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

1. 0:00 – 0:34

   Introduction

   1. SGSarah Guo0:00

      (instrumental music) Hello, and welcome to No Priors. Today, we've got Elias Torres with us, repeat entrepreneur and CEO of Agency, which is working on enabling every company to make their customer successful. Elias is no stranger to entrepreneurship. He's founded four companies, led engineering at the juggernaut SaaS company, HubSpot, and most recently sold his last business, Drift, for more than a billion dollars to Vista Equity Partners. Elias, welcome.

   2. ETElias Torres0:30

      Ah, it's a pleasure. It's been a- a dream of mine to be here with you.

2. 0:34 – 2:36

   Elias’ journey to entrepreneurship

   1. ETElias Torres0:34

   2. SGSarah Guo0:34

      You're doing company number five. Can you just talk a little bit about who you are, uh, getting to this place?

   3. ETElias Torres0:39

      Yeah, absolutely. Uh, the- the journey, um, I think for me is what's interesting bits about it, I'm from Nicaragua. So I came first generation, could not speak English, right? Imagine me at the back of a McDonald's, you know, reading the printouts, to founder number five, three times with Sequoia, you know, and out- great outcomes, IPOs, et cetera. It's been an incredible journey, right? I worked at IBM for 10 years, and then I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just could not be inside of IBM. I needed to be free. I needed to have a chance of huge impact. And- and so here I am, I'm in Boston. Uh, that's another interesting bit, right? I'm not in the Valley. I came to Florida from Nicaragua, and then I had a shot at IBM in the Northeast, and I've been here ever since.

   4. SGSarah Guo1:26

      You know, one tidbit I will insert, because I feel like the tech community has somehow discovered that smart kids who end up in tech often do math competitions growing up. This has been going on a long time, guys. Uh-

   5. ETElias Torres1:38

      Yeah. (laughs)

   6. SGSarah Guo1:38

      ... Elias, you- you were one of the math competition kids.

   7. ETElias Torres1:41

      I was a math competition. I wish I would be like- like an Andrezj or something like that, right? (laughs) But- but, um, yes, we're talking, let's say, 1992, '91. This is Nicaragua. But I get picked somehow to represent the school nationally at these competitions, right? I placed third in the country. Uh, it- it's not a great accomplishment, but the point you're making is that math is fundamental to this, and the ability and the thinking i- is applicable. And when I came to- to the United States, I'm in a low income town in- in Tampa, Florida, low income school, public school, and somehow, again, I don't speak English, but somehow, the math teacher says, "Do you wanna be in math competitions, Mu Alpha Theta?" And I'm like, "Sure, I'll join the- the nerd club." And I'm like, just had a blast there. I did have a lot of trouble with the word problems, uh, but I was able to do well in the other ones.

3. 2:36 – 6:19

   Growing HubSpot to IPO and founding Drift

   1. ETElias Torres2:36

   2. SGSarah Guo2:36

      I wanna talk a little bit about the last two journeys, um, because-

   3. ETElias Torres2:40

      Yeah.

   4. SGSarah Guo2:40

      ... HubSpot is, um, a company that everybody knows that is, like, an important public enterprise SaaS business now. Um, and you've done leadership at different scales. Like, coming out of even the success of HubSpot where you were leading engineering, like, why go start Drift?

   5. ETElias Torres3:00

      I think my whole life has been a- a journey of not having any clue what's- what's ahead or what's possible. Like, I mean, that math competition I had in Nicaragua to go to compete in Mexico, representing my country, and meeting kids from all over Latin America was like mind-boggling. Then I come to the United States, then I'm in Florida, and then you start, like, you know, I don't know, like MIT and stuff like that. So there's always, like, more. It's just been fun not knowing what's ahead until you get there. And taking HubSpot public, whe- when- when Brian Halligan came to me and bought my company, Performable, so he's like, "Our goal is to take it public in the next year or two." I had no clue what taking a company public meant. I mean, we had 30 million in revenue, 200 employees when he said those things.

   6. SGSarah Guo3:47

      (laughs)

   7. ETElias Torres3:47

      Brian says, "You're in charge. You and David can do anything you want with product and engineering. Um, we gotta go public." And so on my mind it's like, "Okay, we're going public, but I have no idea what going public means." That- that naivete is great, right? We go public, a billion dollar company, three years, everything was great. We went from 30 to 130 million. I said, "If- if Brian can do this, w- why can't I do this too, right?" It should be easy to go from zero to 100 million. And that's why I left HubSpot really. I was so naive (laughs) right? Thinking that was gonna be easy.

   8. SGSarah Guo4:22

      Well, you were not, uh, so naive that it didn't work, right? So your last company, Drift, it sold for more than a billion dollars and you could do it. Um...

   9. ETElias Torres4:30

      Yeah.

   10. SGSarah Guo4:30

       ... and yet you- you told me you think of it, in some ways, as a failure, which is like a- like a very odd, uncommon point of view on that sort of outcome. Um, why would you describe it that way?

   11. ETElias Torres4:41

       Look, I- I'm very happy with my life. I had almost no food growing up, right? So, like, (laughs) to me, every year has been a better year than the one before for me, eh- s- ever since growing up. So, like, I have zero complaints. But when we left HubSpot, you know, um, to start a company, I left it at a billion dollars and I saw it grow to 30, right? And so as I'm building Drift, the- the- the... (laughs)

   12. SGSarah Guo5:08

       Oh, the goalpost moved. I see. Yeah.

   13. ETElias Torres5:10

       The goalpost moved, right?

   14. SGSarah Guo5:12

       (laughs)

   15. ETElias Torres5:12

       So the day that we sold Drift, to me, was a very sad day. I- I did feel like a failure. It was super anti-climatic. It was literally, I was at home in bed, tired, it was like 11 o'clock, we've been waiting to sign the papers, you know, power of attorney. I just got a text from one of the lawyers says that, "It's done." You know? And that day I felt nothing, right? And the next day it felt even weirder and weirder. It took a long time for all those things to clear up what- what it meant to sell for a billion in cash, right? A company that we grew to 100 million in revenue, eight years of hard work, but I lost the dream of building a $30 billion company or taking a company public, right? And- and so I felt at that time, I was so tired, uh, worked straight 45 years of my life, you know, and I was, like, never taking vacations really.And I was worried that I, I didn't have it in me at the time if you asked me, "Are you gonna start something else?" I would be like, "I'm done." It- it's like, I'm like, "How can I start over?"

   16. SGSarah Guo6:11

       I did ask you. Yeah. (laughs)

   17. ETElias Torres6:12

       I know. (laughs) I know. So I was like, "I'm done." It's like people are like, "Oh, I want to start a company." I go, "That's stupid. Don't do it."

   18. SGSarah Guo6:17

       So you took a minute. You were kinda hanging

4. 6:19 – 9:35

   Consulting with OpenAI, learning about LLMs, and diving into AI

   1. SGSarah Guo6:19

      out for a while. Then you started doing some consulting for OpenAI and, like, helping their customers. Like, where did the energy come from again?

   2. ETElias Torres6:27

      A- as Pat says, like, I have, like, I'm like, I have the energy of a teenager. Uh, I was, I was a little tired, like, around-

   3. SGSarah Guo6:33

      You're aging in reverse. It's a little weird, Elias.

   4. ETElias Torres6:35

      It's, it's a little weird. Uh, you too. I, it's like we, we, we're lucky. What happened was I was tired. I was in, I was, November of 2022, what happened?

   5. SGSarah Guo6:45

      ChatGPT.

   6. ETElias Torres6:46

      ChatGPT.

   7. SGSarah Guo6:47

      And the launch of Conviction, everybody. This is very important. (laughs)

   8. ETElias Torres6:50

      D- at the same time? Yeah, it was, it's, it's so-

   9. SGSarah Guo6:53

      Uh, October, yeah.

   10. ETElias Torres6:53

       October. No, y- you knew. You, you, you stole the thunder. So I was in Brazil. Actually, technically, that was the first real vacation I took post-acquisition 'cause I worked, I stayed at Drift for almost two years. And, uh, I was there and in the n- I, I, I kite surf. That's one of my hobbies. I have hobbies now, you know?

   11. SGSarah Guo7:13

       Nice.

   12. ETElias Torres7:13

       I- i- poor immigrant does not have hobbies, but now I have hobbies. For the first time, I felt like I get up in the morning, we'll kite surf in the afternoon. We just have breakfast. We feel the ocean breeze. Uh, just four of us, four friends, and we were just like kite surfing. And I'm explaining ChatGPT to them, right? And I'm like, "Guys, this is insane." I don't even know how to explain ChatGPT. I don't know what an LLM is October 2022, technically speaking. I knew BERT. I knew word2vec. I knew Transformers. I don't know this and I, and I'm like explaining to them why this is different. So that's the first moment. I had m- I had the ChatGPT moment where I was like, "You know what? Again, I missed the boat. What happens? Why wasn't I working for OpenAI? What was in, like ... Is this it? Is this game over?" Many of, many of us asked ourselves that question. People are still asking themselves this question. And so that was the first thing that happened, catalyst. I've already gone through that journey of a post-exit founder, but I'm already coming to the conclusion, the only thing I know how to do is build, and I wanna learn. And so I get introduced to OpenAI just to do like one of those networking calls and they tell me, "We're drowning. Customers are asking us for help. We're two, 300 people. We don't, we, we can't help them implement their own solutions. We, we don't have the, the bandwidth. So we're looking for people. We're trying the big firms." Um, and, uh, and it was an idea they were giving me and I said, "I wanna do that. I wanna do that. I don't know anything about it. (laughs) I've never used Ch- the GPT API, but, uh, here I go." And so they were like, "Are you sure?" They looked me up and they're like, "Is this what you wanna do?" And I said, "Yes." And so I did consulting for them and I, I started from, from the bottom, right? People were like, "Who are you?" I was doing some support tickets for them, uh, et cetera, explanations. But then I started getting contracts like the NBA, you know, Ticketmaster. I'm in Dubai talking to customers, um, Red Bull, and I'm just having a blast with a small team, uh, implementing agents, LLM apps, uh, in Klaviyo, one of the customers too. And, and it's, my whole world changes, right? It's like this is the dream as an engineer to build solutions that are this intelligent.

5. 9:35 – 11:40

   Founding Agency to focus on customer success and AI-driven solutions

   1. ETElias Torres9:36

   2. SGSarah Guo9:36

      Okay. So you come around to the idea that you have this like capability that you're actually really inspired about. How did you end up thinking about customer success? Like, can you, can you sort of give us a line about, you know, what agency is and then landing on that idea?

   3. ETElias Torres9:50

      Yeah, I mean, agency is really the lessons learned in all my prior four companies, right? Startups, we, we know how to like build products. We, I mean, we know how to raise money, hire people, build products. We know how to sell it. Sometimes we know how to market them. But I don't believe we know how to take care of our customers, especially in the B2B. I, I, I think managing customers both a- at scale when you have tens of thousands or hundred thousands of customer, it, it's, I don't think anybody has the answer to do that, right? This is something that happened in the past 10 years. And, um, uh, we're, we're struggling as companies, right?

   4. SGSarah Guo10:28

      How'd you end up focusing on CS?

   5. ETElias Torres10:30

      Yeah, I ended up focusing on CS because one of the pro- one of the customers that I started wi- I'm a good friend with Andrew. So Andrew used to work with me at Performable. Andrew Bialecki, CEO of Klaviyo, Boston based company, a- amazing success, IPO. I, I did, I did some consulting for him and one of the ideas was how do we help scale, um, the, the customer success organization, right? At, at Drift, I built, in 2019, the first AI SDR, but now I was helping, um, how do we help these customers at scale 'cause he has hundreds of thousands of customers. So when I started solving that problem, which was a little bit of applying my experience between marketing and a- and LLMs, is when I realized the amount of help that we can provide as a company, uh, to help scale, uh, benchmarking, reporting, insight generation, idea creation to, to the customers that they have, right, at scale because it's something that, that humans struggle, right, to do that, uh, in a very detailed manner. And so that's kinda where the idea was born, right? Uh, it was like, wow, I can do this for all B2B companies.

6. 11:40 – 15:48

   What will a customer experience look like in 5 years?

   1. ETElias Torres11:40

   2. SGSarah Guo11:40

      What do you think CS looks like five years from now? I- it's not been a focus of a lot of AI applications to date. I, one would argue that investors and CEOs often don't think of it as like super strategic. You can be better or worse at it, um, but does it become much more powerful somehow?

   3. ETElias Torres11:57

      I think CS is everything. I think the word CS maybe is the misnomer. I think that that's where people a- are getting lost. I think-

   4. SGSarah Guo12:04

      Hmm.

   5. ETElias Torres12:05

      ... no offense, right? But, you know, VCs are like saying, "Oh, here's CS. Here's a category. How many software companies are in it? What's the TAM? How much is the revenue? Add up the valuations. Is that something that we're interested in?" I'm not necessarily interested in CS, right? I- I'm interested in customers. I've been in the, in the pre-sales-... a, a for- a world for like 15 years. I know that like the back of my head, right? I'm a tried and true, um, customer obsessed founder, right? All my companies, I'm the one who services the customers. And when I went to HubSpot, I went from 20 customers to, uh, 5,000, and I- I was crying 'cause I couldn't... They called me and they would say, "Elias, help me. Get on this screen and help me fix the- the product. Help HubSpot, fix HubSpot for me." And I would say, "No, I'm sorry, I- I have 5,000 customers."

   6. SGSarah Guo12:53

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ETElias Torres12:53

      So the moments where I stop servicing my customers like if they were the only one, my soul gets crushed because the company shifted, right? And so that's what I wanna solve today, right? So that... It's not CS what I'm trying to solve. It's how do we service the customer? How do we give the power, the agency to the customer itself? I'll give you an example, like I like to have personal relationships with the business that I work with.

   8. SGSarah Guo13:19

      Ah, yes. This, very much. Yeah.

   9. ETElias Torres13:21

      Right? Like, for example, like, um, I- I have a guy, eh, that in the winter I have to store a car or two, right? And so I can text... He has a warehouse, he save a space for me, and I can text him. He lives down the street, and he can come and pick me up. We can take the car, drop off, and he's super flexible to me, to my needs, right? I'm in charge of the relationship.

   10. SGSarah Guo13:42

       Yes.

   11. ETElias Torres13:42

       I go to my barber. I just, I just booked two, two haircuts on Saturday for my son and I. My second son says, "Can I come?" And I said, "You text Mel," and you go and say like, uh, "See if he can squeeze us in." So he texts Mel and says from- "Okay, I'll squeeze you in, in the two, in the two slots," right? And so I like that experience. Can we have that experience with a lar- with like a ServiceNow today? Can you text, you know, he didn't say... We want... I wanna be able to provide businesses of the future the ability to put the customer in charge.

   12. SGSarah Guo14:13

       Yes, at scale too.

   13. ETElias Torres14:14

       At scale, with hundreds of thousands of customers. I- I- I... That's the essence.

   14. SGSarah Guo14:21

       Yeah. Oh, I was gonna say, I, um, I... This is actually something I believe very deeply about venture, which is like I do not want a bunch of, could be conceivably very talented people, like between me and the founders that I, you know, owe support and partnership and work to, because they don't have any of the context, they don't care as much as I do, um, and I think it's like, uh, you know, not a great experience when there's like four layers of people who are passing around some task for a founder.

   15. ETElias Torres14:49

       Yeah.

   16. SGSarah Guo14:50

       But it does mean venture doesn't scale if you're doing it in a particular way. And I guess that's true of many customer relationships with, like, you know, an owner of the product.

   17. ETElias Torres14:58

       I think you and I are alike, right? I wanna disrupt how startups work.

   18. SGSarah Guo15:02

       (laughs)

   19. ETElias Torres15:02

       I want, I wanna break the- the status quo, right? Which is what you just said. You don't want four, four layers of people between you and the founders, right? And so the same is with me. At- at Agency, there's only gonna be one email address. It's elias@agency.inc.

   20. SGSarah Guo15:18

       It's very dangerous, man. (laughs)

   21. ETElias Torres15:20

       Everyone will email. I will always like take care of all the customers, right? Um, that's the company of the future. 'Cause at Drift, I had 800 people, like 250 in the- in the- in the customer organization. That- that cannot happen again because it wasn't working.

   22. SGSarah Guo15:36

       Hmm.

   23. ETElias Torres15:36

       Right? Tha- that number of people didn't necessarily solve the problem, right? And that's something that every other company is struggling with. And so I wanna maintain that relationship, and so the only solution out of this is by leveraging AI.

7. 15:48 – 18:32

   Company building in an era of AI, as a 5th time founder

   1. ETElias Torres15:48

   2. SGSarah Guo15:48

      I wanna talk a little bit about like how you think about company building now, um, both in the era of AI and then also like this time around. You don't want 800 people. You say like, "I think I can get to a billion," you know. I- is that, is that value? Is that revenue?

   3. ETElias Torres16:02

      Uh, I would think revenue.

   4. SGSarah Guo16:04

      Yeah, that's a better one.

   5. ETElias Torres16:05

      Value is too, is too easy.

   6. SGSarah Guo16:07

      Yeah, okay. The goalpost move, it's a billion in revenue. That's a good goal-

   7. ETElias Torres16:10

      It's a billion in revenue.

   8. SGSarah Guo16:10

      ... with 100 people. How do you not hire the other 700 people?

   9. ETElias Torres16:14

      We have to question everything. I- I'm, I'm a big fan of Elon, right? I think, um, I heard, I heard him speak about like, you know, he just thinks about building a rocket and he says, "Well, how much does it cost to build a rocket," right? In... Instead of just saying like how much the parts cost at the existing marketplaces, right? It's like, "Well, I'll just build the part," right? It's like, "It's just metal." I think the same way, right? It's like I have to produce something that has high value and that is very rare, right? There's two ways to make a lot of money, right? A billion dollars. You either have something that s- a lot of small businesses can acquire for free, right? With very little marketing costs, or you sell something that is very, very expensive, right? To enterprise customers. And so, uh, I'm- I'm picking to choose something to solve very, very, very big problems for- for big enterprises. Uh, second, uh, I think I wanna challenge, like Paul Graham says, "Do things that don't scale." I think that that's game over for that statement, right? I think now we only have to do things that scale. I already know all the things that I could do before that... not scaling. I could always throw a body at something and be like, "Okay, let's... You- you go do that." I think you said it in a tweet recently, right? And it x, and you're like, "Can we just hire an intern," right? And then I think Pranav or somebody says, "Well, we can throw Devin at it," right? It's like that's the thinking that we need to have, right? Do not do things that don't scale. I already know that they will work for a year and then they're gonna break in a year. I now have to solve the things right from the first place, right? What are the fundamentals, right? Customer intelligence, you know, customer communication, uh, understand the problem deeply, get pricing right, get pricing better, build the right relationships with the right customers, who's gonna take you there, right? You know, I'm building a company at a much faster speed. It's only been a few months, but I'm already much further ahead than Drift was almost three years in, right? When it comes to understanding my passion, what I'm trying to solve, how big the problem is, the market, my position as a company, the team, the engineering organization, the infrastructure, the branding, the marketing. I'm moving at a speed that I just never felt before and it just feels natural.... partly because of AI and partly because of my experience.

   10. SGSarah Guo18:31

       What advice do you

8. 18:32 – 20:35

   Reducing headcount while raising the bar on hiring

   1. SGSarah Guo18:32

      have for people who, I think like one reaction is like, "Oh, man, if you can get to a, a billion dollars in revenue with only 100 employees," it's like, "I wanna be part of the 100 employees," right? Like, what makes those people valuable and special in their work? Like, how do I end up in that last 100 folks?

   2. ETElias Torres18:49

      (laughs) You're asking for something very deep right here, but I- I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say as much as I can because I really don't care anymore.

   3. SGSarah Guo18:56

      Let's go deep. (laughs)

   4. ETElias Torres18:57

      Let's go deep. I, look, as a founder, I see founders all the time doing this. I s- by the way, I was part of three incubators this time around. I'd never been part of an incubator till now, until my fifth time.

   5. SGSarah Guo19:06

      That's funny.

   6. ETElias Torres19:07

      And I got to spend a lot of time with a lot of first-time founders. And it was, it was amazing because it gave me a little refresher of what I was like, you know, the first time around. And so, I see a lot of founders of- keep making so many mistakes in hiring. I've made them all too, right? Too many times, you get excited, you meet someone and they say the things like, "I wanna work for you. I'm gonna make your company get to a billion dollars in revenue, you know, 25% faster than you think." You know, they say all these right things and they're available and they give these pitches and, and I no longer buy any of those things. I've, I've hired every executive, every C-level suite that you can think of multiple times. Uh, I have hired from the best companies. I have hired people that went from zero to 200 million in revenue in four years. I've hired them all. I know them all. I'm, I'm much more disciplined in my interview process. And no one joins, um, Agency until they have worked for me, uh, as a contractor. I'm gonna put you to work and I'm gonna be real. Exactly how I am with everybody in the company today. And if you don't deliver at a level that is, um, world-class in that one or two week timeframe, uh, there will be no room for you, right? And I'm focusing mostly on engineers right now. Everybody has to have a clear role, uh, of what they do. It's very difficult to be part of this 100, right?

   7. SGSarah Guo20:32

      What's on the other side then? What do you think is gonna be the hardest thing

9. 20:35 – 23:06

   Key challenges in building Agency and crafting a standout product

   1. SGSarah Guo20:35

      about building Agency?

   2. ETElias Torres20:36

      Building Agency is always, always about product. It's always about, uh, change management. Everybody thinks that, "Oh, I'll just put an LLM on it, generate some stuff, summarize as a meeting," and ba, ba, here's the next CRM, here's the next customer platform, right? No, no, no, no. It's like, uh, being in the weeds with a c- building the product is the most, uh, it's the hardest part. Like LLMs are solving one tiny part of the problem. We still have to build the products, uh, that solve a specific problem. The solution, right? Uh, if everything was just passing it to the LLM and it does it, but we have to transform organizations from very large organizations struggling, just a lot of chaos in, in, in, in, in, in the customer and the post-sales organizations, that we need somebody to go and, and understand them, talk to them, nurture them, see what's broken, and, and slowly transition into the, into the future, right? It's not something... I've talked to CEOs of public companies and no CEO comes to me and says, "I wanna change everything right now."

   3. SGSarah Guo21:42

      (laughs)

   4. ETElias Torres21:42

      "Just throw it all away, let's swap it," you know? And so m- most companies don't understand that, that change management is the hardest part to, to get through. Building a product that people can use, gaining trust from an LLM. I mean, people are... People like, it's okay if you get the summary of a meeting from an LLM. Like, nobody cares, right? It's like, whatever, it's great. Look at this. I can read faster.

   5. SGSarah Guo22:05

      (laughs)

   6. ETElias Torres22:06

      But to trust the output of an LLM to send an email to a million-dollar customer, it's like, uh, you know, when you present that to a, to a CSM, they're like looking at it and they're like, they're questioning every word. You have no idea. They're questioning every word in that email. Yet, when they're writing their emails, they're not questioning their words, right? And they're just as bad. And so it's like there's a, we have a long road ahead for this. This is, this is a problem that there's not one solution to it, right? This is not one LLM or one foundation LLM is gonna be able to fix. Um, I don't know, eh, AGI will solve everything, but whatever! I don't, it's that... I'm not worried about that. I'm really worried about what is it that I wanna build as I listen to the customers, right? To my customers. And how where... How do I take 'em where I wanna take 'em, right? And then do they wanna come along in the journey with me?

   7. SGSarah Guo23:03

      I wanna take the last few minutes and talk a little bit just

10. 23:06 – 26:27

    Addressing software flaws and transitioning to an era of intuitive, self-operating solutions

    1. SGSarah Guo23:06

       about, um, the software industry because, you know, for somebody who's been building software for, like, 30 years, you're, you're pretty anti-software now. Like, as somebody who's quite dismissive of like, "Oh, I've just putting shit in databases (laughs) and taking it back out." Like, like explain yourself. Like, what, you know, wh- why do you, why do you think that's so irrelevant?

    2. ETElias Torres23:28

       People are like, "Oh my god, like, AGI is gonna, you know, enslave humanity. What's gonna happen?" Right? I'm telling people like, "They're enslaved today." We make fun of it, but like who wants to be a sales rep, you know, that after you finish a meeting goes and puts like a task to remind you to remind the customer to do something else, to put... I mean, like, it's just like, I just think it's utterly ridiculous that we just, it's like the emperor has no clothes. Nobody wants to say anything about this. Our software is shit. Everything is ridiculous. I mean, there's, there's no good software out there. Uber is great, right? 'Cause you need to go somewhere, you call it, it shows up and it takes you there, right? That's good, fantastic.

    3. SGSarah Guo24:09

       That's the one software product Elias likes. Okay. Uber.

    4. ETElias Torres24:12

       I just want people to realize that why do you wanna enter all this information in all the systems and if it doesn't do anything for you? For example-

    5. SGSarah Guo24:20

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ETElias Torres24:21

       ... at Agency, should I install a CRM? Should I, should I install Salesforce? Why, why would I buy Salesforce, is a monstrosity of a software that I would have to hire somebody else to go configure?And then I don't know how to use it. And then that person that is gonna configure it for me, do you think that person knows how to do business better than I do or knows my customers? Th- they don't. And so they're gonna tell me some, you know, antiquated way of working with my customers and what to do. And then I have to hire people to put stuff into the software. And then I have to have people to manage those people to monitor what they put into that software. At what point do we talk to the customer? I mean, like, I'm telling CEOs, "You should just throw away your instance of Salesforce. Just throw it in the trash." Like, it's like they're... What is it doing for you? We're just so busy configuring it and sending data to it, and we don't ever use the data that is in it. And so software has to transform to do things for me without me even asking. Like, we are in the era where, like, "Hey, um, Eliezer, you're going to speak in San Francisco. There's a calendar of a JetBlue flight on my, on my entry onto my calendar." It should read it. Let me look at everybody that always asks you to grab coffee in San Francisco and send them a message, "I'm in town and I'm in town from this day to this day and this is..." And, and lock out, you know, two-hour slots every day and say, "If you want, meet me here, I'm gonna be at this coffee shop and let's catch up." Prioritize that my customers that I'm trying to chase and send them two weeks in advance messages that are repeating every three days, right? Why can't we have software that does that? That Salesforce does not-

    7. SGSarah Guo26:06

       That sounds useful, yeah.

    8. ETElias Torres26:07

       That sounds useful, right?

    9. SGSarah Guo26:08

       (laughs)

    10. ETElias Torres26:09

        It's a... That's the level that we want. Like, you know, so when you can text someone, it just gets done. Like, that's, that's wealth, right? And so we want software to, to, to make us feel wealthy, right?

    11. SGSarah Guo26:20

        Yes, I don't, I do not feel wealthy from my software today. Um-

    12. ETElias Torres26:24

        Exactly, right?

    13. SGSarah Guo26:25

        How, how long does it

11. 26:27 – 31:18

    Timeline for the next-gen software revolution + the power of building from first principles

    1. SGSarah Guo26:27

       take for this to happen, like for this disruption of, you know, software that enslaves us to, to free us? Like, a- a- and does anybody get to stick around? Like, does anybody from the old world of the databases holding, holding our data and creating these workflows get to sustain?

    2. ETElias Torres26:46

       I think there's a lot of infrastructure that is needed, right? So tha- so tha- there's, there's good news for that, right? We have... We, we're gonna need places to store this information. We need the internet, right? I'm talking at the solution level. The old wrappers of databases are going to be dead. Like, there, there's just no way they survive unless they adapt quickly. What we're missing is, is more people like us at Agency where we're, we're thinking fundamentally from, from first principles and saying, "Let's build this new type of software." That's, that's the word that we need to spread, right, is stop... Like, I see all these new CRMs coming up, right? And they're like, it's still the same views, the same tables, except they have, like, AI computer table. We need to fundamentally think software that is almost invisible, right? I think that we need more people thinking this way and not just like, "Oh, let me just improve, you know, Workday or let me just improve, you know, uh, Gusto or, or, or this." And just we need to be, um, thinking how do we really solve the customer problems from a different perspective. Laziness, don't bother them, don't tell them what you're gonna do, just do it. Get verification, right? Ask for suggestions. Learn with the customer wha- how they're like, what they like, and create that personalized experience. We need more people to do that. Once we have examples of that software, which is what we're doing at Agency, I think more people are gonna see and say, "Okay, that's where we should go." And because of the LLMs, a lot of people are gonna be able to build things much faster, right? And then the big rebuilding will begin.

    3. SGSarah Guo28:14

       I hope that happens. I hope I get to be part of some of these companies. I... You know, um, what you said that really speaks to me, I work very hard-

    4. ETElias Torres28:21

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SGSarah Guo28:21

       ... I have some talents. I'm a very disorganized person and I felt bad about this for, like, most of the last two decades. But, uh, I, I think if you were more ambitious about the expectations you'd had for software, you might say like, "Well, why am I filing shit anyway and labeling shit-

    6. ETElias Torres28:42

       I don't know.

    7. SGSarah Guo28:42

       ... anyway?" And, like, trying to force all this into some project management or database framework or whatever for coordination purposes. Like, it feels like we should be able to accept humans as they are because I'm like, all right, I am not that operationally disciplined, but there are a lot of people who don't want to be organizing their data all the time just like me. And so maybe that'll be the better way. (laughs)

    8. ETElias Torres29:08

       I think you have incredible strengths, right? For, to, to, to be where you are, to have achieved what you have achieved is because you're, you're special and talented, right? The good thing is that you don't need organizational skills as a nesse- nece... You know, it's, it's not a need-

    9. SGSarah Guo29:24

       (laughs)

    10. ETElias Torres29:24

        ... for you to become more successful than you are today, right? The good thing is that that's exactly what AI and the computer should solve for you. I, I hate doing... I challenge everything. If I don't need to do something, like for example, when I first came here, I, I'm, uh, I'm terrible at writing in English, right? And then every time before ChatGPT came out, I would be like, "Maybe I should learn that skill." I mean, you know... You, you know that theory about the buckets that there's like five levels of something, mediocre, uh, th- and then really bad and then really good, that it takes like 10 years to shift buckets, you know, to be like-

    11. SGSarah Guo29:58

        Oh, god, okay.

    12. ETElias Torres29:59

        ... to go, to go from average to, like, you know, top. And so it says focus on the things where you only have to move one level up to be better. Don't try to go from the one that you're the poorest to the top, right? And so whatever you're not good at, just let it be. And the beauty is organization, like, AI should tell you everything, my questions, what to ask me, prepare, context, and you shouldn't lift a finger. But you can do your magic interviewing people and that's... AI can't do that, you know, because it's you.

    13. SGSarah Guo30:29

        Okay, just to be clear, I came up with the questions this time.

    14. ETElias Torres30:32

        (laughs)

    15. SGSarah Guo30:32

        But in the future, I-

    16. ETElias Torres30:34

        Yeah.

    17. SGSarah Guo30:34

        You know, I, I, I very much look forward to being told what to do with the prep the minute before and actually setting my avatar. It's gonna be great. And then you and I can just get a beer and that'll be it. (laughs)

    18. ETElias Torres30:43

        Exactly. But that's, but that's what matters, right? Is the relationship, right? Is the friendship.

    19. SGSarah Guo30:48

        I think this is great.

    20. ETElias Torres30:49

        I think this is good.

    21. SGSarah Guo30:50

        Okay.

    22. ETElias Torres30:51

        One shot. We, we, we one-shotted the, the whole podcast.

    23. SGSarah Guo30:54

        Thank you for the conversation, Eliezer. It was great.

    24. ETElias Torres30:59

        (laughs)

    25. SGSarah Guo30:59

        (instrumental music) Find us on Twitter @nopriorspod. Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you wanna see our faces. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way, you get a new episode every week. And sign up for emails or find transcripts for every episode at no-priors.com.

Episode duration: 31:18