The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 38 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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…”
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…”
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 calls selling Drift the biggest failure of his life
“Drift is the biggest failure in my life.”
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.”
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…”
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: Code to build an LLM fits on one page
“The code fits on a, like, a page on the screen.”
Elias Torres manufactures adversity to raise gritty kids in wealth
“I just try to manufacture adversity. That's all I can for them.”
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.”
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.”
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 avoids hiring introverted software engineers
“And so I don't, I tend to not hire like that many introvert engineers, right?”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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?”
Torres convinced Klaviyo founder Andrew Bialecki to take VC funding
“I convinced him to take VC money.”
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.”
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: 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: 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 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…”
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?”
Torres was the first investor in Klaviyo
“That Klaviyo, you know, I'm a first investor, good friends with Andrew, right?”
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.”
Torres: Humans are the primary blocker to AI adoption
“I think that humans are the biggest blocker to adoption, and they're gonna need a lot of hand-holding and help.”
Torres: Nvidia is the best 10-year stock hold due to compute demand
“I'm scared of the giants, they're not gonna last, but Nvidia, I think Compute, it's gonna, we're thirsty for Compute.”
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.”
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 Regrets Not Being Tougher When Raising His Children
“I wish I would have been tougher with them”
Torres is holding his Klaviyo stock because it remains underappreciated
“A thousand percent, so that's why I'm not selling my stock.”
Torres: Drift scaled to 800 total employees, including 200 in customer support
“I had 800 people, I had 200 in CS.”
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 …”