002: Building a $1B Company with Only 100 Employees | Elias Torres (Agency)

Описание: Elias Torres, founder of Agency and formerly Drift (which sold for $1.2B), joins us to explain why he considers that exit his "biggest failure" and how he's reimagining business building in the age of AI with his new company, Agency.

Despite selling Drift for $1.2 billion, Elias surprisingly calls it his "biggest failure." Why? Because his ambition was to build a $30 billion company that would go public:

"My mind for Drift was we were gonna build a $30 billion company. We were gonna take it IPO... And that did not happen, right?"

This stark honesty sets the tone for our conversation about what truly matters in company building.

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Perhaps the most provocative stance Elias takes is on pricing. He doesn't mince words:

"I think that seat pricing is dead. I think people ask me all the time and they say, how are you planning to charge it? You know, is it per seat? I think it's a stupidity to charge per seat nowadays."

Instead, he's eyeing a percentage of customer revenue, the ultimate alignment:
"Why couldn't I have a percentage of your revenue? And that's what I want. Right? It's like, if you don't make money, I don't make money."

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Elias's new mission is radical: build a billion-dollar company with only 100 employees. It's not just a catchy slogan—it's a deliberate constraint:

"I'm trying to create a constraint, right? Because a constraint forces creativity. You have to learn how to manage cost."

In his view, when companies grow to hundreds or thousands of employees, the mission changes from serving customers to managing humans:
"When you have too many people, it becomes a whole different job... Your focus is how do you feed all those mouths? How do you guide them? How do you coach them? How do you manage their emotions?... It becomes no longer the mission of the company."

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This personal evolution mirrors his professional thesis: humans are the "hardest roadblock" to AI adoption, yet they'll increasingly prefer automated solutions that just work.
The Secret Lever Most Founders Miss

The conversation took a turn when Elias revealed the most underrated growth lever:
"Pricing is the most important lever in terms of effort... you make one subtle change to your CPQ or to how you or the number that you charge as the platform price... And that could make or break your business, right? You can increase revenue 50%, you can double revenue."

For founders chasing product excellence or distribution, this reminder about pricing's leverage feels like uncovering a secret weapon.