Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company
Elias Torres (guest), Harry Stebbings (host)
In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Elias Torres and Harry Stebbings, Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company explores immigrant founder on Drift regrets, AI agents, hiring grit, legacy Elias Torres, co-founder of Drift and now CEO of Agency, reflects candidly on why he considers Drift his biggest failure despite a $1.2B exit, and how that experience reshapes his approach to building a lean, durable AI-first company. He argues that incumbents like Google and Microsoft aren’t truly “dancing,” that AI agents will shrink company headcount while massively increasing compute needs, and that B2B software must move from human-operated tools to autonomous systems. Torres dives deep into his extreme hiring philosophy—prioritizing grit, speed, and “high agency”—and his belief in hiring slowly, firing fast, and rejecting ego-driven titles. He also discusses personal themes: growing up poor in Nicaragua, immigrating to the U.S., having kids early, the emotional toll of selling your company, and why he’s now more driven by legacy than money.
Immigrant founder on Drift regrets, AI agents, hiring grit, legacy
Elias Torres, co-founder of Drift and now CEO of Agency, reflects candidly on why he considers Drift his biggest failure despite a $1.2B exit, and how that experience reshapes his approach to building a lean, durable AI-first company. He argues that incumbents like Google and Microsoft aren’t truly “dancing,” that AI agents will shrink company headcount while massively increasing compute needs, and that B2B software must move from human-operated tools to autonomous systems. Torres dives deep into his extreme hiring philosophy—prioritizing grit, speed, and “high agency”—and his belief in hiring slowly, firing fast, and rejecting ego-driven titles. He also discusses personal themes: growing up poor in Nicaragua, immigrating to the U.S., having kids early, the emotional toll of selling your company, and why he’s now more driven by legacy than money.
Key Takeaways
A billion‑dollar exit can still feel like failure if the company doesn’t endure.
Torres calls Drift “the biggest failure” of his life because it became too big, slow, and product‑weak to go public, leaving him feeling he’d let customers and people down despite a $1. ...
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AI will enable billion‑dollar revenue companies with far smaller headcount.
He believes we’re moving from a world where “bigger was better” to one where agents and automation replace many operator roles, shrinking teams dramatically while shifting spend from human labor to compute.
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Incumbents have distribution but are structurally too slow to truly ‘dance.’
Despite Google and Microsoft’s AI moves, Torres argues that layers of management, risk‑aversion, and internal politics make it nearly impossible for elephants to move at startup speed; they talk a big game but ship slowly and inconsistently.
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B2B software must be rebuilt for autonomous agents, not human operators.
Most enterprise tools assume a human drives every workflow; Torres thinks the future resembles driverless cars—systems that execute outcomes with minimal human interaction—so ChatGPT is only an interim, operator‑dependent step.
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Hire for ‘high agency’ and grit, and be ruthless about fit.
His process is intensely hands‑on—live code reviews, probing GitHub, pressure‑testing candidates’ responsiveness—and he now insists on contracting first, hiring slowly, and firing within weeks if performance or grit isn’t obvious.
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Titles and traditional management practices (like endless 1:1s) are overvalued.
Torres sees title obsession as pure ego and believes small, autonomous pods plus shared upside (equity, profit/revenue sharing) will matter more than hierarchical ladders and ritualized one‑on‑ones that slow real work.
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Founders should accept paradox: chase profit and growth, care and ‘not care.’
He emphasizes living with contradictions—pursuing both profitability and ambition, being deeply driven yet emotionally detached enough to act rationally (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
“Drift is the biggest failure in my life.”
— Elias Torres
“Speed creates the American dream.”
— Elias Torres
“All this B2B software was designed to require operators and it just kills me.”
— Elias Torres
“If you could train an AI to do that job, and just have straight compute do it 24/7, which one do you prefer?”
— Elias Torres
“I’m done changing for people. I don’t care.”
— Elias Torres
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should a founder know when selling their company is the rational choice versus an ego‑driven refusal to quit?
Elias Torres, co-founder of Drift and now CEO of Agency, reflects candidly on why he considers Drift his biggest failure despite a $1. ...
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What concrete steps can an existing 500–5,000 person company take to ‘shrink’ into fast, effective pods without imploding?
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How do you design B2B products from day one for agentic, non‑operator use instead of traditional user‑driven workflows?
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Where is the ethical line between ‘ruthless’ hiring/firing for performance and providing people a fair chance to grow?
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If AI does replace large swathes of white‑collar work, what kinds of new careers or roles does Torres believe will actually emerge for displaced workers?
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Transcript Preview
... 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.
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-
(laughs)
... thank you for joining me.
No, absolutely, no pressure.
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)
Yeah.
But how do you think about that?
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 complicated it is?
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