Brainstorm AI 2024: What it Takes to Build A Startup in the AI Era

Fortune

Presenter: Elias Torres, Founder and CEO, Agency

Transcript

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.

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