Elias Torres has been building AI systems since 1999, from chatbots at IBM to co-founding Drift and now Agency. He believes businesses are caught in an expectation mismatch—demanding AI while rejecting it due to imperfection anxiety. Drawing from his experience scaling HubSpot, Elias explains why human-led customer experience doesn’t scale and how Agency is building AI-first solutions that work autonomously. His contrarian approach focuses on the back-end customer experience rather than front-end AI SDRs, aiming to “deprogram the entire business world” from inefficient human-dependent processes.

Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital

Mentioned in the episode:

Lookery: David Cancel’s first startup that Elias joined after IBM; shut down in 2009

Performable: Elias and David’s second startup, acquired by HubSpot in 2011

Drift: Elias and David Cancel’s third startup, merged with Salesloft in 2024

Klaviyo: B2C CRM company started by Andrew Bialecki after working with Elias at HubSpot

Secret: Short-lived anonymous messaging app that inspired one of Drift’s early iterations

Tatajuba: Kitesurfing destination in Jericoacoara, Brazil where Elias (briefly) considered retirement

00:00 Introduction