Elias Torres

Founder & CEO, Agency · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveengineerhost@eliast ↗LinkedIn ↗agency.inc ↗

Elias Torres is a serial entrepreneur and engineer who co-founded Drift and served as VP of Engineering at HubSpot. He went on to found Agency, an AI platform for customer success teams, and hosts The American Dream podcast.

38statements → 11claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.53/5average debate potential → 3.9/5argument clarity · the sources → 1said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 predictions · 6 assertions · 9 opinions · 8 insights · 8 disclosures · 2 what ifs · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Elias argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

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

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

3.9 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 3.7 · precision 3.6 · compression 3.2

redirected or did not address 3 of 36 assessed questions (8%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

287 words/min while actually speaking · 12.4 um and uh per 1k words · 30.3 false starts per 1k · 26.7% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: Spanish). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 11,001 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Elias Torres said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Torres: Google AI products don't work and Notebook LM is already dead
“They invented this Transformers paper, and everything they put out doesn't work. Like Notebook LM, the great one, like it's already dead, right? The project. So it's like they're trying so hard, but they can't do it.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 12:37 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Torres: Nobody is using Microsoft Copilot because the product doesn't work
“Copilot, everybody was like, they're just ahead making all the money first because people, the problem is people are, they just have so much hard time trusting someone, right? And so they're reaping the benefit of being early, But nobody's using the product, r…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 13:34 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Torres: Incumbent tech firms must cut headcount by 80% to survive
“If they do what Twitter did, if they reduce themselves to 20%, and build an amazing product, and are willing to break all their pricing models and revenues and change all of that, then they will survive.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 31:21 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Torres: Salesforce is the biggest short in public software markets
“Salesforce.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:09:36 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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
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
Insight
Torres: Future software will eliminate human operators, functioning like driverless cars
“Software that has been built in the past 2030 years had the assumption, it was built kind of like we build cars. We build a car all around, and we build the entire environment, so a human goes and drives the car. Right? It requires an operator. The future is n…”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 16:03 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Torres: Cursor's Fast Revenue Growth Is Fragile Due to Low Switching Costs
“The cursors and all that stuff, like you can easily switch to like windsurf and you can switch to this and you can go back to copilot and like, so that revenue could disappear. This is a brand new phenomenon and we do not know how it plays out.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 49:08 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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
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
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
Disclosure
Torres: Agency operates its 15-person team on a single daily meeting
“Right now at agency, I have no meetings with anybody, right? We're like 15 people. We have one meeting for the whole company, for the whole team. Show me what you did yesterday, show me what you're gonna do today. That's all we do in that meeting.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 19:28 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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
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
Insight
Elias Torres: Founders waste time being frugal instead of focusing on customers
“I think people are wasting their time trying to be all frugal or this. I want to focus my time on the customers, right? And my team and my people.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 33:37 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

Show 14statements(14 left)

The other half of the tape: Elias Torres's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

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Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Compan Mar 21, 2025 46m
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