In the realm of technological innovation, the story of Elias Torres is a real-life embodiment of the American Dream. This young man, who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua at 17 and couldn't speak English upon arrival, has now become a legendary figure in the tech industry. From his role as Vice President of Engineering at HubSpot to co-founding and selling Drift for approximately $1.2 billion, Torres' success trajectory is remarkable. However, for him, this is just the beginning.
"Reaching this point is already quite rare, but I haven't stopped yet," Torres said in an interview with TechCrunch. About a year ago, he set out again, founding Agency—a startup dedicated to revolutionizing the Customer Success Management (CSM) field with AI technology.
The inception of Agency stemmed from Torres' collaboration with OpenAI. While developing AI solutions for clients like the NBA and LiveNation, he conceived the idea of integrating AI into customer success management. This concept received strong support from HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan, who also joined Agency's board of directors.
With the backing of Sequoia partner Pat Grady, Agency quickly secured $12 million in seed funding. Grady is optimistic about Agency's future: "Recruiting excellent customer success managers is not easy, and scaling their operations is even more challenging. If a product can take over most of their tasks, allowing companies to expand without significantly increasing headcount, it will be very valuable."
Agency's AI system, through deep learning of customer emails, CRM data, chat logs, and phone conversations, can accurately predict customer needs and automate tasks such as scheduling, follow-ups, documentation, customer onboarding, and meeting preparation. Torres stated that this technology has realized a long-held dream, filling the gaps in CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Drift.
Currently, Agency is conducting tests with companies like HeyGen and has opened an invitation-only beta version for specific customer success professionals. Although Agency currently has no direct competitors in the AI-driven customer success management field, related functions such as sales development representatives are already facing numerous AI solution challenges.
Sequoia's Grady is confident about Agency's prospects: "As of now, I don't know of anyone else targeting this market. I hope people don't discover this opportunity in the short term, giving Agency some room to grow."