Torres: Startups know how to build and sell, but fail at customer success
Elias Torres · No Priors Ep. 94 | With CEO and Founder of Agency Elias Torres · Dec 19, 2024 · at 9:57
Elias Torres, founder and CEO of Agency and former CTO of Drift, discusses the core problem in B2B SaaS that led him to start his new company focused on customer success automation.
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“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. I think managing customers both at scale, when you have tens of thousands or a 100,000 of customers, It's, I don't think anybody has the answer to do that, right?”
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More from Elias Torres
Torres: Paul Graham's 'do things that don't scale' rule is obsolete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: 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: 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: 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…”