Why Businesses Are Rejecting the AI They’ve Asked For: Agency CEO Elias Torres

Elias Torres has been building AI systems since 1999, from chatbots at IBM to co-founding Drift and now Agency. He believes businesses are caught in an expectation mismatch—demanding AI while rejecting it due to imperfection anxiety. Drawing from his experience scaling HubSpot, Elias explains why human-led customer experience doesn’t scale and how Agency is building AI-first solutions that work autonomously. His contrarian approach focuses on the back-end customer experience rather than front-end AI SDRs, aiming to “deprogram the entire business world” from inefficient human-dependent processes. Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital Mentioned in the episode: Lookery: David Cancel’s first startup that Elias joined after IBM; shut down in 2009 Performable: Elias and David’s second startup, acquired by HubSpot in 2011 Drift: Elias and David Cancel’s third startup, merged with Salesloft in 2024 Klaviyo: B2C CRM company started by Andrew Bialecki after working with Elias at HubSpot Secret: Short-lived anonymous messaging app that inspired one of Drift’s early iterations Tatajuba: Kitesurfing destination in Jericoacoara, Brazil where Elias (briefly) considered retirement 00:00 Introduction 01:50 AI and Customer Expectations 03:36 Managing Emails with AI 07:21 Elias' Personal Journey 11:27 Early Career 14:28 Joining HubSpot and Scaling Challenges 16:31 Hiring Exceptional Talent 18:53 Founding Drift 20:27 Pivoting to Success with Drift 21:41 Drift's Chatbot Innovation 22:09 Challenges and Limitations of Drift 22:37 The Struggle with Customer Knowledge 23:09 Scaling Challenges and Lessons Learned 25:58 Rediscovering Purpose Post-Drift 28:55 The Birth of Agency 29:42 AI's Role in Customer Experience 35:13 Building a Sustainable Business Model 37:06 The Vision for Agency 38:22 Challenges and Opportunities with AI 41:22 Deprogramming and Embracing Change 43:23 Optimism for the AI Future 44:15 Closing Thoughts

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In the past, I would be like, the minute I had something that kind of like loaded on your browser, like I wanted to charge you, you know, it's like a dollar. I was like, yes, I got a dollar. This time I'm like, I don't want your money. It's like, I want to know that you're obsessed and that it's so sticky. And I'm going to do everything at your company. There's so many founders that they think that they, just because they built something that they got it, right? People are delusional. People have $50 million in revenue and they're delusional that that product works, you know? This time around, I really want to do it right. I want to build something that people like, like throwing money at me and saying like, this is really, there's nothing like it. This is, this is my journey now.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  We're really excited to share today's episode of Training Data with you. Today, we have Elias Torres, someone we've known for more than a decade across three companies. We first met Elias when he was busy rebuilding the core platform for HubSpot many, many years ago. After that, we got into business with him with Drift, which is his second startup. And then more recently, we got into business with Elias on Agency, his third startup. Agency is in the midst of redefining customer experience. And so today we'll hear a bit about what that means and also how to build a company in a world of AI. We hope you enjoy.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Elias, welcome to the show.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Thank you. I've been waiting for this moment my whole life.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I know you have. I know you have. You know, we had, we had this wonderful script all planned. And then over the last few minutes, we got into some real hot takes. Why don't we just start with the hot takes? Tell us what's going on in the world of AI.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  I think that everybody's asking for AI. Everybody says they want it. And when you come and bring it to them, they just reject it. You know, it's like the Messiah has arrived and everybody is like, no, we don't want it. And I think it's, it's a super interesting time, right? Because we have the best technology mankind has ever created. It is so intelligent. It's so smart. It's so capable. But yet people are like demanding this level of perfection. When they're not even able to like use the chat prompt to ask like a basic question. And so I think that we are completely misunderstanding the technology and its capabilities.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  So it's an expectation mismatch, not necessarily a technological flaw.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think in some ways, we're used to pre-AI technology, right? That it was able to look up a string from a database and it was a perfect lookup and a perfect match. And so I think they're used to that level of perfection. And so when you bring any possibility of a different answer, a different solution, I think people are struggling with that imperfection.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  So we're used to narrow functionality, perfect accuracy. All of a sudden, we have broad functionality, imperfect accuracy, and people are having a hard time with that transition.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I see a lot of customers being like half-full, you know, half-empty.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  My approach to AI is like, if it's doing 10% more than I wasn't doing before, if it's doing 20%, 30%, I'm extremely happy. Like, I don't have to do that. It saved me time. But other people, if it's like, if it's not 100% perfect, I'd rather have none.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  And I think that's a very dangerous take for people to take.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  And actually, the example that comes to mind is one that you've shared with us before, which is around how you manage your own email.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Do you care to share that example?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Which one? The one that I, so let me see if I get this one right. So it was agency, right? Agency can like read all my email and creates drafts and automatically like I can reply to everybody. So usually what I'm doing is when I'm demoing the product, I let, I'm like, I open my entire inbox to the customers right now. So it's like, it really, not to worry about it yet, I guess. But I'm like, oh, I just had this meeting with this customer and we had this thing and I'm gonna send this follow-up. And I just, I just hit the send button, you know? And is this the example?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we were talking about how like the email deluge is just untenable at this point. And like people spend hours and hours a day managing their email, or at least a lot of people do. And like the AI product that I would love to pay for is one that can just take care of my email. We were having this conversation, you're like, I don't spend any time managing my email. I actually just let agency do it for me.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Which is not the point of agency, but it's one of the things agency can do.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  And I think that's a great example, I think that narrows it, right, is that we generate these emails for customers and follow-ups. And the thing is that if you're managing, if you're trying to manage, you know, 500, you know, pipeline and you're trying to communicate to everybody. What's best? That you deliver two perfect emails? Or that you send something to all 500 prospects?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Right? Because they individually don't know how much time you're spending on. But just that, just say ping and like send that email, right?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  To follow up. And so what happens with my customers, right, is like, I'm sending these messages. And I kind of like almost don't, I look at it, I might cringe sometimes, but I send it. Because partly is this, I don't know, the stage in my life, maybe because I'm old, I'm like, I already know that I'm never gonna say anything perfect. So if it goes out, it goes out and like, as long as I, you know, it's, it's gonna be fine, but the problem is I see customers. I watch them on recordings, right, of using the product from a user experience perspective and I'm like, wow, this person just spent 20 minutes. And they really didn't edit the email. Sometimes they're just changing the salutation or like, they didn't like how

• 5:52Speaker 00

  it was too aggressive to say, here's my calendar link and they were like, and let me know times. And then they're like 20 minutes later and the email gets sent. And so I think that that's fundamentally why businesses can't scale today. Because there's humans in the middle, you know, to, to add so much delay and, and obstacles and slowdowns in, in the in the pursuit of delivering a customer experience, you know?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  So you're saying people are scared to let AI take the wheel and they should just let AI take the wheel?

• 6:21Speaker 00

  I think so. I think we need to choose what really matters, you know, like kind of one-way doors, two-way doors. We need to say like, is, is this gonna, like, we need to also have a little bit more leniency and forgiveness. Like if, if an email goes out, you know, that didn't say exactly the right thing or hallucinated, I think we all should be a little bit more forgiving and be like, it's okay, don't worry. And, and remove that fear from people. I think we, both sides, the sending and the receiving needs to be a little bit more.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  What's you?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  I'm gonna use that excuse next time I say some crazy shit that picks this up hat. Sorry, this is the AI.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  But isn't that what we do normally?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  We say crazy shit and then it's like, like the guy that stole the hat from the kid, you know, at the USO.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  First says some crazy shit, then he says some other crazy shit. He could just throw an AI too, might as well, you know?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Well, it reminds me of-

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Hold on, we might be sued by him right now.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  You didn't specify which guy, so I think we're good. Normally on, on training data, we don't really get into personal stories, but I actually think your personal story is pretty exceptional and pretty unique. And so could you maybe just say a couple of words about how your childhood shaped the sort of entrepreneur that you have become?

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that I am an engineer, George, just for the sake of it. I've written code before, but let's talk about, uh, let's talk about the personal stuff. Absolutely. I think I grew up in Nicaragua in, I would say, what we call a communist era, right? So very little, third world country, you know, I, I still have a shock. I go into people's homes, not that I go without, like I do, like they invite me, you know, just make sure.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  We're not breaking in.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  I get confused, not breaking in here. But then I go in and like I open the fridge and it's just like, just full of food. Americans, it's just like boxes and boxes and snacks and, and more, every, every drawer you open. If you came to my house in Nicaragua, everything was empty. Like the only things that would be in there is like a few pots and pans. And like I literally remember this, the kid would be like, there's absolutely nothing to eat. There would be like, you know, just the food that you were gonna make for that meal kind of thing. It's like, it's like just in time. And so that's just, it's a lot of scarcity, right? And so you grew up with, um, you know, I remember telling my mother, we'd be like,

• 8:49Speaker 00

  I would ask for things and one time my mom said something like, I would give you anything I had, anything I could, if I'm not giving it to you because I can't. So, and so I learned to ask like, mom, if you can buy me this gift, you know, if you can buy me this. So it's just like a completely different, um, world than the world that we live in in a first world country. America, you know, greatest country in the world, you know. Then, but then it's like, and then how we're living today, right? And a lot of people are like, at least the world that I'm living in today is just like the extreme opposite of that.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. What was your first job?

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Pre IBM?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I mean, your actual first job that you got paid any sort of money for, for doing any sort of work.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I think there's a competition. The one that sounds better is the one I was like cleaning the offices with my mother. But I, we did both. I was working at McDonald's and cleaning offices when we first came to this country that I got paid. I was seventeen years old.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And I remember you told me your mom had a laptop and you became tech support. And this is how you got introduced to technology.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  That was, that was pre United States. So, well, I, I, I came, I spent two years with my father. I didn't grow up with my dad. And he bought this like computers. I don't know, it's like, you know, people would bring him stuff that I don't know where it came from. Yeah, it was stolen. And so he would buy stuff and, and he would just bring it home. And so the thing that caught my attention, I have a half brother and, and he just loved fixing cars. And then my dad brought this computer and my, my half brother did not look at it. I don't know if it was a drawn by it or drawn the fact that my brother wasn't using it. And I just started using WordPerfect and, and like Lotus one, two, three in the eighties. I was like in sixth, seventh grade. I did junior high in LA.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  And I just love like, like typing on that thing and trying to get the printer to work. No internet, no communication, no user group. I just, me in the garage is just trying to figure this thing out.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And then when I went back to Nicaragua, my mother had a laptop. I show up in Nicaragua in the eighties and my mom has a laptop. She's, she's a professor, she's a, you know, PhD, a veterinarian at the university. And she has a laptop and I'm just like, why do you have a laptop? This is Nicaragua. And, and so I started helping her and being like her tech support at the university. Mostly I just broke the computer and then I would take it to IT to get it fixed.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And then your first job. Kind of post-university was IBM, is that right?

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And we don't need to talk about IBM necessarily, but tell me about the moment that you met David Cancel.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I worked at IBM with an amazing group of people. I'll say that my first, 1999, my first project at IBM, I was building a chatbot that you could look up people's phone numbers. This is called like Blue Pages, like instead of Yellow Pages at IBM.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  And I learned so much, I built so much, it was an amazing thing. But I just got fed up. Four hundred thousand people, you cannot make a huge impact in that company. It's just too political. I imagine me in a four hundred thousand person organization. And so I just kept trying to, I kept making connections in Boston in the tech, in the tech scene. It took me a long time. Then I finally met David. And first I never seen another Hispanic Latino in tech. You know, I was like, okay, like, I liked him. I felt like I trusted him more to join his startup because a lot of people were asking me to join their startups and I did not know how to choose one. I chose him because I just felt comfortable.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  You know, I felt that he understood me and that I could trust him. And the first thing he did is like, he offered me to take over his prior job at some other company. And I was like, what do you mean? Just be VP of Engineering at your own company? But in the end, I really decided to join him in this company called Lookery. It was my first tech startup because I needed to try something outside of IBM.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was it like going from four hundred thousand people to forty people or whatever?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  No, no, it was like ten.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  I was working, I had a desk and I lived in Lowell, Massachusetts. I had a desk in my bedroom. So I would get up and sit down and I would just work. Twenty four seven, like it was like that, that, that stage of my life was like three babies in diapers, working twenty four seven.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Just, it was so exhausting, like literally, I was like the main engineer in the company and I had to build everything. So I went from building stuff that nobody cared, nobody used at IBM and they're like, to like, I was the sole person responsible. But it was, it was the best, not, not, I have so many best times, sorry. It was the, it was when I started using AWS.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  And I started using the cloud and it was mind boggling from like ordering and buying blade servers and requesting stuff through IBM, you know, procurement systems to do anything to like pushing a button, S three and ECS, EC two. And it was like, I was just blown away that I could be this one person orchestrating and building everything without needing anybody.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  So that was a huge unlock.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  And then you guys started Performable. So that was your first company that you founded, agency is your third company that you founded. You guys started Performable and after a few years, joined HubSpot, which is where we intersected.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And for people's benefit, and I think Brian and Dharmesh should agree with this characterization. HubSpot in the early days had an amazing story and like an okay product. And then you and David joined with your team from Performable. And originally the mandate was to build out a particular piece of the product. But then you ended up with responsibility for the whole thing and rebuilt it from scratch. And sort of the second phase of HubSpot, thanks to you guys, was great story, great product. Can you say a couple of words about what it was like joining HubSpot? And then sort of how over the time you were there, you, you, you managed not only to scale with the organization, but to kind of like reinvent it in some ways?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  To me, professionally, it was a big breakout moment, you know, you go from, from tinkering with computers and we're perfect. And or like launching a few EC two instances and building a few web apps to, to really having to support 5,000 customers. I went from like 20 customers at Performable to like 5,000 customers immediately.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  And that was a shocker to me because one, what I care more about is customer experience, right? My customers are performable would text me and they would say, this is broken and I would open my computer, edit the code and say reload. When you have 5,000 customers, you can't do that. So I had to learn how to scale in every sense of the word, right? We had, we had a huge urgency. We had major churn. The product did not work at all and the team did not function either. So we had to like rebuild the team, rebuild the product and rebuild the trust with the customers, right? That this product was going to actually achieve, you know, what, what it was going to do.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  And I also had to learn how to scale myself as a leader and the most important thing I would say that I learned there was like hiring at scale.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  I was gonna ask you about that actually because you, I believe you hired Andrew Byleke before you started Klaviyo. I believe you hired Christopher O'Donnell, you know, before he went on to build HubSpot's CRM and, and start a company of his own. I believe you had a handful of really exceptional hires and it's not obvious that a mid-stage marketing software company in Boston would be able to attract such great people. And so I'm curious, like what were you looking for in people that you hired? And then maybe what did you do to help them sort of have such growth in their careers?

• 17:07Speaker 00

  I think, I think so many people are exceptional and it's a combination of giving them a chance and also role modeling after them what, what becoming an outlier really, really means. And so I, I would say like, am I as successful as I am because of who I was so early or is because a lot of people also shaped me along the way to teach me what was possible, right? And, and made me want to go after and accomplish those same things like, just like Brian and Darmesh for example, right? And so I think all these people. There's so many people. There's Whitney, there's Jared, current EVP at HubSpot, that is still there running the entire system.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I forgot about Whitney, yeah, good point.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  There's a few more, right?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Not that I'm like keeping track of them. It just makes me really proud to have people that have been able to influence their lives and their careers, right? But it was, it was really, they were at the places where I was. I was in a garage, just tinkering with work perfect. They were doing, you know, the crappiest jobs that you could possibly think of.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  And so my thing is, I give people a shot, right? And I can, you know, test their intelligence from the conversation, see if they can keep up, see if they have hunger, they have grit, and then just bringing them along for the ride. And then they get to choose the path that they take after, right?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  And so I think that I just, I don't hire for credentials. I don't hire for where you came from, what you said you did. And I actually, like, if you have all that stuff, I'm kind of like, rule you out immediately.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  A little suspicious.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  It's sus, totally sus.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Let's talk about Drift real quick, just because, so startup number one, Performable. Startup number two, Drift, which again was you and David Cancel. And I know that your experience at Drift helped to shape the idea for agency. So can you just say a word about what was Drift? And what aspects of Drift kind of gave you the insight for agency, which you're building now?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that the thing that we learned at HubSpot was time to value, right? It's like, how long does it take for the customer to experience the value and the product that you're building for them? And at HubSpot, it takes a long time. You have to build blogs, you have to build ranking in SEO and Google, and you have to get leads, and you have to become a brand. So you're coaching the customer from day one to like, you know, like, we're in here for a journey. And at a low price, which is an unbelievable achievement for HubSpot to be at the revenue that it is today, right? The scale. But I would say that at Drift, we were kind of like, it was almost something I always kept thinking with David, and we were like, how can we get time to value? And so.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  We were patient in the beginning. We spent about two years wandering through the desert trying to figure out like, what should we work on?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember it began as HR software.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Yeah, let's not talk about that.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  God, there's a bad joke in there. So we were trying to do like Glassdoor. It was like a secret app at that time. Remember secret? People could say like secretly, like anonymously, what's going on at their company. Cause we were using, we were obsessed with team dynamics and culture at HubSpot. But then we kept pivoting and pivoting like, we would pivot like every month. Every time Pat would stop by in Boston to see us, like, so what are you guys working on? Oh, a new Dropbox. What are you doing now? A new Pinterest. What about now? Survey Monkey. Literally every month, I would just tell the team. That was not a good idea. We're gonna try another one. So one, we spent two years being super patient and finding something we want.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  And the thing that I realized is like, you gotta go back to what you know. Experience compounds and you gotta just like stick with it. And so we went on a huge diversion and then came back to like closer and closer and closer to the app, to service, to customer. And we were like, we were next door to HubSpot. So we were not gonna do marketing and we were not gonna, I was not gonna build another CRM. And it was like, no. And so we started focusing in from support, then we went in app, and then we went back to leads. And the idea was to, if you could deploy this, that can immediately start getting you more leads without any human effort. That was the scaling point, right? And automation.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  So we had a chatbot that would be the receptionist, the welcome reception on your homepage. Instead of asking you to fill out a form, it could ask you questions, it could inform you, deliver you some value, book a calendar meeting, route it to the right rep and send a notification to the cell phone of the rep and just make connections faster and remove the friction. And that was fantastic, right? That worked, right? I think that that helped us take off. We did many things right. But the reality, this product was shallow, right? And that it wasn't too deeply penetrated because it was only solving one basic step in the customer journey. It only did like the first connection.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  But the problem that arose then after is like, everybody would be like, well, I came back to the website. Why doesn't it recognize? What does it pick up where it left off? I already had this conversation. I already explained this. How come when I'm inside the app, it doesn't know, you know, what I said before, my support tickets and my whatever, right? And so there was this, this dream I had of like, how could we always know everything about the customer? And how could we always apply that information in every exchange that we have? We should know our customer, right? And so it was a pain that we didn't have the technology to be able to deliver that.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  And so I think that was one struggle. The other struggle I would say was that we, we built quickly, we built brand, we built product, we have amazing speed to market.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  But then we didn't have the ability to scale like the, you know, here, we always think like, well, just just hire more bodies and and just raise more money. Don't worry about spending. It's just like, it it'll resolve itself out. We can always scale it later. And I think that that's fundamentally flawed. I don't know if people still get that, to tell you the truth, in this age of AI. I think that is the whole point of AI is to prove that out. But other people are like, just hire it. We'll worry about it later. And I think that that was my biggest lesson adrift that I always like talking to my customers. I always like to text me, call me.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  I just, I'm an extrovert and I just thrive on that, on relationships. And when we got to the point where we started having thousands and thousands of customers adrift, I just could no longer talk to them, right? I could not longer know them. And usually when a CSM calls you, because it's a churn of somebody that I might have emailed once, commonly hasn't saved this churn. It's just too late.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  You can't do that. I mean, I might have a success rate of like 20% if I promised them the world and I'm gonna be there for you. That's shallow, that's hypocritical, that's not the truth, you know? And so I felt that pain intimately of what happens when you scale? And what happens when you have 800 people, 600, I could keep track, you know? And you're just like, you spend more time managing the people, their promotions, their growth, their onboarding, their recruiting, their entertaining, the town halls. And I think that just consumed us and realized that, that took our eyes from the ball of the customer and the product.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  And I think that that's where we paid the price and not being able to build a legendary company as we dreamed to build from the beginning.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  And Drift, you know, Drift was ultimately still worth more than a billion dollars. And so, you know, your second, first startup success, you know, joined HubSpot. Second startup success of greater magnitude. And at that point, you know, you're kind of like a walking example of the American dream, you know? Like you came to this country with nothing and through smarts and hustle and sheer force of will, you know, you built these amazing things and put your life in a totally different position for, you know, for you and your family. You could have ridden off into the sunset and just like called it a, called it a career. Like, why do it all over again?

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Well, I did, I did ride into the sunset. I did that for like seven months. I think that people did, you know, traveled the world, did all this stuff, but it's extremely empty and boring, I would say. But I was kite surfing in Tata Juba, Jerico Acorda in Brazil, you know, with some friends. Majestic place. This is the first time I'm actually disconnecting. Like, this is my first trip after I leave Drift.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  And I'm like, wow, I have no meetings, I have nothing to do. And I'm just like, the whole morning, we're just staring in this like cabana, just looking at this ocean, empty beaches, it's a very remote area in the north, northeast of Brazil. And I'm like, wow, I need to learn how to meditate and how to just be one with nature. And in the afternoon, we would go kite surfing. And then ChatGPT launches, you know? And I'm just like, showing everybody and explaining, and I don't even know how to explain. It's like, how does he know how to answer this? And, and, and so the first day that I'm off, really mentally, is the day ChatGPT launches. And I'm just like, this is the greatest moment in, in, in mankind.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  And I'm just like, fuck, I gotta go back in, you know? It's like, I, I feel like I worked all my life. I always considered myself an imposter, uh, not anymore. You know, that's, we, we achieved that. But the thing is like, all my life, I'm like, I didn't go to this school. I, I didn't build in the valley. I'm in Boston, this company failed, it's only, you know, this, all this stuff. And like, I didn't have enough because of this, I didn't have this network, I didn't know investors, I didn't know this, I didn't know English. And now I'm like, I, I fucking know everything. I know everybody, I know I built the systems enough to prove to millions of users and this and that and revenue and sales. And I'm not just gonna sit here when all these people that don't know anything are like building AI startups?

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Fuck, no, I'm just, I'm jumping back in, you know? It's like, uh, I, I was like, this is the moment. And, and I, I will say the, the cheesy, cringey answer to this is also, as a Latino, I feel an obligation. You know, it's like, most people would die to be in the position that I, that I am in right now. And to squander, going back to that day in my house in Nicaragua with no food, to squander resources and opportunity and just so like, time earned, work earned, you know? To just sit around and just kite surf in Brazil, you know? Or like surf in Fiji or, I just think it's a waste. Like, while I'm on this earth, I, I have to do something.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  And going back to being a role model. People want to see what someone that looks like you is capable of achieving. And I'm like, I can't sit this one out, right? And so that's when I like called you and I'm like, can I come to base camp? Can I get like reconnected, fired up with this stuff? I think I came to AI Ascent. And that's when LaMond, it was like, let's fucking go.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  You know?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, early 2023, I remember you came to AI Ascent. And then you started talking with OpenAI.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  And one of the problems they were having was they had all these enterprises whose immediate thought was, can we deploy this thing in a customer facing way? Kind of like the drift business in some ways. And so I remember you kind of jumped back in on that. And then evolved the idea into what agency has become, which is very different. And can you just say a word? We kind of backed into this earlier, talking about the email stuff. But can you just say a word like, what is agency? And like, what problem does it solve for customers? Why is that problem important? Can you just say a few words about that?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, the problem that everyone in the world has is that they struggle to deliver a great customer experience. And the only way that they can solve that problem today is not with technology, but is with humans. And so human led deliver customer experience. It's almost an impossible thing. And so what agency it is building is AI led customer experience. How do we truly scale customer experience beyond our wild imaginations without needing a human in every step of the way? Right? So that's what I'm really solving for. And it kind of like came through. I just, I love life, right? And now that I'm older, because you can trace back all the steps.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  And so I gave you a whole bunch of them. But Brazil, ChatGPT, AI Ascent.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  You introduced me to OpenAI. OpenAI says, we're just like 200 people. We do not know how to talk to all these customers. We can't tell them how to like prompt stuff. And would you help us? There was a jump. There's a cohort of companies that were like, let's build services in AI and let's start there. And so I kind of did that and build a consultancy and just started servicing all kinds of customers like the NBA, Red Bull, crazy companies. One of them was Klaviyo. You know, Andrew, I said, what do you need help with? And he's like, I need help delivering customer experience. You know, it's like, how do I help my customers understand what the potential is of using Klaviyo? How do we give them advice?

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Which is the job of a CSM, right? And so it's like, how can a CSM know, be an expert? Every CSM that you hire, be an expert, the number one and the world expert in Klaviyo itself or in e-commerce marketing. So that's where AI comes in. And when he first asked me to do this, I said, no fucking way. I don't know if I could do that. Imagine like, what would, my company would be bigger than yours. He's like, just do it. So he just, you know, roles, roles reversed, right? And he's like, go do it, go do things. And so we, we built a model that understood every customer and every one of their interactions and understand what was working, what was not working,

• 32:01Speaker 00

  and be able to classify the entire usage of every user in the company and start being able to deliver tailored advice, right? And so, and then the whole thing started clicking for me. It was like, what if I can just deliver the QBR? What if I can just like do, you know, create a video explaining that and saving time to the customer? And so then I was like, this is great. Like, this is the moment where like, this is what I want to solve. And, and I wasn't sure, right? That that was going to be it. And that, literally that day, like Brian Halligan sends me a text like, you know, he had been sending me all these messages, romancing me. And then that day is like, I have an idea for you.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, let's disrupt the world. You know, let's disrupt the, this entire industry. And I'm like, what are you talking about? It's like, it's about the people. We can't scale. You know, how do we solve this problem in customer experience? Let's do it. And then we called you and that's how agency was born, you know? It's it's just, things just accelerate, you know?

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Must have been a really cool full circle moment going from chatbots at IBM to to now chat is working and and going from, you know, you're only solving the transactional part of the conversation at Drift to now you want to, you know, manage the entire customer experience. It's incredible, full circle moment.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that a lot of people are struggling. They're having an identity crisis with AI of like, what should I do? What will I be replaced? And to me, I I think what I've learned, what I see a lot of a lot of founders struggle with is or people is like, what's my purpose? Like, what am I going to do? And what am I going to do that's going to last? So what am I going to do that is big? And so to me, finding the problem of customer experience is so soothing and reassuring. It's like the hardest thing. I'm not saying it's easy, but I I just can't think of how this will ever be solved.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Top.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  It's like, whatever customer experience we could, like, most customer experience in the world sucks. Like, it's like, I would say, like, the best I could think of maybe could be like a fancy hotel. You know, like, sometimes, but I don't want to name my hotel that I stay here. But now if I ask them to send me some delivery or medicine or something, they're like, that'll be $4, Mr. Torres. Like, why am I paying thousands of dollars in this room? And you're charging me $4 for delivering me like my Tylenol? It's like, and then I got this food that you want, I don't want to come down and say, that'll be $7, you know? And so, and this is like the great experience, the greatest experience you can get today, I think, in customer. Like, that's where you get pampered.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you have any customers on agency today and any favorite customer stories?

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Here, classic Sequoias, like, what's the revenue? What's the curve? Let's talk about ARR. Let's talk about ARR.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Really went through your, some of your story.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  What's your gross margins? Yeah, what's your gross margin? Actually, we can talk about that. This is a shit show. I don't know how we're going to survive with this LLM cost. I think it's an entire pyramid scheme here. Well, actually, say a word about that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I I think, so we have over 50 customers using the product, right? It's like, I don't give a shit about numbers and stuff like that. I'm building for them. I'm solving, I'm really delighted. I was trying to get more customers and Brian said, Stick with the customers you have. Make them like so wildly successful. And I was like.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I think that's important is that there there are more customers that you could go get, but you're focused right now on just making these fifty like deliriously happy with the product.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  That that's exactly where I am, right? And so and so back to the cost stuff. So so we we've been working with them and and and I have a really.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  It's hard going multiple times around because this time around, in the past, I would be like, the minute I had something that kind of like loaded on your browser, like I wanted to charge you. You know, it's like a dollar. I was like, yes, I got a dollar. This time I'm like, I don't want your money. It's like, I want to know that you're obsessed and that it's so sticky and I'm going to do everything at your company. And I don't want to make my. There's so many founders that they think that they just because they built something that they got it, right? People are delusional. People have fifty million dollars in revenue and they're delusional that that product works. You know, this time around, I really want to do it right. I want to build something that people like like throwing money at me and saying like, this is really, there's nothing like it.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  This is this is my journey now, right? So I want to build something real, right? That is not going to like just. I I think most of SaaS out there that we ever built, that I ever built, just created more work for the user. I want something that takes the work off, right? And so this I'm being more patient, right? And maybe it hurts me, maybe it doesn't, but I got great found a great investors like that. It's not rushing me, so sometimes. I would say that what what's really hard is.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  I'm trying to understand. My number one goal, right, is I want to create a company that is a billion in revenue with less than a hundred employees, right? It was one of the first ones saying out there and and people were like, you're crazy, you're crazy. And and I really mean it, right? Most of my team is engineers, right? And we're just building the product because the where most of the money and where the headcount goes is in customer experience in in in GTM and customer experience.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  And so I want to solve that. I want to get that right so we can build the companies of the future.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  There's a lot of lack of creativity and we're in the most creative company, country in the world. But what I see out there in products is like everybody's building the same chat, you know, a meeting recorder, the note summarizer and the email drafter, right?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Well, I remember when you started Agency, one of the HubSpot, you know,

• 37:56Speaker 01

  principles or norms has always been when they zig, we zag, right? And I think when you started Agency, the zig was all these AI SDR companies. And your zag was, no, no, we'll let them take the front end of the business. We're going to deal with the back end of the business because that's where the pain actually is. And that's where the value is built. And so I think you've, you sort of zagged when people were zigging. And I think over the last year or so, that's proven to be a good decision. But can you say a word about like, what can AI do today? What can it not do today? And so in the product that you've built, where is AI like, or the product itself, really nailing it? And where do you feel like there is maybe still a capability gap in terms of what can be done?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Well, I think that if we're optimists, AI is infinitely capable. In the theoretical.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  In the fullness of time.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  In the fullness of time, right? But today, it's actually not that smart. And so like, you know, it's like, you have to write paragraphs and paragraphs to maybe get the right answer, 42. It's a, you know, if you type the wrong word or if you try it again, it's just a different answer. And so that's the part that today's human's brains just can't cope with it. And so when you're trying to deliver experience to the customer, you're trying to figure out, what is it that you're exactly trying to do, right? Are you trying to just come up with the better word to reply to the customer? Or you're trying to let the AI actually do and manage the customer experience? And so I think where we're struggling is that if we cannot even trust the AI to draft your own email

• 39:28Speaker 00

  that you're about to hit the button, how much worse is it going to be for us to let the AI make decisions on 10,000 customers on a daily basis on its own? And so we built the first part of Agency, which is what most people are trying to do today, which is this, you know, customer 360 foundational, let's bring all that information into one place and be able to ask questions. But what most people are not realizing is that if you require a human to go type into that chat box.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  You're dead on arrival. Everybody's so confused and even in the valley of like building tools that are like just helping a human do something. I'm done with that. Like I don't want to do that. I it's like it bores me to death to type stuff into chat G P T. I I like I'm a C E O now like I'm spoiled. I'm you know, living my best life. I just want to tell people what to do one time and they do it ten thousand times. And so that's kind of what I really want, you know, A I to do for me. It's like, how can we instruct A I to do one task infinitely? And and most people are stuck like people and don't get me started on the word agents, right? Everybody like talks about agents and and like, okay, send me a summary after my meeting to my email.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Who gives a shit like like I can always go ask that question, but it's what do I do with it? So what I'm doing is I'm doing the very first principles in in the in the companies that I'm working with. Because people just keep asking me, oh, can you generate me a dashboard about the customers? And then so what? Yeah, what do you want to do with the dashboard? Do with the dashboard and say and so, oh, well, I want to click on this and then do this. Why can I do that? And then what do you want me to do that? You want me to go after the renewals? You want me to go tell the rep? And then what are you going to tell the rep? Oh, I'm going to tell them to email the customer. Why can I just email the customer, right? And so that's the journey I'm in that I'm enjoying, but it's it's really hard. I have to deprogram the entire business world. Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Because they're used to working and operating this way. And, you know, I was Brian had his birthday. I was I was at his house. I showed up with his glasses and then he was like in shock. He's never seen them before. It's a then I was um. One of one of his old friends, because Brian is old, I'm old, I can say I'm old, I can say anything I want. I'm old too. So one of his old retired V C's. It's like came like to me like an oracle. And he was saying, Elias, my advice to you. Forget everything you've ever learned. Forget the pattern recognition. Forget your experience. Forget all that. That's bullshit. Just gotta like try new things.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  It is like telling me to let go and not like rely on the past. Because sometimes like experienced founders, we get stuck in that way. And it was like this deprogramming, right? To just charge into the future. And and that's my challenge of like, how do I become a change agent to our customers? To really believe in in in stop worrying about the things that we were doing before and focus on the right thing that they can do and they can have that one on one with their customer, with the top customer. But a lot of stuff that we're doing is really unnecessary. Because we just didn't have the technology. But it's going to take a long time for AI to be prompted in into into success of like,

• 42:55Speaker 00

  read this dashboard, make this concrete and do this. Just even doing one of those workflows consistently every time.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  It's it's going to take a lot of prompting. But there's a lot of stuff that you can bring change internally. As a customer experience, you know, platform. We can bring things to resolve a lot of internal inefficiencies. But the most valuable thing is delivering that directly to the customer.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  All right, last question, let's end on a high note. What are you most optimistic for in our AI future?

• 43:29Speaker 00

  I think that what I'm most optimistic is I want people to be able to leverage to use their agency more. You know, I think that we have worked so hard for all of our our history. And I think we need to stop so focused on like hard, hard, hard work. And then being able to like, do what we're best at doing, right? Which is taking initiative, making decisions, choosing a purpose, choosing a customer, choosing an audience and go serve them, right? But be able to leverage AI to do the work, right, around us? And not be afraid of it that is really taking away our agency, because it just can't, you know?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Great company name, Humans Have Agency.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Indeed. Awesome. Elias, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Thank you.