings 52:04 (laughs) Is it dangerous?

Elias Torres 52:06 Ego is dangerous, but ego, ego drives us too. It's kind of like the, the care, don't care, you know?

Harry Stebbings 52:12 I, I totally do. Uh, I spoke to Julien before, and he told me that you are an advocate for having children as soon as possible. Um, I wanted to touch on this.

Elias Torres 52:22 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 52:22 Why do you think that's a-

Elias Torres 52:23 So this is a big pivot, right?

Harry Stebbings 52:24 ... it's a big pivot, but I, I, I, bluntly, yeah, ego can drive of it.

Elias Torres 52:29 I got enough friends. Let's not make any friends here. Let's go.

Harry Stebbings 52:31 (laughs)

Elias Torres 52:33 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 52:33 Why do you think it's so important to have kids early?

Elias Torres 52:35 I, I think... Look, when I was growing up, everybody was like, "We have too many humans in the planet," right?

Harry Stebbings 52:41 Yeah, I remember this.

Elias Torres 52:42 Oh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 52:42 "Global population will be 32 billion."

Elias Torres 52:44 Oh. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 52:44 "Oh my God."

Elias Torres 52:45 And now the problem is the reverse. We no- we don't, we don't have children. Like, societies are going to collapse. I mean, that's what we think, right? Uh, unless I've been misinformed. And so I, I just think that, you know, we have Bryan Johnson trying to, like, uh, uh, stretch, you know, longevity and things like that. But I don't think we're f- we're far away from figuring that out, I think. We're farther away to figure out how we can have healthy babies at a later age. So I think that the best time to have children is when we're younger, unless we have unlimited resources, right? But even then, your health, your ability is... We, we, we have improved the possibility of having children with IVF and those things, but I've heard that the journey on that is really hard. It's really difficult. Really long, right? And so I would say that I was very fortunate. I met my wife when I was 17. Uh, we had our first child at, I was 27. I have three kids. They're, like, 18, 19, and 21. They're wonderful. We just went to Cairo together. We're, like, hanging. The- they're, they're, it's my squad, right? They're, they're my, they're my, they're my team. And so what happens is that they're like, "Can we go to Amsterdam now, you know, this week?" I'm like, "No, I got to work." (laughs) It's... So you guys can go (laughs) have fun. Uh, and so I think that, uh, I'm, I was, I'm so blessed, right? Because most people think it's one or the other, but in reality you can do both. It's not gonna be pretty. Uh, i- i- it's, it's gonna be ugly. But while everybody was ha-

Harry Stebbings 54:10 How can you do both? I mean, honestly, like, I, I, I-

Elias Torres 54:11 I did it. I mean, my, my, my wife is incredible. She was at home. We had these kids, but I would work all day at IBM, and I would go home, and it was like, dinner time, bathing, uh, and, like, put them to bed, then doing the dishes. Just exhausting. No sleep, uh, commute, no money, no help at home. We're far away from our family. It was horrible.

Harry Stebbings 54:33 But I, but I think entrepreneurs are like athletes. This sounds awful and arrogant, and so I might have to edit this out, but, like, I have a very honed life. It's incredibly selfish.

Elias Torres 54:42 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 54:42 Everything that I do is so that I can perform better and be the best that I can be in different respects. When you have the kids and the wife-... suddenly, you are no longer the most important thing.

Elias Torres 54:55 Oh.

Harry Stebbings 54:55 And that, that sleep schedule goes to shit.

Elias Torres 54:57 Oh.

Harry Stebbings 54:58 And your ability to inspire in that meeting is completely off. Your ability in fundraising meeting, it's off, you're not performing at peak. And-

Elias Torres 55:05 But I guess it's just the, the, the, it's just we have different iss- diff- different definitions of peak. Because I was able to do all that. I raised hundreds of millions of dollars going through all that stuff, right? You have three kids at home that they just don't take a break, they don't take naps, and you're just like, "I am exhausted. It's Sunday afternoon, can I take a nap?" You know what I mean? It's sort of like, you can't, right? It, it's so, it's like, it was horrible. And everybody would be talking to me in my younger days, they'd be like, "W- what'd you do this weekend?" And I hated that question, you know, in IBM, right?

Harry Stebbings 55:36 Why? (laughs)

Elias Torres 55:37 Because they were like, "Oh, I went to Egypt for the weekend," right? And I'd be like, "What'd you do?" They're like, "I, I, well, I spent all day on dealing with outages at, uh, you know, from the company, from the startup." And then, m- you know, my wife would be like, "Saturday, like let's go out, let's get out of the house," and I'd be like, "Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll be done coding this feature that I'm finally without interruptions by noon, and then we'll take the kids off." And it'd be 3:00 PM and I would still be coding, right? And, and, and I would, we would go to the beach and I would carry my laptop, and David would be like, "Buy me like a modem or something." It's like, I need to respond, and if there's an outage, who else is gonna do it but me? And so my life sucked, right? I never traveled, I never did anything but work and the kids and the family, right? I traded it off. Now, I get to go wherever I want, right? But, uh, unfortunately, that I was able to build a company, be successful, and have my children, I'm more than blessed, I'm more than grateful. I can die happy today, right? Other people, other friends that they, they either were successful or they had family and now they wanna go start their next journey in their lives, right? So I was able to do both. But regardless, when you have everything, when you have money, when you have all these things, if you get to a later age and you don't have kids, not that everybody should, and know that I'm sure people are gonna judge me, "Look, what if I don't wanna have kids? Respect me." I'm fine, but the reality is I see like we want something more than just material things. And, and, and having a family is, is a great thing.

Harry Stebbings 57:06 I totally agree with you. I've just become an uncle for the first time, and it's, it's, it's-

Elias Torres 57:09 I've seen your pictures, you're getting soft, you're getting soft.

Harry Stebbings 57:11 ... so, I, I do, I love this, a beautiful little girl. Um, my question to you is, your wife is the first woman that you met in America, I think, yeah? Like when you were 19, okay.

Elias Torres 57:21 17.

Harry Stebbings 57:22 17. After so many years of amazing marriage, what would be your biggest piece of advice to someone listening on how to sustain an amazing marriage?

Elias Torres 57:31 She's always right. (laughs) .

Harry Stebbings 57:33 (laughs) .

Elias Torres 57:33 You see? It's like I just, I can't get my wife to apologize anything, no matter how mo- right. I, I, I think I'm right at work all the time, but not at home. And so, I don't know, it's just the first thing that came to my mind. You know, uh, we always joke about that. But i- it's really about that selfishness, right? Is that you have to realize that it's not about you, or is about just, you know, I think social media has ruined us of thinking what a perfect, most of us, what you see on social media is fake.

Harry Stebbings 57:57 What if it is about you? And I don't mean that badly, but you mentioned Cairo, you mentioned Amsterdam, you mentioned the nice things that they have.

Elias Torres 58:04 Well, now I'm being more selfish now.

Harry Stebbings 58:05 That's all enabled by you.

Elias Torres 58:06 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:06 It's all, it is all about you.

Elias Torres 58:08 It, i- it is, but, but like, um, uh, like, we were supposed to go to Cairo, I have a friend and he invited me, and then my friend wasn't responding, so I said to the kids, "Let's go to Amsterdam instead." And my kids were like, "But we wanna go to Egypt." Okay, okay, let's make it happen, right? And so, um, I don't know, I think, I think you have to balance the selfishness, right? Yes, we are selfish (laughs) beings, but what I'm telling you is that you, you get a lot more pleasure when, when others are around you. Right? And so it, it has to be a little bit less about us.

Harry Stebbings 58:39 So that's marriage. On the father's side, when you think back over the 21 years of fatherhood, anything that you know now that you wish you'd known when you became a father 21 years ago when you were 27?

Elias Torres 58:51 I, I guess what I saw their parents or whatever in the past, like for example, my kids are like, you know, the five love languages? My kids' love language is, uh, is touch, right? All three of them. And my daughter says, "From you, dad, I want words of affirmation." So I've learned to be more, like overcome that like, "Oh, I don't wanna be this dad." We had these images. And so on one side, you learn to be more loving and caring. And the other side I wish I would've been tougher with them. And so like right now, I try to be tough too, right? And it's like, 'cause nothing compares to how I grew up. I mean, I, I was like, beating the shit out of me, like by my mom, like, uh, I can go into specifics. And I love all that. I love my mother because of what she did at the time with what she knew, but she made me tougher, right? And so I think that we are too soft. Sorry, our kids.

Harry Stebbings 59:41 We're too soft on our kids.

Elias Torres 59:42 Yeah. We're weak.

Harry Stebbings 59:43 But what do we do when they say they want words of affirmation?

Elias Torres 59:45 You can give them words of affirmation and be tough at the same time. Back to the paradox, right? I mean, words of affirmation doesn't mean that you can't be tough when you're like, "I gotta manufacture adversity."

Harry Stebbings 59:55 (laughs) .

Elias Torres 59:56 You gotta be tough, man. You can't be weak, you can't be soft.

Harry Stebbings 59:59 Has there ever been a time when you felt like you were letting them down as a father?

Elias Torres 1:00:02 Oh, all the time, right? Because it's like, did I ... Like I, I saw all these, all these parents, you know, that were older when I was working, right? And they'd be like, "Oh, I, I just restored this car with my kids." And, "Uh, my, my kid is an Olympian," and "My kid is going to be like a pianist, world pianist." And I'm like, "Shit, I had no money, I couldn't do tutors for them, I couldn't do any of that stuff." And so then I was like, "Maybe I'm gonna teach them how to be engineers, right?" And I was like, "That's one thing I could teach them, how to code early." And I still failed at that, 'cause I was so busy. I was either in there doing the dishes or, or, or making sure the systems were up at the company. And so I felt like I let them down, but, but, um-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:43 I ask 'cause I, I think I feel like bluntly a constant failure. Because, you know, I'm a founder of a media company, an investor, a son, a brother, a boyfriend, an uncle, and at every mo- a board member, at every moment I'm letting down multiple people.

Elias Torres 1:00:58 Yeah.... so that's why I said, yeah, I'm, I'm letting them down. But, but the reality is that no one can do a perfect job for anyone. And so what matters is, what were you able to do in, in, in the good moments, right? And, uh, whether it was a tough lesson or whether it was a, a, some great words of affirmation or touch, right? So I, that's kind of why I don't care. Like, I have no regrets. It's like, I'm trying to do the best I can and I do good things because I'm thinking about them. But I don't worry if I don't do 100% of what you wanted and what she wanted, and what they wanted. It's like, I'm just like, "Hey, I'm doing... Leave me alone." You know what I mean?

Harry Stebbings 1:01:33 I, I want to finish on, you retweeted Marcelo Claure's tweet on the commonality of failure in great people's careers. And I think it's a really interesting question which is like, what was your favorite failure? And a favorite failure is often, uh, attributed with great lessons, great takeaways on how it changed you.

Elias Torres 1:01:53 I mean, I think Drift was, was a great failure, right? You know, it, it's both, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:01:56 Well, you sold it for $1.2 billion, so it's a bit of a cop out of a failure, my friend.

Elias Torres 1:02:00 Yeah. (laughs) It is. It... But, but it is. Like, like what I'm saying is, like, look, uh, what I've learned was-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:05 Do you think David saw it as a failure?

Elias Torres 1:02:07 Yes. I mean, I think, I think... You know, just look at HubSpot, right? HubSpot is my, is my, is my thing there, right? It's like, look, it's a $30 billion company. Bryan and Dharmesh get to still be involved. From an ego perspective that, that's like... It's nice. It's better than Drift, right? And so I think that that's what I wanted to build. But I made mistakes along the way that didn't create as, uh, uh, a foundation solid enough to grow that. Klaviyo, you know, I'm a first investor, good friends with Andrew, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:02:37 You're the first investor in Klaviyo?

Elias Torres 1:02:38 I convinced him to take VC money.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:40 Whoa!

Elias Torres 1:02:41 And so, um-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:42 How much did you put in?

Elias Torres 1:02:43 (laughs) It went... It's great. And so what happens is that-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:47 I'm sure I'll have him on the show.

Elias Torres 1:02:48 I know. Of course. It's... So the thing about it is that, um, you go and you do that. And look, here's an amazing $10 billion company, right? And it's, it's a fantastic, you know, free cash flow, this, that.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:59 I still think it's super underappreciated.

Elias Torres 1:03:01 1000%. So that's why I'm not selling my stock. But here's the thing, right, is like that's... Those are role models for me, but this time I want to do it my way, right? And so that's what I'm doing. That's why I'm in this journey all over with Agency.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:14 You're an investor also, right? You've made quite a few investments.

Elias Torres 1:03:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:17 How has investing changed your operating mindset?

Elias Torres 1:03:20 Investing is really hard, man. It, it's like-

Harry Stebbings 1:03:24 (laughs) You're telling me. (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:03:25 I, I, I respect that. That... You know, and that's why... I could have come... I could have gone and become a VC. I had dinner with, with David Fialko for, like, two hours one day, 'cause, like, "We're gonna start a firm," you know. And he's like... Oh, my God, so many bottles of wines later and he's like, "I can't believe Fialko gave me, like, two hours to explain how a VC firm worked." And I'm like... After that conversation, I was like, "No fucking way."

Harry Stebbings 1:03:49 Why? What made you say, "No fucking way"?

Elias Torres 1:03:52 Because I'm a builder.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:53 You can build a firm.

Elias Torres 1:03:55 No, but the thing is that I can't be telling people... I hate telling people... I hate seeing people that are like, "I'm gonna build it this way," and like, "No, that's wrong. That's not gonna work," and I was like, "Oh, no, you don't under-" It's when I see how much gap there is between where they're going to be after that experience and that journey, I'm not interested in working through that journey with them. You know what I mean? And asking people for money, and me making bets, and then I have to advertise and build a different style of brand for myself, I'd rather build, man. It's so much easier. It's so much more fun.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:26 Why did you take VC money? Respectfully, you could self-fund. Why take VC money for Agency?

Elias Torres 1:04:32 The reality is that, you know, I made like $2 million in, in, like, just over, like, six, seven months consulting AI. I was working with OpenAI, I was servicing their customers. I was just, like, sweating it out there, like learning LLMs, 'cause I... You know, I thought I missed the boat. And so that... I worked with, you know, Red Bull, Ticketmaster, the NBA, Klaviyo. And that's kind of where the idea for, for Agency-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:56 You made $2 million doing consulting?

Elias Torres 1:04:58 (laughs) Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:59 What?

Elias Torres 1:04:59 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:00 What were you doing?

Elias Torres 1:05:01 I was just working in coding and solving problems for them.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:04 For OpenAI?

Elias Torres 1:05:05 Uh, for OpenAI's customers. You know, they, they... People would go to OpenAI and they're like, "I need... Help me do this," and they're like, "We don't help you build that stuff. That's your problem." And so they would send me leads and I had to work the leads, and started f- started charging, like, 25K a month, and then, like, slowly things became $100,000 contracts, some of them became $500,000 contracts. And so there's money to be made, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:05:27 So I, I actually tweeted, um, that, uh, AI services companies will be bigger than actually AI technology providers-

Elias Torres 1:05:34 Yeah, potentially.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:35 ... in the next five years.

Elias Torres 1:05:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:37 Uh, I think, I... Paul Graham said I was a moron. (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:05:41 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:05:41 Uh, but, uh, do you agree with that?

Elias Torres 1:05:43 I, I just... I think that humans are the biggest blocker to adoption and they're gonna need a lot of handholding and, and help. So there's a period where this, this... Because we don't have the agents that we, that we... And the workflows, and the new products, and the new models, right? And so, in the meantime, it's a step function.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:00 It's-

Elias Torres 1:06:00 That we need people, people to handhold them.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:02 A last one and then we'll do a quick fire. It's a horrible question because I hate, like, "Oh, timeline, what do you think?" But, you know, do you think that there will be this transitionary period of five to 10 years or will it be much shorter, of kind of 12 to 24?

Elias Torres 1:06:15 I, I'm on the longer side.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:16 You're on the longer side?

Elias Torres 1:06:17 I think there's a lot of hype. This stuff, we're not, um... We're not gonna... Like, even in the, in the industrial age and revolutions, right, GDP was growing at 1%, 2%. I don't think we're gonna grow, like, a 10%, 20% (laughs) in one year all of the sudden because most, most of the money and most of the, the industries are even slower than adapting tech. Tech is being extremely slow to adapt this technology. And so it's, it's... It can be. It can be that fast.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:45 It's funny. Satya said we misappropriate success in AI to AGI. And actually the way that we should appropriate it is 10% increase in GDP.

Elias Torres 1:06:54 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:06:54 (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:06:55 Sure. I'll bet. How much?

Harry Stebbings 1:06:57 (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:06:57 (laughs) No, I'm not a betting man, but, uh, let's, let's drop some money on this, if you want.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:01 Oh, I don't wanna, I don't wanna drop some money on this.

Elias Torres 1:07:03 All right. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:07:04 But I, he didn't set a timeline. That could've, that could've been in 10 years.

Elias Torres 1:07:07 Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's like, yeah, 10% GDP growth, I mean, the world is gonna double and explode so much faster. Yeah. Whatever. When that happens, it's gonna happen. But in the meantime, it's gonna take time for, for people to adopt this. And we don't even know, we don't even have the right solutions yet. What we found is that we just, we just discover fire. Right? (laughs) The rest is gonna take

Elias Torres 1:07:27 time.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:27 (laughs) I wanna do a quick ............................ I say a short statement. Let's start with, what do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

Elias Torres 1:07:35 That being direct is better.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:37 People disagree with that?

Elias Torres 1:07:38 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:39 People think that being indirect is better?

Elias Torres 1:07:41 In action.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:42 (laughs) You can buy and hold one public stock for the next 10 years.

Elias Torres 1:07:48 I'm not a good investor. I don't know. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:07:50 Come on.

Elias Torres 1:07:51 I'm, I'm scared of the giants that are not gonna last, but, uh, NVIDIA, I think, compute is gonna, we're thirsty for compute.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:57 Well, you could've said Klaviyo. That was a mistake. (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:08:00 It's tough. It's tough.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:01 Uh, what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Elias Torres 1:08:04 Educate more people in the world.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:06 Hmm. Love that one. I was not expecting that. Um, how do you have such great skin? Julian Beck asks this one.

Elias Torres 1:08:14 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:08:15 He was like, "Ask him about his facial routine. Ask him about his facial routine."

Elias Torres 1:08:18 Oh, my blessing.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:19 You do look very young.

Elias Torres 1:08:20 I, I think it's the... Thank you. Thank you. Um, I think that, um, it's the Latino genes. I'm, I, I, I thank the genes. I'm, I'm grateful for them.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:28 Huh. Your Botox doctor told me a lot. (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:08:30 No, no. No Botox, no nothing here. This is... I don't even wash my face.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:34 Uh, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

Elias Torres 1:08:37 I didn't think I was gonna start a VC backed company. I don't know. I, I, I, I didn't know what was the right idea. I didn't know that... So I, I changed my mind around. This is the best thing I could ever be doing.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:50 What about the way that your mother brought you up have you decided to do differently with your children?

Elias Torres 1:08:55 I'm letting them do whatever they want, right? And so I'm, I'm, I'm freeing them from my pressure of, like, to be me. They're kinda being me in a way. It's back to selling and relationships. I'm, I'm letting them be. If they don't wanna go to school, they don't wanna do their homework, I don't care. It's their problem. I'm happy, I'm successful, I'm rich. It's, it's up to them, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:09:17 Does money make you happy?

Elias Torres 1:09:19 Uh, no. But it, it definitely makes things easier.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:23 What concerns you most in the world today?

Elias Torres 1:09:26 Extremism, ignorance. I just think that people can't have a conversation. It's sad.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:33 What's your biggest short in the public markets?

Elias Torres 1:09:36 Salesforce.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:38 (sighs) I've asked a couple of people that question, and everyone said that. And I'm just looking at you going-

Elias Torres 1:09:43 Oh, really?

Harry Stebbings 1:09:44 ..."Oh, fuck, Benioff's gonna fucking kill me." (laughs)

Elias Torres 1:09:48 (laughs) I guess I haven't listened enough to you.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:49 Anyway, well, you might wanna come back on the show. Um, final one for you. When you look at the next 10 years and being excited, I like to end on a note of, like, optimism. You know, my mother's got MS. I'm excited for the drug, drug discoveries that will come through AI and through, you know, what we have ahead of us. What are you most excited for?

Elias Torres 1:10:07 Look, I just, I just came back from Cairo, and I got to learn about the Egyptian civilization. It, it's mind-boggling and I, I don't think we studied it enough. But their, their, their love for art, their love for culture, for, for, for craftsmanship, it was so mind-boggling and so inspiring for me. You know, we, we think that with, with the, with the evolution, with new generations, we think we are better. But I think we're, we're going worse. You can see in different dynasties and different generations how the ma- the craftsmanship in the Hellenistic era was actually worse than prior to that. And you can see that in the way that we build, right? And the way we treat our customers, you know, with billion dollar companies. So I, I'm, I'm hoping, I'm optimistic that we can get back to that and that we can build better products, better customer relationships, better businesses, more art, more culture, more time with our families. Like, uh, I'm optimistic that that could happen.