Presenter: Elias Torres, Founder and CEO, Agency
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00This is my first time speaking here, and it's the first time I got makeup done, so I hope
00:05you like it.
00:09My slides are not working, but okay, who needs slides?
00:11There you go.
00:12One more.
00:13There you go.
00:14So, I guess this slide is here to tell you that I'm an entrepreneur, I have a problem
00:22in my head because I can't stop doing this, right?
00:25This is my fifth time, correction to Rana.
00:28Not five exits, but here I am.
00:31Definitely addicted to this, but in reality, my last company, Drift, I sold to Vista, and
00:37I could have retired, but thanks to the OpenAI people, the team, they built this great amazing
00:42technology that made me rethink everything and come back.
00:46Because what really happened to me at Drift was that as a founder, I always get to interact
00:52with customers directly, and I'm just passionate about that.
00:57And I get to work with the customers, they text me, they have direct access to me, to
01:02my everything, and I love doing that, right?
01:05And that's why I think I've had success, because I love my customers.
01:10But what happens is that as I have success and I grow and I have more customers, I don't
01:17have the time anymore for them.
01:19So I think this is kind of probably what happens to you.
01:21Tell me how many of you are able to dedicate as much time as you want to all of your customers.
01:26Raise your hand.
01:27Can you do that?
01:28What?
01:29We've got to be a little bit more ambitious than that.
01:33And so what I would say is that I've really struggled with that.
01:37When I sold a company, Performable, to HubSpot, I had all these, like about 100 customers,
01:44about a million in revenue, 2009, 2011, and then HubSpot had 5,000.
01:50And I remember just like when they would call me, I would say, sorry, but I have 5,000 other
01:55customers.
01:56I have to build what they need.
01:58And so that kind of broke my heart.
02:00And that same thing happened at Drift, right?
02:02And so what I'm doing now, right, is really thinking how I can solve this problem.
02:09How can I help all of you take care of your customers like if they're the only one?
02:16Anybody interested in that?
02:17Right?
02:18That's it?
02:19Nobody?
02:20Yeah.
02:21Okay.
02:22But you've got to like say it.
02:23I'm Latino here.
02:24Show your emotions.
02:25And so what I'm really here to tell you, right, I think that the title of my talk is like
02:30how do we build companies in the age of AI?
02:32So I just want to leave you with some basic thoughts in the short amount of time that
02:36I have, right?
02:37That is like the first thing is that, are you ready for this?
02:43Forget everything that you know.
02:45Question everything that you hear.
02:48I hear a lot of founders right now, you know, I'm fortunate, very fortunate for an immigrant
02:54to come here when I was 17, a long time ago, to be able to be in this stage here with you
03:00today.
03:01But a lot of people that are starting companies now don't know, right?
03:06When do you hire your first salesperson?
03:07When do you hire your first support person, customer success?
03:11We're always looking for advice.
03:13Can you believe this is 2024?
03:14We have Chad GPT, Chad GPT Pro, $200 a month, and we still don't know how to run our businesses.
03:22It's crazy how hard it is, right, to know how to scale with the amount of customers
03:28and the time that they demand from us.
03:31So I feel like we're always looking for advice and we contact other people and we say, tell
03:36me how can I do this?
03:38How can I do this better?
03:40But I'm here to tell you that we kind of have to maybe, if we want to look at the past,
03:45we're going to have to forget, look at the past and hear what they have to say, but not
03:50do it that way.
03:51Because AI has changed everything.
03:55I am so excited to build in a company.
03:58I went to Sequoia and I opened my big mouth and I said, I'm going to never hire more than
04:05100 people, and I'm going to get to a billion in revenue.
04:11And they believed it.
04:12I hope they're not watching this, this is being recorded.
04:18And so what I said was something that I fundamentally believe, right?
04:23My last company, I had 800 employees and it was really hard to build a sustainable business
04:28that way.
04:29Right?
04:30A lot of our companies are not profitable and so we have to figure out how to do this
04:33more efficiently and how to do a better job of relating and connecting with our customers.
04:40And so the things that I'm doing in this company are everything is being done from the ground
04:47up through first principles.
04:49I'm challenging everything that normally entrepreneurs would do when they're building a company.
04:56So for example, in the past I've hired as, you know, besides the founders, I've hired
05:01like an MBA person.
05:03Anybody of you hired an MBA person to do great things, all this stuff that you don't want
05:07to do?
05:08Right?
05:09It's great.
05:10They like, they make slides and they like, I don't know, they make slides and they make
05:15slides.
05:16And so like, it's great.
05:17You don't have to, I don't have to make slides.
05:19But then another company I did, my first hire was a recruiter because that's the best way.
05:26You need people to build great things.
05:29Guess what I hired for the first time this time besides engineers?
05:35Anybody guess?
05:39Customer support?
05:40No.
05:41I hired a lawyer.
05:43So now my first employee was a lawyer.
05:45So this lawyer, it was too early.
05:48You would think you don't need a lawyer when you're like 10 employees.
05:50But this lawyer does all the contracts.
05:53Her name is Zee.
05:54And she also does payroll.
05:57She also does IT.
05:58She does security because we use a platform called Rippling.
06:02And so we have to do more with less.
06:07We have to hire less and people have to be willing to do more because we have the power
06:11of AI.
06:13We are not, you know, I'm doing all the sales.
06:16I'm an SDR.
06:17I'm an AE.
06:18I'm an onboarding specialist.
06:19I'm a customer success manager.
06:20In fact, if you check me out on LinkedIn, my title is customer success manager.
06:29And I'm support.
06:32So at my company, I'm doing things differently.
06:35I'm challenging the norm.
06:37For example, at my company, there is no support at agency.inc.
06:45There will never be.
06:46The only email you will use is my email.
06:50Every single customer from now on forever will email me because that's my responsibility.
06:56I'm not going to let it happen what happened before where I lost track of my customers.
07:03And I'm going to use agency, my own company, to do so.
07:06So we have to spend less and we have to learn more.
07:13We have to challenge the norms.
07:15You see companies like Klarna that they're ditching Salesforce.
07:19I didn't say that.
07:20I didn't say anything bad about Benioff, but this is public information.
07:26And they're ditching Workday and they're ditching this and they're ditching that.
07:30And that might not work for everyone, but it might work for you.
07:34We are living in the future, and you have to question those things that you thought
07:39cannot be changed in order to build the companies that will generate a billion in revenue, just
07:45a small group of powerful and efficient people.
07:49For example, one more thing, it's like I will never use a CRM.
07:58Why would I buy a CRM?
08:01Anybody here uses a CRM?
08:02Raise your hand if you use a CRM.
08:04Do you guys like your CRM?
08:06Keep your hands up if you like your CRMs.
08:09Okay.
08:10Nobody does.
08:11We need to start demanding more out of software.
08:14I am here guilty to apologize.
08:15I've built software for about 30 years.
08:19The makeup is hiding some of that stuff.
08:22But the reality is that most of the software that we built in the past sucked.
08:26It's terrible.
08:28I think we're worried about AI enslaving us.
08:33The old software was slaving us.
08:34I mean, you guys got to go home and update your records?
08:38Put in tasks and reminders to contact Elias to see if he can help you?
08:42God forbid.
08:44That's terrible, right?
08:45And so I'm not building that.
08:46I'm not using that.
08:47I'm not building that again.
08:49I'm just telling you that we need to demand more of the software builders of the future
08:54to build software that serves you, and you don't serve it, right?
08:59That understands and makes sense of all that unstructured data.
09:01You saw Romain do that amazing demo, multimodality, talking to it, translating every language.
09:09Have a customer in France, they have customers in Italy, they have customers in Germany,
09:14and everything is working well because we have powerful technologies like today.
09:18So I hope I left you with something to do, to challenge the norms, think differently,
09:23and demand more from the tools that you use today.
09:26Thank you very much.