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Elias Torres

27 statements across 1 episodes · 7 bullish · 8 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Mar 21, 2025 by Elias Torres · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2025 · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Elias Torres's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (1)

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2025 1 mention in 1 episode

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Everything said about Elias Torres, oldest first

Mar 21, 2025 negative
Insight
Torres: Long tenure at a single company can be a hiring red flag
“If you stayed there for a long time, it's a red flag too.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 42:09 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
What-if
Elias Torres Regrets Not Being Tougher When Raising His Children
“I wish I would have been tougher with them”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 59:12 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Elias Torres: AI Startups Are Trading Human Headcount for Compute
“We'll have smaller teams, but we still need more compute. I mean, we're just really trading people for compute.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 23:52 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Torres: Drift scaled to 800 total employees, including 200 in customer support
“I had 800 people, I had 200 in CS.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 21:07 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Insight
Elias Torres manufactures adversity to raise gritty kids in wealth
“I just try to manufacture adversity. That's all I can for them.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 10:08 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 negative
Opinion
Torres: 400,000-person corporations cannot move fast despite Lou Gerstner's claims
“What I learned was that a four-hundred-thousand-person company just can't move as fast. Lou Gerstner was the CEO at the time and wrote a book called, like, Why Elephants Can Dance, right? And I don't think, I disagree with him. Elephants can't dance.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 11:12 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Torres built all his previous startup teams with Northeastern University students
“Before all my companies, I've built them on the backs of Northeastern students. They're amazing people. They're the best.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 36:33 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Torres: Raised Hundreds of Millions of Dollars While Raising Three Children
“Because I was able to do all that. I raised hundreds of millions of dollars going through all that stuff, right?”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 55:10 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Torres: AI will displace B2B corporate workforces despite optimistic predictions
“That's bullshit, right? I just, it's just, you have had some guests here that I love and respect, but they're like, Oh yeah, we're gonna get larger, you know, in five years, and I'm like, what? I just saw something, you know, somebody posted on Twitter, it's l…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 25:19 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 negative
What-if
Torres claims Drift would be public without executive equity concessions
“I would have a public company right now if I, if it wasn't for like all those carrots that I gave and candy bars and trophies.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 29:54 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Opinion
Torres: Having children at a younger age is optimal
“The best time to our children is when we're younger, unless we have unlimited resources, right?”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 53:12 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 negative
Opinion
Elias Torres calls selling Drift the biggest failure of his life
“Drift is the biggest failure in my life.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 30:16 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Assertion Supported
Elias Torres: Code to build an LLM fits on one page
“The code fits on a, like, a page on the screen.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 4:36 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Torres is holding his Klaviyo stock because it remains underappreciated
“A thousand percent, so that's why I'm not selling my stock.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:03:02 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Torres convinced Klaviyo founder Andrew Bialecki to take VC funding
“I convinced him to take VC money.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:02:39 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Torres: AI adoption transition will take five to ten years
“I'm on the longer side. I think there's a lot of hype. This stuff, we're not we're not gonna, like, even in the industrial age and the revolutions, right, GDP was growing at one percent, two percent. I don't think we're gonna grow, like, at 10%, 20% in one yea…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:06:15 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Torres was the first investor in Klaviyo
“That Klaviyo, you know, I'm a first investor, good friends with Andrew, right?”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:02:33 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Elias Torres: AI Startups Will Suffer Far Less Equity Dilution
“A lot less equity will be spent on, on, on the team, right? Because you're not gonna need rounds and rounds and Distributing equity after every round to hundreds and hundreds of people.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 24:11 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Elias Torres got his start in tech using a stolen IBM computer
“He bought, like, a stolen computer. Like, people came and sold him, you know, and so I, he put it in the garage, and he said, go play with it. And so that's, it's like an IBM computer, like, you know, in the eighties, and I would be typing my homework in this …”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 8:15 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Insight
Torres: Wealth Eliminates One-Third of Everyday Stresses
“So that is a huge release, you know, of stress that I just don't care about that stuff anymore. So that just takes like, I don't know, one third of the problems, and I'm just like, ok, I don't care, just pay it, you know, move on.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 3:19 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Disclosure
Torres: Overrode interview panels to make hiring decisions at Drift, HubSpot
“By the way that I ran interview at HubSpot and Adrift, everybody, I would help, I have a panel of people interviewing, But I would always interview myself. I will do the informal, I will do the formal, I bring them in, and then I do the closing. But I let them…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 39:20 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 negative
Insight
Torres: CEOs err by delegating AI software implementation to middle management
“CEOs are making a big mistake right now. They're like, I talk to them and they're like, yes, this is what I want. I'm down. Elias, let's get agency in here right now. And then they pass me down to the next person and to the next person.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 22:34 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Elias Torres tests engineering candidates by reviewing live Git repos
“Show me, open up your computer. I want to see your Git right now. Show me what you committed. Show me your code. Let's discuss that. Did you really build that? Who was it? So I'm just like, I don't care about my questions. I just go bang, bang, bang, bang. I w…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 28:47 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Insight
Torres: Founders spot bad hires within two weeks but ignore signals
“In reality, most people should know, like, within the first week or two, it's just, they just reject those signals.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 37:34 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 positive
Opinion
Torres: Building a company is much easier and more fun than investing
“For myself, I'd rather build, man. It's so much easier, so much more fun.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:04:22 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Elias Torres avoids hiring introverted software engineers
“And so I don't, I tend to not hire like that many introvert engineers, right?”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 27:53 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025
Disclosure
Elias Torres earned $2 million in six months consulting on AI
“The reality is that, you know, I made, like, two million dollars in, like, just over, like, six, seven months consulting AI.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:04:33 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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