Why Businesses Are Rejecting the AI They’ve Asked For: Agency CEO Elias Torres

[00:00] In the past, I would be like, the minute I had something that kind of like loaded on your browser, like I wanted to charge you, you know, it's like, [00:06] A dollar. I was like, yes, I got a dollar. This time I'm like, I don't want your money. It's like, I want to know that you're obsessed and that it's so sticky and I'm going to do everything at your company. There's so many founders that they think that they just because they built something that they got it right. People are delusional. People have $50 million in revenue and they're delusional that that product works. You know, this time around, I really want to do it right. I want to build something that people like, like throwing money at me and saying like, [00:36] This is really, there's nothing like it. This is my journey now. [00:40] - [00:56] We're really excited to share today's episode of Training Data with you. [01:00] Today we have Elias Torres. [01:01] Someone we've known for more than a decade across three companies. We first met Elias. [01:06] when he was busy rebuilding the core platform for HubSpot many, many years ago. After that, we got into business with him with Drift, which is his second startup. And then more recently, we got into business with Elias on Agency, his third startup. Agency is in the midst of redefining customer experience. And so today we'll hear a bit about what that means. [01:28] and also how to build a company online.

[01:31] in a world of AI. [01:33] We hope you enjoy. [01:34] Elias, welcome to the show. [01:38] Thank you. I've been waiting for this moment my whole life. I know you have. I know you have. You know, we had this wonderful script all planned. And then over the last few minutes, we got into some real hot takes. Why don't we just start with the hot takes? Tell us what's going on in the world of AI. [01:52] I think that... [01:54] everybody's asking for AI, everybody says they want it. And when you come and bring it to them, they just reject it. It's like the Messiah has arrived and everybody's like, "No, we don't want it." And I think it's a super interesting time, right? Because we have the best technology mankind has ever created. It is so intelligent, it's so smart, it's so capable. But yet, people are demanding this level of perfection, [02:21] when they're not even able to use the chat prompt to ask a basic question. And so I think that we are completely misunderstanding the technology and its capabilities. So it's an expectation mismatch, not necessarily a technological flaw. Well, I think in some ways we're used to pre-AI technology, right? That it was able to look up a string from a database and it was a perfect lookup and a perfect match. [02:51] And so when you bring any possibility of a different answer or a different solution, I think people are struggling with that imperfection. So we're used to narrow functionality.

[03:03] perfect accuracy, all of a sudden we have broad functionality, imperfect accuracy, and people are having a hard time with that transition. Yeah. I think I see a lot of customers being like half full, you know, half empty. Yeah. My approach to AI is like, if it's doing 10% more than I wasn't doing before, if it's doing 20%, 30%, I'm extremely happy. Like, I don't have to do that. It saved me time. But other people, if it's like, if it's not 100% perfect, I'd rather have none. [03:33] And I think that's a very dangerous take for people to take. And actually, the example that comes to mind is one that you shared with us before, which is around how you manage your own email. Correct. Do you care to share that example? Which one? The one that I... So let me see if I get this one right. So it was agency, right? Agency can read all my email and creates drafts and automatically I can reply to everybody. [04:03] customers right now. So it's like, it really, not to worry about it yet, I guess. But I'm like, oh, I just had this meeting with this customer and we had this thing and I'm going to send this follow-up. And I just... [04:16] and just hit the send button. [04:17] You know, and is this the example? - Yeah, 'cause we were talking about [04:22] how like the email deluge is just [04:24] untenable at this point and like people spend hours and hours a day managing their email or at least a lot of people do and like the ai product that i would love to pay for is one that can just take care of my email we were having this conversation you're like

[04:36] I don't spend any time managing my email. I actually just let agency do it for me. Absolutely. Which is not the point of agency, but it's one of the things agency can do. And I think that's a great example. I think that narrows it, right, is that we generate these emails for customers and follow-ups. And the thing is that if you're managing, if you're trying to manage, you know, 500, you know, pipeline and you're trying to communicate to everybody, what's best? That you deliver two perfect emails or that you send something to all 500 prospects. Yeah. Right? [05:06] But just say ping and send that email to follow up. And so what happens with my customers is I'm sending these messages, [05:15] And I kind of like almost don't. I look at it. [05:19] I might cringe sometimes, but I send it. [05:22] Because partly is this, I don't know, stage of my life, maybe because I'm old. I'm like, I already know that I'm never going to say anything perfect. So if it goes out, it goes out. And like, as long as, you know, it's going to be fine. But the problem is I see customers, I watch them on recordings, right, of using the product from a user experience perspective. And I'm like... [05:42] Wow, this person just spent 20 minutes [05:44] And they really didn't edit [05:46] the email. Sometimes they're just changing the salutation or like they didn't like how [05:52] it was too aggressive to say, here's my calendar link. And they were like, and let me know times. And then they're like 20 minutes later and the email gets sent. And so I think that that's fundamentally important. [06:03] Why businesses can't scale today? Because there's humans in the middle.

[06:07] to add so much delay and obstacles and slowdowns in the pursuit of delivering a customer experience. [06:16] So you're saying people are scared? [06:17] to let AI take the wheel, and they should just let AI take the wheel. [06:21] I think so. I think we need to choose what really matters. You know, like kind of one-way doors, two-way doors. We need to say, like, it's... [06:29] is this gonna like we need to also have a little bit more leniency and forgiveness like if an email goes out you know that [06:36] didn't say exactly the right thing or hallucinated. I think we all should be a little bit more forgiven and be like, it's okay, don't worry. And remove that fear from people. I think both sides, the sending and the receiving needs to be a little bit more... [06:51] What's your? [06:51] I'm going to use an excuse next time I say some crazy shit that pisses off Pat. Sorry. It was the AI. But isn't that what we do normally? Yeah. We say crazy shit and then it's like... [07:03] Like the guy that stole the hat from the kid, you know, at the U.S. Open. Yes, exactly. First says some crazy shit. Then he says some other crazy shit. He could just throw an AI too. Might as well, you know. It reminds me. Hold on. We might be sued by him right now. You didn't specify which guy. So I think we're good. Normally on training data, we don't really get into personal stories. But I actually think your personal story is pretty exceptional and pretty unique.

[07:33] shaped the sort of entrepreneur that you have become? [07:36] Yeah, absolutely. I think that I am an engineer, George, just for the sake of it. I've written COVID before. But let's talk about the personal stuff. Absolutely. I think [07:47] I grew up in Nicaragua in, I would say, what we call a communist era, right? So very little, third world country. [07:57] I still have a shock. I go into people's homes regularly. [08:01] Not that I go without, like, I do, like, they invite me, you know, just make sure I get confused. We're not breaking in. You're not breaking in here. But then... [08:10] I go in and I open the fridge and it's just like, [08:13] Just full of food. [08:15] Americans, it's just like boxes and boxes and snacks and more. Every drawer you open. If you came to my house in Nicaragua, [08:24] Everything was empty. [08:26] Like, the only things that would be in there is, like, a few pots and pans. Like, I literally remember this as a kid. We were like... [08:31] There's absolutely nothing to eat. There would be like, you know, just the food that you were going to make for that meal kind of thing. It's like, it's like just in time. And so that's just, it's a lot of scarcity, right? And so you grow up with, you know, remember telling my mother, we'd be like, [08:49] I would ask for things, and one time my mom said something like, [08:53] I would give you anything I could if I'm not given a chance because I can't. So I learned to ask like, mom, if you can buy me this gift, you know, if you can buy me this. So it's just like a completely different.

[09:08] world than the world that we live in in a first world country. [09:13] America, you know, greatest country in the world. [09:16] you know but then it's like and then how we're living today right a lot of people are like at least the world that I'm living in today is just like [09:25] the extreme opposite of that. Yeah. What was your first job? [09:29] Pre-IBM. I mean, your actual first job that you got paid any sort of money for, for doing any sort of work. [09:36] I think there's a competition. The one that sounds better is the one I was like cleaning the offices with my mother. But we did both. I was working at McDonald's and cleaning offices when we first came to this country that I got paid. I was 17 years old. [09:50] And I remember you told me your mom had a laptop. [09:53] and you became tech support. And this is how you got introduced to technology. That was pre-United States. Well, I came, I spent two years with my father. I didn't grow up with my dad. And he bought this like computer. I don't know. It's like, you know, people would bring him stuff that I don't know where he came from. Yeah, it was stolen. And so he would buy stuff and he would just bring it home. And so the thing that caught my attention, I have a half brother and he just loved fixing cars. [10:22] And then my dad brought this computer and my half brother did not look at it. I don't know if it was drawn by it or drawn the fact that my brother wasn't using it. [10:32] And I just started using the word perfect and like Lotus 1, 2, 3 in the 80s. I was like in sixth, seventh grade. I did junior high in L.A.

[10:40] And I just love, like... [10:44] like typing on that thing and trying to get the printer to work. No internet, no communication, no user group. I just... [10:51] me in the garage just trying to figure this thing out yeah and then when i went back to nicaragua my mother had a laptop i show up in nicaragua in the 80s and my mom has a laptop she's she's a um a professor she's a you know phd a veterinarian at the university and she has a laptop and i'm just [11:08] Why do you have a lot? This is Nicaragua. And so I started helping her and being like her tech support at the university. Mostly I just broke the computer and then I would take it to IT to get it fixed. [11:20] and then your first job, [11:22] kind of post- [11:24] university was IBM. Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah. And we don't need to talk about IBM necessarily, but tell me about the moment that you met David Cancel. [11:32] Yeah, I think I worked at IBM with an amazing group of people. [11:37] I'll say that my first 1999, my first project at IBM, I was building a chatbot that you could look up people's phone numbers. This is called blue pages, like instead of yellow pages at IBM. [11:51] And... [11:52] I learned so much. I built so much. It was an amazing thing. [11:54] But I just got fed up. 400,000 people. [11:58] You cannot make a huge impact in that company. It's just too political. I imagine me in a 400,000 person organization. And so I just kept trying to, I kept making connections in Boston in the tech, in the tech scene. It took me a long time. Then I finally met David and, um,

[12:16] First, I'd never seen another another Hispanic Latino in tech. You know, I was like, okay, like, I liked him. I felt like I trusted him more to join his startup because a lot of people were asking me to join their startups and I did not know how to choose one. [12:31] I chose him because I just felt comfortable. [12:34] I felt that he understood me and that I could trust him. [12:38] And the first thing he did is he offered me to take over his [12:43] prior job at some other company and I was like, [12:46] uh... [12:47] What do you mean? Just be VP of engineering at your company? But in the end, I really decided to join him in this company called Lookery. It was my first tech startup because... [12:59] I needed to try something outside of IBM. [13:02] Yeah. What was it like going from 400,000 people to 40 people or whatever? No, no, it was like 10. There you go. I was working. I had a desk and I lived in Lowell, Massachusetts. I had a desk in my bedroom. So I would get up and sit down and I would just work. [13:19] 24 7. Like it was like that that that stage of my life was like three babies in diapers working 24 7. Uh [13:31] just it was so exhausting. Like literally it was like the main engineer in the company and how to build everything. So I went from building stuff that nobody cared, nobody used at IBM. And they're like to like, [13:44] I was the sole person responsible, but it was the best. No, no, I have so many best times, sorry. It was when I started using AWS.

[13:55] And I started using the cloud. [13:57] And it was mind boggling from like ordering and buying blade servers and requesting stuff through IBM, you know, procurement systems to do anything to like. [14:07] pushing a button, S3 and EC2, and he was like, [14:14] I was just blown away that I could be this one person [14:17] orchestrating and building everything without needing anybody. Yeah. So that was a huge unlock. And then you guys started Performable. So as your first company that you founded, Agency is your third company that you founded. You guys started Performable and after a few years, [14:32] join HubSpot, which is where we intersected. And for people's benefit, and I think Brian and Dharmesh [14:40] agree with this characterization. HubSpot in the early days had an amazing story and like an okay product. And then you and David joined with your team from Performable. [14:50] And originally, the mandate was to build out a particular piece of the product [14:54] But then you ended up with responsibility for the whole thing and rebuilt it from scratch. And sort of the second phase of HubSpot, thanks to you guys, was a great story. [15:02] Great product. [15:03] Can you say a couple words about what it was like [15:06] joining HubSpot and then [15:09] sort of how over the time you were there, you you manage not only to scale with the organization, but to kind of like reinvented in some ways. [15:17] To me, professionally, it was a big breakout moment. You know, you go from... [15:23] from tinkering with computers and WordPerfect and or like launching a few EC2 instances and building a few web apps to to really having to support 5000 customers.

[15:35] I went from like 20 customers that performable to like 5,000 customers immediately. [15:41] And that was a shocker to me because [15:44] One, [15:45] What I care more about is customer experience. My customers that are performable would text me, and they would say, this is broken, and I would [15:52] Open my computer. [15:54] Edit the code. [15:55] and say reload. [15:56] When you have 5,000 customers, you can't do that. [15:58] So I had to learn how to scale. [16:00] in every sense of the word. Right. We had we had a huge urgency. We had [16:05] major churn, [16:07] The product did not work at all. [16:10] And [16:11] the team did not function either. So we had to like rebuild the team. [16:15] rebuild the product. [16:16] and rebuild the trust with the customers, right? That this product was going to actually achieve, you know, what it was going to do. [16:24] And I also had to learn how to scale myself as a leader. And the most important thing I would say that I learned there was like hiring at scale. I was going to ask you about that, actually, because you I believe you hired Andrew Bailacki. [16:35] before you started Klaviyo. I believe you hired Christopher O'Donnell, you know, before he went on to build HubSpot CRM and start a company of his own. I believe you had a handful of [16:46] really exceptional hires. And it's not obvious that a [16:51] mid-stage marketing software company in Boston would be able to attract such great people. And so [16:57] I'm curious, like, what were you looking for in people that you hired? And then maybe what did you [17:03] do to help them [17:04] sort of

[17:05] have such growth in their careers. [17:08] I think so many people are exceptional, and it's a combination of giving them a chance [17:13] and also role modeling after them. [17:15] what becoming an outlier really means. And so I would say like, [17:24] Am I as successful as I am because of who I was [17:27] so early or is because a lot of people also shaped me along the way to teach me what was possible, right? And made me want to go after and accomplish the same things, like just like Brian and Darmesh, for example, right? And so I think all these people, there's so many people, there's Whitney, there's Jared, current EVP at HubSpot that is still there running the entire system. I forgot about Whitney. Yeah, good point. There's a few more, right? It's amazing. [17:57] that have been able to influence their lives and their careers, right? But it was [18:03] It was really... [18:05] They were at the places where I was. I was in a garage just tinkering with WordPerfect. They were doing, you know... [18:12] the crappiest jobs that you could possibly think of. And so my thing is I give people a shot, right? And I can, you know, test their intelligence from the conversation, see if they can keep up, see if they have hunger, they have grit. [18:29] And then just bringing them along for the ride. And then they get to choose the path that they take after. And so I think that I don't hire for credentials. I don't hire for where you came from, what you said you did. I actually, if you have all that stuff, I'm kind of like rule you out immediately. A little suspicious. It's sus. Totally sus.

[18:51] Let's talk about Drift real quick. So startup number one, Performable. [18:59] and David Cancel. [19:00] And I know that your experience at Drift helped to shape the idea of [19:05] for agency. So can you just say a word about what was Drift [19:08] And what aspects of Drift kind of gave you the insight for agency, which you're building now? [19:14] I mean, I think that... [19:15] uh, [19:17] The thing that we learned at HubSpot was time to value, right? It's like, how long does it take for the customer to experience the value and the product that you're building for them? And at HubSpot, it takes a long time. [19:30] You have to build blogs. You have to build ranking in SEO and Google. And you have to get leads. And you have to become a brand. So you're coaching the customer from day one to like, [19:41] you know, like, we're in here for a journey. And... [19:45] And at a low price, which is... [19:47] an unbelievable achievement for us but to be at the revenue that it is today right at the scale but i would say that uh at drift we were kind of like i was almost something i always kept thinking with david and we were like how can we get time to value and so [19:59] So we were patient in the beginning. We spent about two years wandering through the desert trying to figure out, like, what should we work on? Yeah, I remember it began as HR software. Oh, my God. Yeah, let's not talk about that.

[20:14] There's a bad joke in there. So we were trying to do, like, Glassdoor. It was like a secret app at that time. Remember Secret? People could say, like, secretly, like, anonymously what's going on at their company. Yeah. [20:29] and culture at HubSpot. But then we kept pivoting and pivoting. We would pivot like every month. [20:36] Every time Pat would stop by in Boston to see us, like, so what are you guys working on? Oh, a new Dropbox. It's like, what are you doing now? A new Pinterest. What about now? Survey Monkey. It's like literally every month I would just tell the team, [20:51] That was not a good idea. We're going to try another one. So one, we spent two years being super patient and finding something we want. And the thing that I realized is like, you got to go back to what you know. [21:02] Experience compounds and you got to just like stick with it. And so we went... [21:07] on a huge diversion and then came back to like, [21:11] closer and closer and closer to the app, to service, to customer. And we were like, we were next door to HubSpot. So we were not going to do marketing. And we were not going to, I was not going to build another CRM. And it was like, no. And so we started focusing in from support. [21:26] Then we went in app. [21:27] And then we went back to Leeds. [21:30] And the idea was to, if you could deploy this, that can immediately start getting you more leads without any human effort. [21:37] That was the scaling point, right? And automation, right? So we had a chatbot that would be the receptionist, the welcome reception on your homepage. Instead of asking you to fill out a form, it could ask you questions. It could inform you, deliver you some value, book a calendar meeting, route it to the right rep, and send a notification to the cell phone of the rep, and just make connections faster and remove the friction.

[22:04] And that was fantastic, right? That worked, right? I think that that helped us take off. We did many things right. [22:11] But the reality, this product was shallow, right? In that it wasn't... [22:16] too deeply penetrated because it was only solving one basic step in the customer journey. [22:23] It only did like the first connection. Yeah. [22:27] But the problem that arose then after is like everybody would be like, [22:31] Well, I came back to the website. Why doesn't it recognize? Why doesn't it pick up where it left off? I already had this conversation. I already explained this. How come when I'm inside the app, it doesn't know, you know, what I said before, my support tickets and my whatever, right? And so there was this... [22:49] This dream I had of like, how could we always know everything about the customer? [22:54] And how could we always apply that information [22:57] in every exchange that we have. We should know our customer. [23:01] And so it was a pain that we didn't have the technology to be able to deliver that. [23:05] And so I think that was one struggle. The other struggle I would say was that [23:12] we... [23:14] We build quickly, we build brand, we build product, we have amazing speed to market. [23:19] uh, [23:21] But then... [23:22] we didn't have the ability to scale like that. You know, here we always think like, well, just just hire more bodies and [23:30] and just raise more money, don't worry about spending. It'll resolve itself out. We can always scale it later.

[23:38] And I think that that's fundamentally flawed. I don't know if people still... [23:43] Get that? To tell you the truth? [23:45] in this age of AI. I think that is the whole point. [23:49] of AI is to prove that out [23:51] But other people are like, just hire it, we'll worry about it later. And I think that that was [23:56] my biggest lesson at Drift, that, [23:59] I always like talking to my customers. I always like... [24:03] to text me, calling me. [24:04] I'm an extrovert, and I just thrive on that, on relationships. [24:11] When we got to the point when we started having thousands and thousands of customers at Drift, [24:16] I just... [24:17] could no longer talk to them. I could not longer know them. And usually when a CSM calls you, [24:24] because it's a turn of somebody that I might have emailed once. [24:28] Kamali hasn't saved his churn. [24:30] It's just too late. [24:32] Yeah. You can't do that. [24:34] I mean, I might have a success rate of like 20% if I promise them the world and I'm going to be there for you. That's shallow. That's hypocritical. That's not the truth, you know. And so I felt that pain intimately of... [24:49] what happens when you scale, what happens when you have [24:53] 800 people, 600, I can keep track, you know, and just like, [24:58] You spend more time managing the people, their promotions, their growth, their onboarding, their recruiting, their entertainment, the town halls. [25:07] And I think that just consumed us

[25:10] and realized that that took our eyes from the ball of the customer and the product. And I think that that's where we paid the price and not being able to build a legendary company as we dream to build from the beginning. And Drift was ultimately still worth more than a billion dollars. [25:27] you know, your second first startup success, you know, join HubSpot, second startup success of greater magnitude. And at that point, [25:36] You know, you're kind of like a walking example of the American dream. You know, like you came to this country with nothing and through smarts and hustle and sure force of will, you know, you built these amazing things and put your life in a totally different position for, you know, for you and your family. You could have ridden off into the sunset and just like called it a career. Like why do it all over again? [25:58] Well, I did. I did ride into the sunset. I did that for like seven months. I think that people didn't travel the world, did all this stuff. But, [26:06] It's a-- [26:07] It's extremely empty and boring, I would say. But I was kite surfing in... [26:12] in Tata Juba, Jericho Dakota in Brazil, you know, with some friends, majestic place. This is the first time I'm actually disconnecting. Like this is my first trip after I leave Drift. [26:24] And I'm like, [26:26] Wow, I have no meetings. I have nothing to do. And I'm just like, the whole morning, we're just staring in this cabana, just looking at this ocean, empty beaches. It's a very remote area in the north, uh... [26:38] northeast of Brazil. And I'm like, wow, I need to learn how to meditate and how to just...

[26:45] be one with nature and in the afternoon we would go kite surfing. [26:49] And then ChatGPT launches, you know? And I'm just like showing everybody and explaining. I don't even know how to explain it. Like, how does he know how to answer this? [27:00] And so the first day that I'm off really mentally is the day Chad GPT launches. And I'm just like, this is the greatest moment in mankind. And I'm just like. [27:10] Fuck, I got to go back in. You know, it's like I feel like I worked all my life. I always considered myself an imposter. Not anymore. You know, we achieved that. But the thing is, like, all my life I'm like, I didn't go to this school. I didn't build in the Valley. I'm in Boston. This company fell. You know, all this stuff. And, like, I didn't have enough because of this. I didn't have this network. I didn't know investors. I didn't know this. I didn't know English. And now I'm like, I fucking know everything. [27:40] Everybody, I know I built the systems enough to prove to millions of users and this and that and revenue itself. [27:48] And I'm just going to sit here when all these people that don't know anything are like building AI startups? Fuck no. I'm jumping back in, you know? It's like, I was like, [28:00] This is the moment, and I will say that the cheesy, cringy answer to this is also, as a Latino, I feel an obligation. [28:08] You know, it's like, [28:11] Most people would die to be in the position that I am in right now.

[28:15] and to squander going back to that day in my house in Nicaragua with no food. [28:20] to squander resources and opportunity and just so like, [28:25] time earned, work earned, you know, [28:28] to just sit around and just [28:31] kite surf in Brazil, you know, or like surf in Fiji or... [28:36] I just think it's a waste. Like while I'm on this earth, I have to do something. And going back to being a role model, [28:42] People want to see what someone that looks like you is capable of achieving. And I'm like... [28:48] I can't sit this this one out. Right. And so that's when I like called you and I'm like, [28:53] Can I come to Basecamp? Can I get like reconnected, fired up with this stuff? I think I came to AI Ascent. [29:01] And that's when the moment it was like, let's fucking go. - Yeah. - You know. - Yeah, early 2023, I remember you came to AI Ascent, and then you started talking with OpenAI. - Yes. - And one of the problems they were having was they had all these enterprises, [29:14] whose immediate thought was, can we deploy this thing in a customer facing way? [29:19] kind of like the drift business in some ways, [29:22] And so I remember you kind of jumped back in on that. [29:25] and then evolve the idea into what agency has become, which is very different. And can you just say a word? We kind of backed into this earlier, talking about the email stuff, but can you just say a word like, what is agency? And like, what problem does it solve for customers? Why is that problem important? Can you just say a few words about that? [29:41] Yeah, the problem that everyone in the world has

[29:45] is that [29:46] they struggle to deliver a great customer experience. [29:50] And the only way that they can solve that problem today is not with technology, but is with humans. [29:56] And so human-led deliver customer experience [30:00] It's almost an impossible thing. [30:04] And so what agency is building is AI-led customer experience. [30:08] How do we truly scale? [30:09] customer experience beyond our wildest imaginations without needing a human in every step of the way. Right? So that's that's what I'm really solving for. And it kind of like came through. [30:21] I just, I love life, right? And now that I'm older, because you can trace back all the steps. And so I gave you a whole bunch of them. [30:29] Brazil, ChadGPT, AI Ascent, you introduced me to OpenAI. OpenAI says, we're just like 200 people. We do not know how to talk to all these customers. We can't tell them how to like prompt stuff. [30:43] Would you help us? There was a jump. There's a cohort of companies that were like, let's build services in AI and let's start there. And so I kind of did that and build a consultancy and just started servicing all kinds of customers like the NBA, Red Bull, crazy companies. One of them was Klaviyo, you know, Andrew. I said, what do you need help with? And he's like, I need help delivering customer experience. You know, it's like, how do I help my customers? [31:11] understand what the potential is of using Klaviyo.

[31:16] How do we give them advice, which is the job of a CSM? [31:19] Right? And so, it's like, [31:21] How can a CSM know [31:23] be an expert, every CSM that you hire, be an expert, the number one in the world expert in Clearview itself, or in e-commerce marketing. [31:33] So that's where AI comes in. And when he first asked me to do this, I said, [31:37] in a fucking way, I don't know if I could do that. And imagine like, what would my company would be bigger than yours? He's like, just do it. So he just, you know, roles reversed, right? And he's like, go do it, go do things. And so we built a model that understood [31:55] every customer and every one of their interactions and understand what was working, what was not working, and be able to classify the entire usage of every user in the company and start being able to deliver tailored advice. [32:09] Right. And so and then the whole thing started clicking for me. It was like, what if I can just deliver the QBR? What if I can just like do, you know, create a video explaining that and saving time to the customer in it? And so then I was like, [32:23] This is great. [32:24] Like... [32:25] This is the moment where like, [32:26] This is what I want to solve. And... [32:30] And I wasn't sure, right, that that was going to be it. And literally that day, like, Brian Halligan sends me a text. Like, you know, he had been... [32:40] sending me all these messages, romancing me, and then that day is like, I have an idea for you. You know, it's like, let's disrupt the world. You know, let's disrupt this entire industry. And I'm like, what are you talking about? It's like, it's about the people. We can't scale. You know, how do we solve this problem in customer experience? Let's do it.

[33:00] And [33:01] Then we called you, and that's how agency was born. [33:06] things just accelerate, you know? [33:09] Must have been a really cool full circle moment going from chatbots at IBM. [33:13] to now chat is working and going from, you know, you're only solving the transactional [33:20] part of the conversation at Drift, so now you want to manage the entire [33:24] customer experience. It's incredible. Full circle of it. [33:27] Yeah, I think that a lot of people are struggling. They're having an identity crisis with AI of like, what should I do? What will I be replaced? [33:35] And to me, I think... [33:37] What I've learned, what I see a lot of founders struggle with is [33:42] or people is like, what's my purpose? Like, what am I going to do? And what am I going to do that's going to last? So what am I going to do that is big? And so to me, finding the problem of customer experience, [33:54] is so soothing and reassuring. It's like the hardest thing. I'm not saying it's easy, but I just can't think of how... [34:04] this will ever be solved. [34:06] Totally. It's like... [34:08] Whatever customer experience we could, like, most customer experience in the world sucks. Like, it's like, I would say, like, the best I could think of maybe could be, like, a fancy hotel, you know, like, sometimes. But... [34:20] I don't want to name my hotel that I stay here. But now if I ask them to send me some delivery or medicine or something, they're like, that'll be $4, Mr. Torres. Like, why am I paying thousands of dollars in this room? And you're charging me $4 for delivering me, like, my Tylenol? It's like, and then I got this food that I don't want to come down. It's like, that'll be $7. And this is, like, the greatest experience you can get today, I think, in a customer. Like, that's where you get pampered. Yeah.

[34:50] today and any favorite customer stories? Your classic Sequoia is like, what's the revenue? What's the curve? Let's talk about ARR. Let's talk about ARR. We went through your story. What's your gross margin? Yeah, what's your gross margin? [35:01] Actually, we can talk about that. This is a shit show. I don't know how we're going to survive with this LLM cost. I think there's an entire pyramid scheme here. Well, actually, say a word about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think so. We have over 50 customers using the product, right? I don't give a shit about numbers and stuff like that. I'm building for them. I'm solving. I'm really delighted. I was trying to get more customers, and Brian said, [35:26] Stick with the customers you have, make them [35:29] like so wildly successful. And I was like, [35:31] Yeah, I think that's important is that there are more customers that you could go get, but you're focused right now on just making these 50 like deliriously happy with the product. That's exactly where I am, right? And so back to the cost stuff. So we've been working with them. And I have a really... [35:50] It's hard going multiple times around because this time around in the past, I would be like the minute I had something that kind of like loaded on your browser, like I wanted to charge, you know, it's like a dollar. I was like, yes, I got a dollar this time. I'm like, I don't want your money. It's like, I want to know that you're obsessed and that is so sticky and I'm going to do everything at your company and I don't want to. [36:13] make my there's so many founders that they think that they just because they built something that they got it right people are delusional people have 50 million dollars in revenue and they're delusional that that product works you know

[36:26] This time around, I really want to do it right. [36:28] I want to build something that people are like, like throwing money at me and saying like, this is really, there's nothing like it. This is, this is my journey now. Right. So I want to build. [36:39] something real, right? That is not going to like just, I think most of SaaS out there that we ever built, that I ever built, just created more work for the user. [36:48] I want something that takes the work off, right? And so I'm being more patient, right? And maybe it hurts me, maybe it doesn't, but... [36:55] I got great fonds, great investors like that. He's not rushing me, so sometimes. But I would say that what's really hard is... [37:04] Okay. [37:05] uh, [37:06] I'm trying to understand my number one goal, right, is I want to create a company that is. [37:10] a billion in revenue with [37:12] less than 100 employees, right? It was one of the first ones saying out there, and people were like, "You're crazy, you're crazy." [37:19] And I really mean it, right? Most of my team is engineers, right? And we're just building the product because where most of the money and more of the headcount goes [37:28] is in customer experience, in GTM and customer experience. And so I want to solve that. I want to get that right. [37:35] so we can build the companies of the future. [37:37] There's a lot of lack of creativity, and we're in the most creative country in the world, but what I see out there in products is, like, everybody's building the same chat, you know, a meeting recorder, the note summarizer, and the email drafter, right? Well, I remember when you started Agency, [37:53] One of the HubSpot [37:54] principles or norms has always been when they zig, we zag. And I think when you started agency, the zig was all these AISDR companies. And your zag was, no, no, we'll let them take the front end of the business. We're going to deal with the back end of the business because that's where the pain actually is and that's where the value is built. And so I think you sort of zag when people were zigging. And I think over the last year or so, that's proven to be a good decision

[38:20] But can you say a word about like, [38:22] what can ai do today what can it not do today and so in the product that you've built [38:28] Where is AI like [38:29] or the product itself really nailing it? And where do you feel like there is maybe still a capability gap in terms of what can be done? [38:37] Well, I think that [38:39] If we're optimists, AI is [38:41] infinitely capable. [38:43] in the theoretical... In the fullness of time. In the fullness of time, right? But today, it's actually not that smart. And so, like, you know, it's like you have to write paragraphs and paragraphs to maybe get the right answer, 42. And so, you know, if you [39:00] type the wrong word, or if you try it again, it's just a different answer. And so that's the part that today's human brains just can't cope with it. And so when you're trying to deliver experience to the customer, you're trying to figure out what is it that you're exactly trying to do, right? Are you trying to just come up with a better word to reply to the customer, or are you trying to let the AI actually do and manage the customer experience? And so I think where we're struggling is that [39:25] If we cannot even trust the AI to draft your own email that you're about to hit the button, how much worse is going to be for us to let the AI make decisions on 10,000 customers? [39:35] on a daily basis on its own. So we built the first part of agency, which is what most people are trying to do today, which is this... [39:44] you know, customer 360, foundational, let's bring all that information into one place and be able to ask questions.

[39:51] But what most people are not realizing is that if you require a human to go type into that chat box, [39:57] you're dead on arrival. Everybody's so confused, and even in the valley, of building tools that are just helping a human do something. [40:06] I'm done with that. [40:07] I don't want to do that. It's like it bores me to death to type stuff into chat GPT. [40:13] I like, I'm a CEO now, like I'm spoiled, I'm, you know, living my best life. I just want to tell people what to do one time and they do it 10,000 times. [40:22] And so that's kind of what I really want. [40:24] AI to do for me. It's like, how can we instruct AI to do one task [40:30] infinitely. [40:31] And most people are stuck. Like people don't get me started on the word agents, right? Everybody like talks about agents and like, okay, send me a summary after my meeting to my email. [40:41] Who gives a shit? Like, I can always go ask that question, but it's what do I do with it? [40:46] So what I'm doing is I'm doing the very first principles in the companies that I'm working with because people just keep asking me, oh, can you generate me a dashboard about the customers? Yeah. [40:58] And then so what? [40:59] Yeah, what do you want to do with the dashboard? What do you want to do with the dashboard? And so... [41:04] "Oh, well, I want to click on this and then do this." [41:07] Why can't I do that? And then what do you want me to do that? You want me to go after the renewals? You want me to go tell the rep? [41:13] And then what are you gonna tell the rep? [41:15] Oh, I'm going to tell them to email the customer. Why can't I just email the customer, right? And so that's the journey I'm in that I'm enjoying, but it's really hard to

[41:22] I have to deprogram the entire business world because they're used to working and operating this way [41:30] and [41:31] You know, I was... Brian had his birthday. I was at his house. I showed up with his glasses, and then he was, like, in shock. He's never seen them before. It said then... I was... [41:43] One of his old friends, 'cause Brian is old. I'm old, I can say anything I want now, I'm old too. So one of his old retired VCs. [41:52] It came to me like an oracle. And he was saying... [41:56] Elias, my advice to you... [41:59] Forget everything you've ever learned. [42:02] Forget the pattern recognition. Forget your experience. Forget all that. That's bullshit. [42:08] Just got to like try new things. [42:11] He was telling me to let go and not rely on the past. [42:15] Because sometimes, like experienced founders, we get stuck in that way. [42:19] And it was like this deprogramming, right? [42:22] to just... [42:23] charge into the future. And that's my challenge of like, how do I become a change agent to our customers? [42:31] to really believe in and stop worrying about the things that we were doing before and focus on the right thing that they can do and they can have that one on one with their customer, with the top customer. But a lot of stuff that we're doing is really unnecessary. [42:45] because we just didn't have the technology. But it's going to take a long time for AI to be prompted. [42:52] into success of like read this dashboard, make this concrete and do this, just even doing one of those workflows.

[43:01] consistently every time. Yeah. It's going to take a lot of prompting. [43:06] But there's a lot of stuff that you can bring change internally. [43:09] as a customer experience platform, we can bring things to resolve a lot of internal inefficiencies, but the most valuable thing is delivering that directly to the customer. [43:21] Our last question, let's end on a high note. [43:23] What are you most optimistic for? [43:26] in our AI future. [43:28] Yeah. [43:29] I think that [43:30] What I'm most optimistic is I want people to be able to leverage to use their agency more. [43:36] You know, I think that we have worked so hard for all of our history. And I think we need to stop [43:45] so focused on like hard, hard, hard work. And then being able to like, [43:50] do what we're best at doing, right? Which is taking initiative, making decisions, choosing a purpose, choosing a customer, choosing an audience and go serve them, right? But be able to leverage AI to do the work right around us. [44:06] and not be afraid of it that is really taking away our agency because it just can't, you know? [44:10] Great company name. Humans have agency. [44:13] Indeed. [44:15] Awesome. Elias, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

[44:42] Thank you.