No Priors Ep. 94 | With CEO and Founder of Agency 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

Sarah GuohostElias Torresguest

Dec 18, 202431mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Immigrant founder reimagines customer success and software in AI era

Elias Torres, repeat founder and former HubSpot engineering leader, discusses his journey from poor Nicaraguan immigrant and math-competition kid to building multiple billion‑dollar companies. He explains why selling Drift for over $1B felt like a failure relative to his ambition to build a $30B public company, and how that led to a period of burnout, kite-surfing, and then renewed energy sparked by ChatGPT. That energy turned into consulting for OpenAI customers and ultimately founding Agency, a company focused on transforming how businesses support and empower customers using AI agents instead of bloated customer success orgs. Throughout, he argues that most enterprise software is “enslaving” busywork, predicts a shift to invisible, proactive AI-driven systems, and outlines how he’s building a lean, high‑leverage, billion‑revenue company with only 100 world‑class people.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Ambition resets with exposure; big outcomes can still feel like failure.

Torres viewed selling Drift for $1B as emotionally anticlimactic because his benchmark had shifted to building a $30B public company, illustrating how success is relative to evolving personal goals.

AI can reignite careers and create entirely new company theses.

His “ChatGPT moment” in late 2022 led him from semi‑retirement and burnout into hands‑on OpenAI consulting and, subsequently, founding Agency around AI-driven customer solutions.

Customer success is really about owning the full customer relationship.

Torres argues the label “CS” is misleading; the real challenge is how companies serve customers like high‑touch personal relationships, but at the scale of tens or hundreds of thousands of accounts.

Future software teams will be tiny, elite, and relentlessly scalable.

His target is $1B in revenue with ~100 people by refusing to hire for work that doesn’t scale, using AI instead of adding layers of staff, and only bringing in people who prove world‑class execution via trial contracts.

Change management, not just LLM capability, is the hardest problem.

Getting enterprises to trust AI outputs for high‑stakes customer communication, and to gradually migrate away from chaotic legacy processes, is a deeper challenge than simply wiring an LLM into existing tools.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Our software is shit. Everything is ridiculous.

— Elias Torres

At Agency, there’s only gonna be one email address: elias@agency.inc.

— Elias Torres

The old wrappers of databases are going to be dead.

— Elias Torres

I lost the dream of building a $30 billion company or taking a company public.

— Elias Torres

Do not do things that don’t scale. I already know that they will work for a year and then they’re gonna break.

— Elias Torres

Elias Torres’ immigrant background and early love of math competitionsLessons from Performable, HubSpot, and building/selling DriftPost‑exit burnout, rediscovering motivation through ChatGPT and OpenAIThe origin and mission of Agency focused on customer success at scaleReimagining customer success as end‑to‑end customer ownership, not a departmentCompany-building philosophy in the AI era: small teams, only scalable workCritique of traditional enterprise software and vision for proactive, invisible tools

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