YouSaid · the spoken record

Elias Torres

lines on the record: 97
first: 2025-03-21
most recent: 2025-03-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I'm most excited about. Look, I just came back from Cairo and I got to learn about the Egyptian civilization. It's mind-boggling, and I didn't think we studied it enough. The love for art, the love for culture, for craftsmanship, it was so mind-boggling and so inspiring for me. You know, we think that with the evolution with new generations, we think we are better, but I think we're going worse. You can see in different dynasties and different generations how the craftsmanship and the Hellenistic era was actually worse than prior to that. And you can see that in the way that we build, right? And the way we treat our customers with billion-dollar companies, I'm hoping I'm optimistic that we can get back to that and that we can build better products, better customer relationships, better businesses, more art, more culture, more time with our families. I'm optimistic that that could happen.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Letting them do whatever they want, right? I'm freeing them from my pressure of to be me. They're kind of being me in a way. It's back to selling in relationships. I'm letting them be. If they don't want to go to school, they don't want to do their homework. I don't care. It's their problem. I'm happy. I'm successful. I'm rich. It's up to them”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't think I was going to start a VC back company. I don't know. I didn't know what was the right idea. I didn't know that. So I changed my mind. This is the best thing I could ever be doing.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it could have been in 10 years. Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's like, yeah, 10% GDP growth, I mean, the world's going to double and explode so much faster. Yeah, whatever. When that happens, it's going to happen. But in the meantime, it's going to take time for people to adopt this. And we don't even have the right solutions yet. We just discover fire, right? The rest is going to take time.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a lot of hype this stuff. We're not going to, even in the industrial age and the revolutions, right, GDP was growing at 1%, 2%. I don't think we're going to grow like a 10% one year all of a sudden because most of the money, most of the industries, right, are even slower than adapting tech. Tech is being extremely slow to adapt this technology.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humans are the biggest blocker to adoption, and they're going to need a lot of hand holding and help because we don't have the agents that in the workflows and the new products and the new models, right? In the meantime, it's a step function that we need people to handhold them.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For OpenAI's customers, people would go to OpenAI and they're like, I need help me do this. And they're like, we don't help you build that stuff. That's your problem. And so they would send me leads and I had to work the leads and started charging like 25K a month and then like, you know, slowly things became a hundred thousand dollar contract. So it became $500,000 contracts. There's money to be made, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reality is that I made like $2 million in like just over six, seven months consulting AI. I was working with OpenAI. I was servicing their customers. I was just like sweating it out there, like learning LLMs because I thought I missed the boat. And so I work with Red Bull, Ticketmaster, DMBA, Clavio. And that's kind of where the idea for agents.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but the thing is that I hate seeing people that are like, I'm going to build it this way. I'm like, no, that's wrong. That's not going to work. I was like, oh no, you don't understand. When I see how much gap there is between where they're going to be after that experience and that journey, I'm not interested in working through that journey with them. You know what I mean? And asking people for money and me making bets. And then I have to advertise and build a different style of brand for myself. I'd rather build, man. It's so much easier, so much more fun.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could have come in, I could have gone and become a VC. I had a dinner with David Fialgo for like two hours one day because we're going to start a firm, you know? And he's like, oh my God, so many bottles of wines later. And he's like, I can't believe Fialco gave me like two hours to explain how a VC firm worked. And I'm like, after that conversation, I was like, no fucking way.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A thousand percent. So that's why I'm not selling my stock. But here's the thing, right? Is like those are role models for me, but this time I want to do it my way. And so that's what I'm doing. That's why I'm in this journey all over with agents.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go and you do that. And look, look, he has an amazing $10 billion company, right? And it's a fantastic free cash flow. I still think it's.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I think just look at HubSpot, right? HubSpot is my thing there, right? It's like, look, it's a $30 billion company, Brian and Damesh get to still be involved from an ego perspective. That's like nice. It's better than Drift, right? And so I think that that's what I wanted to build. But I made mistakes along the way that didn't create the foundation solid enough to grow, that Clevia, you know, I'm a first investor, good friends with Andrew, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the reality is that no one can do a perfect job for anyone. And so what matters is what you're able to do in the good moments, right? And whether it was a tough lesson or whether it was some great words of affirmation or touch, right? So that's kind of why I don't care. Like I have regrets. It's like I'm trying to do the best I can and I do good things because I'm thinking about them, but I don't worry if I don't do 100% of what you wanted and what she wanted and what they wanted. It's like I'm just like, hey, I'm doing, leave me alone.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of all the time, right? Because it's like, did I? I saw all these parents that were older when I was working, right? And it'd be like, I just restored this car with my kids. And my kid is an Olympian and my kid is going to be like a pianist, world pianist. And I'm like, I had no money. I couldn't do tutors for them. I couldn't do any of that stuff. And so then I was like, maybe I'm going to teach them how to be engineers, right? And that's one thing I could teach him how to code early. And I still fell out that because I was so busy. It was either doing the dishes or making sure the systems were up at the company.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can give him words of affirmation and be tough at the same time. Back to the paradox, right? Words of affirmation doesn't mean that you can't be tough when you're like, I got to manufacture adversity. You got to be tough, man. You can't be weak. You can't be soft”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess what I saw their parents or whatever in the past, like, for example, my kids are like, you know, the five love languages. My kids love languages is touch, all three of them. My daughter says, from you, Dad, I want words of affirmation. So I've learned to be more, overcome that like, oh, I don't want to be this dad. So, on one side, you learn to be more loving and caring, and the other side, I wish I would have been tougher with them. And so like right now I try to be tough too, right? And it's like, because nothing compares to how I grew up beating the shit out of me. Like my mom, like, and I love all that. I love my mother because of what she did at the time with what she knew, but she made me tougher. And so I think that we are too soft.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, but we were supposed to go to Cairo. I have a friend and he invited me, and then my friend wasn't responding. So I said to the kids, let's go to Amsterdam instead. And my kids were like, we want to go to Egypt. Okay, okay, let's make it happen, right? And so I don't know. I think you have to balance the selfishness, right? Yes, we are selfish beings. But I'm telling you is that you get a lot more pleasure when others are around you. It has to be a little bit less about us.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always Get my wife to apologize anything no matter how right. I think I'm right at work all the time, but not at home. And so I don't know. Just the first thing that came to my mind, we always joke about that. But it's really about that selfishness, right? It's that you have to realize that it's not about you or it's about this, you know, I think social media has ruined us of thinking what a perfect most of us what you see in social media. What is fake.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the friends that were successful or they had family, and now they want to go and start their next journey and their lives, right? I was able to do both. But regardless, when you have everything, when you have money, when you have all these things, if you get to a later age and you don't have kids, not that everybody should, and I'm sure people are going to judge me, look, what if I don't want to have kids? Respect me. I'm fine. But the reality is I see, like, we want something more than just material things. And having a family is a great thing.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they were like, oh, I went to Egypt for the weekend, right? And I would be like, what'd you do? I spent all day on dealing with outages from the company, from the startup. And my wife would be like, Saturday, let's go out. Let's get out of the house. And I'd be like, okay, I'll be done coding this feature that I'm finally without interruptions by noon. And then we'll take the kids off. And it'll be 3 p.m. And I would still be coding, right? And we would go to the beach and I would carry my laptop. And David would be like, buy me like a modem or something. It's like, I need to respond. And if there's an outage, who else was going to do it but me? My life sucked. I never traveled. I never did anything but work and the kids and the family, right? I traded it off. Now I get to go wherever I want, right? But unfortunately that I was able to build a company be successful and have my children. I'm more than blessed. I'm more than grateful. I can die happy today, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just we have different definitions of peak because I was able to do all that. I raised hundreds of millions of dollars going through all that stuff, right? You have three kids at home that they just don't take a break, they don't take naps, and you're just like, I am exhausted. It's Sunday afternoon. Can I take a nap? You can't, right? So it's like, it was horrible. And everybody would be talking to me in my younger days, what you do this weekend. And I hated that question in IBM, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did it. I mean, my wife is incredible. She was at home. We had these kids, but I would work all day at IBM and I would go home. And it was like dinner time bathing, put them to bed, then doing the dishes. It was just exhausting, no sleep, commute, no money, no help at home. We were far away from our family.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, no, I got to work. And so you guys can go have fun. So I think that I'm so blessed, right? Because most people think it's one or the other, but in reality, you can do both. Not going to be pretty. It's going to be ugly. But while everybody was having...”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God. And now the problem is the reverse. We don't have children. Societies are going to collapse. I mean, that's what we think, right? I just think that, you know, we have Brian Johnson trying to stretch longevity and things like that. But I don't think we're far away from figuring that out. I think we're farther away to figure out how healthy babies at a later age. So I think that the best time to have children is when we're younger, unless we have unlimited resources, right? But even then, your health, your ability, we have improved the possibility of having children with IVF and those things, but I've heard that the journey on that is really hard. It's really difficult. I was very fortunate. I met my wife when I was 17. We had our first child. I was 27. I have three kids. They're like 18, 19, and 21. It's my squad, right? They're my team. And so what happens is that they're like, can we go to Amsterdam now? You know, this week.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pros and cons. It's sad to be nobody, right? To walk around in your own company and you don't matter anymore. You bring new CEO, you bring new management. It hurts the ego, right? And you created this and you're no longer relevant or that you couldn't take it further. And so it was a great experience for me to be the post-drift days. I spent like seven, ten months traveling and trying to find myself. It was a tough journey. There's people that done some nice graph of what happens in the depression and the sadness and you're nobody. You have no job. You have no meetings. But it was great. I needed that break.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, right? I mean, I think I like deals, right? I like, you know, whether it's I'm hiring someone, close to deal, whether I'm hiring a customer, close to the deal, whether it's fundraising, yeah, closing the deal. I love that. I love that excitement. You know, we were selling to private equity, right? We had some bankers that the board asked me to hire, but I didn't really need them. But I mean, I was like, I like this job. This would be great. Like just every month, just like having two or three deals on flight. So I like doing deals, but in reality, I'm my relationship guy, right? And so I care more about what happens after. I care more about the relationship I have with the VC after. Like I love Pat. I love EZR from CRV, Fialco, Larry Bond from General Callas. Those are my Jewish uncles. And like, I like people. I like being with people.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learned to not make big promises that I cannot fill. People don't realize when I'm speaking how accurate I am because I've had so many conversations before, so I'm not promising shit to anyone, right? I'm like, I don't know. All I promise you is like a lot of work and me yelling. You know, that's it. I promise you that.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money is always brain. VC is a small asset compared to the rest of the stuff that happens in the world. Go to Dubai and go to all these other places. It's an exciting place, American Dream.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really bad, right? Because there was a moment in time where we were worried about profitability, you know, past ZERP, right? Where we're like, now we're going to build better companies. And now we have cursor and now everybody's like, I want the same. And so luckily I'm not falling to that peer pressure, right? What I really care is how do I gain the distribution of lifetime customers? I'm working on doing that at scale. That's what I'm out here to prove, right? The cursors and all that stuff, like you can easily switch to like Windsurf and you can switch to this and you can go back to co-pilot and like so that revenue could disappear. This is a brand new phenomenon and we do not know how it plays out.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cursor is great because he could grow so fast, unbelievable, but that's a different style of product, right? It's something that you can gain it easily and you can lose it easily.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Problem is that I was a psychic and we would be always like, and he's like, just build me another CRM or build me another marketing automation platform at Drift. And I'd be like, which one do you want? You want CRM or do you want a map? Do you want a chatbot or do you want this? I would always like make him choose. And he would always be like, I want both. I go, do you want a quick product or do you want a great product? Engineers always want to like we go back into, you know, that's the co-founder. Do you want this or do you want that? And his answer was always both. And it took me a long time to learn that, right? That yet you have to focus, but not a simple clear answer. You have to do more than one thing at once. The same is with companies, right? I want profitability, right? But doesn't mean that the rules are changing, right? The success of a company depends on its brand, depends on its product differentiation. Those things don't change, right? How do we scale it and how do we grow it? It's not one company to rule them all, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. It was something that we were taught not to worry about it, right? In the past, like ZERP, right? It's like probability was never a discussion. I mean, Pat gave me a class on free cash flow at one point in time. Some big players in the Sequoia portfolio doing things like that. But now I think about a lot more. I'm thinking more about enduring company more than anything else, right? Whatever that takes, right? If I can make this profitable for 100 people and then I can make something less longer, you know, I'm more driven about legacy now than I am about money.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get to profitability, right? Let's see how we build this company, right? Let's see what Pat supports, right? What Sequoia wants?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The companies I've been at and I participated, maybe I was naive, but I was never calculating how much money I was going to get. I was doing it for the love of the game, right? Being in that world and creating, compared to my IBM days, right, and being frustrated for not being able to do anything and people just leaving at 5 o'clock and not caring, oh, I'm an SDSM, I'm a distinguished engineer, and I get to go home and do some pottery. Kill me, right? It's like, I wanted to be in this, right? And so creating, building impact, talking to my customers, busy all day, working for them, working with, having experiences with my team. And so if you don't want to be in that, don't do it. If you're in it for the money, forget about it, right? Join the party and come and create value. And then the rest will take care of itself.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we're just ego driven humans, right? We just want to build empires. We just want everybody obsessed. I mean, how many young people I've hired, right, that they pull me aside? And they said, Liz, can I get a shot at being a VP at your company early days? I'm like, you just graduated college. Back off. We're just obsessed with all that stuff, right? And so I'm looking for people that don't really care about that. We have to change the way we reward the team, right? Where there's going to be profit sharing, revenue sharing, right? Where there's going to be more equity, just higher salaries, right? These are things that I'm thinking about constantly, right? If I'm going to have 100 people, billion dollars in revenue, right? How am I going to compensate them? How am I going to retain them? Or not? They can't handle the first, you know, maybe they burn out after two years, then take a break. Here, take your equity. It's going to be worth billions, all right, maybe billions. And so we go and we say, start something else, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. That's what I'm saying. But I mean, but even tidal acceleration doesn't mean anything. That's why you have to probe deep when you're interviewing. What did you do?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But nobody says this, it must be good. Exactly. Do you reference? Do you call me? Call me. If you call me, you're here the truth because I don't want to lie to a founder. But then people do it. I'm just saying this is how the industry works. But here I'm saying, here I'm the truth.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, I know. I've been there. I hear you. I feel you. I've done that mistake, right? I tell them, don't hire that person. And they're like, no, no, but I need to hire this person. And so I just see people live in this lie, right? That they're like, convince themselves they're going to still do it. And then they hired this person and they keep them for two years. You know, people that I let go. And then they go, someone else takes them and they just the whole industry just keeps taking these people over and over.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest failure in the midst hires was myself. I saw it, but maybe I was desperate. I need to build things. You know, I needed help. And I convinced myself that it was going to be okay.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never say anything about boring. Boring is great, right? I've had people that my team interviews, right? And they're like, this guy's not good. And I'm like, let me go back in. I go in. Really quiet, really shy. But they had grit. They got shit done. They showed me their code. And I go back to the team and I'm like, by the way, the way that I ran interview at HubSpot and Adrift, everybody, I would help, I have a panel of people interviewing, but I would always interview myself. I will do the informal. I will do the formal. I bring them in. And then I do the closing. But I let them interview and have fun and tell me what they think, right? So they're like, no, no. And then I just do whatever I want. I just make the higher end decision, regardless of what the panel says, right? So I'm always like, no, we're hiring this person. Many times I'll be like, that was really good, right? And they're better than the people that were interviewing. Those are the compromises I was making before, right? And so now I'm getting leaner and leaner and just finding the best of the best.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not true because I've hired thousands, right? It's like there's so many people that you are like, wow, what a diamond in the rough, right? So there's a lot of those, I have time to find them.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Barely giving them a chance. Ego, right? And so those people that are making those decisions are not changing their process. They either have to do more research, more interviewing, more testing, or finding the right talent or doing the right reference checks, right? Or they need to be willing to do that or be more upfront. And that's why I tell people I'll pay you a contract an hourly rate this work. And I let them be. Show me what you got”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that was like we're like, okay, we're going to do like two or three times more than we did last week this week because these people are here. And whoever doesn't make that goes.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just tell them, come to my house. I have a chef. We cook them lunch. Ship all the laptops to the house. And then we just ship code that day.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. Sorry. We can say anything we want about Europe. Let's not talk about Europe. Exactly. And so what happens is that People just need to be more careful. I think my advice I give to early founders is that that's the problem with early founders, right? They have so much more to learn of like they have all these high hopes for all these people that they hire and don't realize that most likely they're going to be let down because it's going to take a long time to develop that intuition for recruiting. And so now I just like, you know, I had a guy working for me, like tried one week. Then he's like, didn't get anything done in a week. I had a whole bunch of young kids that I hire out of college and they all started early. I hire five kids from Northeastern in one day. Before all my companies, I've built them on the backs of northeastern students. They're amazing people. They're the best. I love the university. All my kids are going there. I used to hire one or two every time. My co-founder was Northeastern. He was early in founding engineer at Drift. This time I saw one. I was like, great. Who's your friend? Oh, let me see that GitHub. Oh, who's your other friend? And see that GitHub? So I made five offers. They all started working.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hire fast fire is slowish now. I'm higher slow fire fast. People never fire fast enough. Like every time I fire someone, right? Even though I'm a good fire now, right? It's like I would always like everybody knew it was so hard and it just became harder and harder. So think about the large incumbents, how long it takes them to fire people. Years, years.”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, big difference. So I used to be intense. It was a numbers game, right? And we wanted more, more, more, more. And so like I had to go really fast and I would force people and convince people and I would convince more people than I should have. I could convince anyone. I'm a good recruiter, right? But I've realized now that that's not the same, right? Now this time I'm pushing back. More people know me now. More people know my reputation. More people want to join. It's important to not fall. There was people that would reverse engineer my process and they would know how to talk to me in a way that would just touch the right points. Now, it doesn't matter what you say to me. I have to reject, reject, reject, push back, push back, push back, right? And so like if you don't, if you don't handle the pushback, I do a lot of contracting now. You have to work for me part-time. So either you're available or you're not, you need to show me your grit. How much work can you do while you're doing something else?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, it reduces a lot of the physical and material stress such a blessing from an immigrant that had nothing to not worry about like, you know, I focus on the small stuff, right? Get a car whenever you need it, stay at whatever hotel you want, fly to wherever you want, eat wherever you want. That's just like the basics, you know, it's great not to worry. I believe a lot in assistance eventually will have him with AI. Like you need help. I think people are wasting their time trying to be all frugal or this. I want to focus my time on the customers, right? And my team and my people, I don't want to do anything else”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at all the other companies that are growing because I did this in September of 2021, right? And so there's a lot of peers of mine that were like four billion valuation or stuff like that. And so we started a little bit earlier in some of those waves. So they were getting crazy valuations like hopping, you know, other companies, right? And so outreach, Manny is a good friend of mine, right? He's in London. And so you see all this stuff and that affects your ego. Like, why am I not being value when I'm a similar company? Sales Lawf was valued at too, right?”
2025-03-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source