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

Is selling a company what we are told it is? Shift is the biggest failure in my life. Like I wanted to build something great. I wanted to build something sustainable. To walk around in your own company and you don't matter anymore. You bring new CEO, you bring new management. It it hurts the ego, right? And you created this and then you're no longer relevant. I would have a public company right now if if if I if it wasn't for like all those carrots that I gave. And and candy bars and and and trophies. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stabbings, and I'm so excited for the show today. So I always remember the first time I went to San Francisco, I was 18 years old, I was at Sasta with Jason Lemkin, and the hottest company of the time was Drift. And today I have one of their founders on the show, Elias Torres. Elias is now the founder of Agency, but before Agency he co-founded Drift, which he's

sold for$1.2 billion to Vista and before Drift he found it Performable which he sold to Hubspot. But before we dive into the show today, SecureFrame empowers businesses to build trust with customers by simplifying information security and compliance through AI and automation. Thousands of fast growing businesses, including Nasdaq, Angelis, Doodle, and Coda, trust SecureFrame to expedite their compliance journey for global security and privacy standards, such as SOC2 and ISO 27001, CMMC, NIST standards, and more. Backed by top-tier investors in corporations like Google and Kleiner Perkins, the company is among Forbes' list of the top 100 startup employers for 2024. G2's best software awards for high satisfaction products and a recipient of the 2024 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. Something I definitely never got in school myself. Learn more today at SecureFrame.com. And speaking of trust and intelligence, let me tell you about Harmonic. Did you know that half of the 27 companies started last year by OpenAI Alumni are still in stealth? I discovered this on Harmonic, the complete startup database used by Excel, Insight Manlo, and hundreds of other leading VCs, as well as go to market teams from the likes of Notion, Brexit.

and Google to find the best startups and founders, even in stealth. Few things annoy me more than missing a round where we know the founder and should have led the round. But now this is a problem of the past. Harmonic maps everyone your team has ever met emailed or connected with to the source of truth for startups. So when that company that was just a little too early sudden gains traction, you won't be too late. Or when you find the perfect company for your thesis or product, you'll know that Sarah just happens to know their CTO. How does Sarah know everyone? Who knows? She's a genius. Learn how VCs and GTM teams find the best startups six months ahead of the competition on harmonic.ai. And while staying ahead of the curve is crucial, make sure your finances work just as hard with Brex, the ultimate financial stat for startups. So when Brex was founded, it wasn't just about creating another financial product, it was about solving the really gritty challenges that founders face daily. Let's be honest, building something from the ground up is hard enough without dealing with clunky outdated. creative banks that pile on fees and leave your cash idle.

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