Dec 19, 2024 · 31m · no-priors
No Priors Ep. 94 | With CEO and Founder of Agency Elias Torres
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In this episode of No Priors, serial entrepreneur Elias Torres reflects on his journey from immigrant mathematician to scaling HubSpot and Drift, sharing his vision for founding Agency to transform customer success through autonomous, invisible enterprise AI.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 19.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.7 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 3.3 The hosts pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 24:10 Torres attacks Salesforce and traditional CRM overhead
Torres passionately dismisses modern enterprise software as useless overhead and boldly advises CEOs to throw away their Salesforce instances.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 16:02 Guo clarifies billion-dollar metricGuo forces Torres to specify whether his billion-dollar lean enterprise target refers to enterprise valuation or actual revenue.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:20 Torres refutes standard startup scaling wisdomTorres directly contradicts conventional startup orthodoxy by explaining why the AI era makes Paul Graham's 'do things that don't scale' advice obsolete.
The host holds their own ▶ 14:20 Guo explains lean venture relationship philosophyGuo demonstrates deep domain expertise by articulating why multi-layered teams degrade context and quality in both venture capital and customer relationships.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Analytical Roots and Competitive Mathematics Background | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Guo sets up the conversation by connecting math competitions to tech backgrounds and prompts Torres on his transition from HubSpot to Drift. Torres reflects cooperatively on his background and early naivete. | |
| The Paradox of a Billion-Dollar Startup Exit | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Guo questions why Torres viewed a billion-dollar exit as a failure and traces the origin of his renewed energy around ChatGPT's launch. Torres shares his emotional journey and subsequent consulting stint with OpenAI. | |
| The Genesis of Agency and Customer Success Bottlenecks | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Guo presses Torres on how he narrowed his focus specifically to customer success. Torres explains identifying large-scale customer success bottlenecks while consulting for Klaviyo. | |
| Redefining Customer Success Through Direct Scaled Relationships | 6 | 5 | 4 | 2 | Torres critiques traditional VC categorization of CS and argues for personal customer agency, while Guo demonstrates domain expertise by drawing parallels to high-conviction, low-intermediary venture investing. | |
| First-Principles Strategy for a Billion-Dollar Lean Enterprise | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | Guo prompts Torres on achieving a billion dollars in revenue with only 100 people. Torres aggressively challenges standard startup dogma, declaring Paul Graham's maxim to 'do things that don't scale' obsolete. | |
| Disciplined Hiring Criteria and Contractor Trial Periods | 3 | 4 | 4 | 1 | Guo asks what distinguishes top talent in lean teams. Torres delivers a blunt critique of typical executive interviewing, outlining his mandatory trial contract policy. | |
| Navigating Enterprise Change Management and Model Trust | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 | Guo asks about the hardest part of building Agency, prompting Torres to push back against naive AI wrapper hype by detailing the friction of enterprise change management and output trust. | |
| Critiquing Modern Software and Designing Invisible Systems | 4 | 4 | 7 | 2 | Guo prompts Torres to justify his disdain for traditional software. Torres unleashes an aggressive critique of current enterprise tools, urging CEOs to discard bloatware like Salesforce in favor of invisible systems. | |
| The Demise of Database Wrappers and Software Rebuilding | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | Torres predicts the demise of database wrappers while Guo articulates her own view on human organizational friction and playfully defends her own prep work against full AI automation. | |
| Episode Conclusion and Subscription Channels | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Standard host outro and podcast subscription housekeeping. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Torres: HubSpot Had $30M Revenue and 200 Employees at Performable Acquisition
“When Brian Halligan came to me and bought my company, Performable, so he's like, our goal is to take it public in the next year or two. I had no clue what taking a company public meant. I mean, we had thirty million in revenue, 200 employees when he said those…”
Torres: HubSpot Scaled from $30M to $130M Revenue in Three Years
“We go public, a billion dollar company, three years, everything was great. We went from 30 to a hundred and thirty million.”
Torres: Drift reached $100M revenue before $1B cash sale
“It took a long time for all those things to clear up what it meant to sell for a billion in cash, right? A company that we grew to a hundred million in revenue, eight years of hard work, but I lost the dream of building a thirty billion dollar company or takin…”
Torres consulted for OpenAI on LLM apps for NBA and Ticketmaster
“And so I did consulting for them and I started from the bottom, right? People were like, who are you? I was doing some support tickets for them et cetera, explanations. But then I started getting contracts like the NBA, you know, ticket master. I'm in Dubai ta…”
Torres: Startups know how to build and sell, but fail at customer success
“Startups. We know how to like build products. I mean, we know how to raise money, hire people, build products. We know how to sell it. Sometimes we know how to market them, but I don't believe we know how to take care of our customers, especially in the B to B…”
Guo: Venture capital cannot scale when avoiding intermediary staff layers
“I do not want a bunch of, could be conceivably very talented people, like between me and the founders that I, you know, owe support and partnership and work to, because I don't have any of the context. I don't care as much as I do. And I think it's like You kn…”
Torres: Agency will only have one public email address
“At agency, there's only going to be one email address. It's aliasatagency.inc. Everyone will email. I will always like take care of all the customers, right?”
Torres: 250 customer support reps at Drift did not solve scaling
“Cause at Drift I had 800 people, like 250 in the customer organization. That, that cannot happen again because it wasn't working, right? That, that number of people didn't necessarily solve the problem.”
Torres: Paul Graham's 'do things that don't scale' rule is obsolete
“I think I want to challenge like Paul Graham says, do things that don't scale. I think that that's game over for that statement, right? I think now we only have to do things that scale.”
Torres: No one joins Agency without completing a contractor trial period
“No one joins agency until they have work for me as a contractor. I'm going to put you to work and I am going to be real exactly how I am with everybody in the company today. And if you don't deliver at a level that is World-class in that one or two week timefr…”
Torres: Customer success reps scrutinize LLM emails far more than their own
“To trust the output of an LLM to send an email to a million dollar customer. It's like, you know, when you present that to a CSM, they're like looking at it and they're like, they're questioning every word. You have no idea. They're questioning every word in t…”