--- title: 'Drift CTO Elias Torres on Building a Billion-Dollar Company and Opening a Tampa Office' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=NDSJ4zZvwx8' video_id: 'NDSJ4zZvwx8' date: 2026-07-14 duration_sec: 0 --- # Drift CTO Elias Torres on Building a Billion-Dollar Company and Opening a Tampa Office > Source: [Drift CTO Elias Torres on Building a Billion-Dollar Company and Opening a Tampa Office](https://youtube.com/watch?v=NDSJ4zZvwx8) ## Summary In this fireside chat, Elias Torres, founder and CTO of Drift, shares his journey from immigrating to Tampa as a teenager to building a multi-billion dollar company. He discusses the importance of mentorship, the challenges of fundraising outside Silicon Valley, and his commitment to supporting underrepresented founders. ### Key Points - **Drift opens Tampa office** [00:00] — Drift announced opening an office in Tampa in December 2019, aiming to grow the team to 100 employees by early 2021. - **Elias's immigration story** [01:30] — Elias arrived in Tampa from Nicaragua on December 3, 1993, at age 17, with family support and a dream of opportunity. - **First opportunities in Tampa** [03:30] — In high school, Elias joined an internship program for minorities (Inroads) that taught interview skills and resume building, giving him confidence. - **Transition from IBM to startups** [05:30] — After 10 years at IBM, Elias left in 2008 to join a 10-person startup, just before the market crash. He had no plan B. - **First startup success** [08:30] — With co-founder David Cancel, Elias built Performable, reaching $1M in recurring revenue in 9 months, and sold to HubSpot for $25M in 2011. - **Leaving HubSpot to start Drift** [11:30] — Elias left HubSpot two months before its IPO to start Drift from scratch, motivated by a desire to be a role model for Latinx founders. - **Talent and office strategy** [14:00] — Drift specializes offices to create self-contained product units, avoiding cross-functional dependencies to move faster. - **Supporting Latinx founders** [16:30] — Elias emphasizes the need for Latinx success stories and investing in one's own community to build bridges with investors. - **Hiring diverse talent** [19:00] — Elias finds it difficult to hire underrepresented minorities in Boston, which motivated opening an office in Tampa near USF. - **Levers for startup speed** [21:00] — Key levers: bias for action, deliver daily results, put products in front of customers, charge quickly, build a brand, hire sales early. - **Work-life balance** [23:00] — Elias emphasizes that building a company is a marathon, not a sprint; he goes to bed at 9:30 PM and focuses on time management. - **Hiring criteria** [25:00] — Drift looks for 'winners' using ROI hiring: candidates who have taken risks, been promoted, and shown leadership in every aspect of their journey. - **Fundraising advice** [27:00] — Elias advises working at successful hyper-growth companies to build relationships with investors and gain experience before starting a company. - **Encouraging entrepreneurship in children** [29:00] — Elias exposes his children to business books and encourages them to find their passion, supporting alternative paths like dropping out of college for startups. - **Why Tampa** [31:00] — Elias chose Tampa for its talent pool, community, and personal connection; Drift has 22 people from USF and plans to reach 60 by end of year. ### Conclusion Elias Torres's journey from immigrant to CTO of a billion-dollar company underscores the power of resilience, mentorship, and community. His commitment to opening Drift's Tampa office reflects a strategic move to tap into diverse talent and build a lasting tech ecosystem outside traditional hubs. ## Transcript so I don't know if you all heard the announcement but in December of 2019 drift which is the world's leading conversational marketing platform announced that they had opened an office in Tampa aiming to grow the Tampa team to 100 employees by early 2021 a huge win for our market as one of the largest growing technology startups having an office with the presence here in our next fireside chat will learn how and why vascular startups are opening offices in the southeast so please join me in welcoming aleeah's Taurus who is the founder and CTO of drift in J Klaus who is the founder of upside FM which is a top-rated business podcast by Fortune magazine how do you know I took kind of a wild guess to sit on your right hoping this is your good side there you go perfect perfect thanks for being here guys this is a really really exciting event on our podcast we talked to Ali back in October of 2018 about embark collective so this is an amazing full circle moment and I'm also a drift user so I'm excited to talk with leus here so Leah you are CTO of one of the fastest growing companies in the country previously you're at HubSpot another crazy success story but I want to go all the way back to your your America story when you emigrated here can you talk a little bit about your story of coming to America and coming to Tampa specifically and yes I I arrived in 1993 December 3rd of 1993 to Tampa Florida I was 17 years old and we had family here when you're an immigrant you have to go wherever you can get any kind of help right so we had an aunt that been living here we had a few ODS my mom had a few sisters in Miami but we picked Tampa my mother says Miami's too crazy just had that foresight and said let's go meet with your with your other aunt Lydia and we came here and he was that I come it was exciting right I was coming I grew up in a communist country in Nicaragua and I was always poor America and this is the land of the opportunity and I had big dreams and so I was really excited to be here right where we could have an equal opportunity to be successful because not in America you kind of have to be born into it to be successful and even though society here is not quite equal there's a lot more opportunity and so I've been very very thrilled that I was able to spend a little bit of high school here I went to USF the community here had embraced me helped me I would received a scholarship to go to school and it was incredible right I worked at IBM well I was as an intern when I was at a college and then that connection to IBM is kind of what took me up north that was the moment where I got a full-time job at IBM and I had an amazing opportunity and I took it right just like every other opportunity I took here at the Tampa Bay Area gave me so it was an incredible about I spent here from 93 to 98 and so when you when you immigrated here you were about 17 you said you're in high school what what was that like experiencing this community for the first time you know what was the first opportunity that you remember being able to embrace and start building your here even before IBM well the first opportunities to have access to school right and from a very early moment in high school I went to led2 high school and we there was a program called in Rhodes which is an internship program for minorities that they would help me I interview and I had a job at Bank of America nations Bank at the time and we would go Saturdays and spend the entire day Saturday learning how to interview how to build resumes how to talk to a manager and those are there's such foundational things that gave me the the current the courage and the confidence right to be in a corporate setting you know it was something that you know when you're very poor when you have food stamps and you have to dress up and put up a jacket and go to a banking Center it's like how do you act who's modeling this after you and so those trainings that we would go every Saturday made a big difference in my life right at some point I mean you're at IBM which is truly corporate that's that's a big corporate job at some point you transition into the world of startups and then even venture a little bit so can you talk about that transition and what piqued your interest into getting into the world of entrepreneurship and startups really it was like something like TechCrunch to be honest I worked at IBM it was an amazing run ten years there where I was part of a very innovative and visionary technology organization we're the ones who put ibm.com on the Internet calm I be I'm on the website on the Internet they were doing the Olympic websites at the time Nagano Sydney those were the you know this was deep blue cast perhaps I was an amazing team that I got to see because of my internship in Tampa and so when I interview at IBM I I knew about this team already and I wanted to work there and I got that opportunity so it was incredible iBM is 400 thousand person organization it was one of the most advanced I was there pre-google right and in fact I know some of the engineers that work with me when and left to go to Google and build great things there so at the time I was happy I was so impressed you know of working for such a global company but I realized quickly that my personality is very intrapreneurial in nature I'm a I'm impatient and I want it I want to get things done quickly and I don't like consensus and and I like people that have a lot of passion so slowly I started looking into the external world and realizing this startup scene that I kind of missed in the 2000 in fact I had friends I asked me to start a startup in 2000 and and I chickened out I really did I didn't know anything about it I was in New York City and I was like I don't want to do it and I stayed at IBM and then the second wave I had to do it right I was not going to miss it this time mm might have been a good time to be on the sidelines in the world of startups anyway was entrepreneur entrepreneurship was that supported in your family you know coming coming from a different country and coming to this world of opportunity was it expected that maybe you do go on and start something on your own or was that something that was scary and and culturally less familiar there's two parts of it my mother was a is a veterinarian right and she tried to start a lot of businesses and failed yeah and so she was always scared of that in and but she's an amazing academic she's an amazing professional she was a college professor but was did not have luck that the system in Nicaragua its communist we we barely had things to eat right so it was not conducive to start businesses and she many times my father lived in LA and had small businesses I really don't know exactly where this entrepreneurial thing comes I don't think I'm still learning this this environment this system I think it's just a personality right where I can you can tell me know a thousand times and I'm not gonna stop right you I come from nothing I have nothing to lose so who cares right it's like I don't have anything so I'll go I'll go for it right I don't have alternatives there's no plan B for me there's no plan B for me with drift right it's like I only have plan a it's got to keep going and so that's really I think what fits and then I just everything else I'm just learning along the way and and make sure that I have the right mentors David cancel is my partner we've been in we've been in business for 10 years four companies together and I've learned a ton from him and plus other mentors that we associate ourselves with I love to dig into that topic of mentorship because if you are if you're starting up something for the first time you know maybe thinking back to when you were first starting your first company all the way through to on your third or fourth company now mentorships play such a key role so if I'm a first time founder and I don't have the executive coaching that Embarq offers how do I find mentors and how do I you best utilize those Mentors well I think everything is a numbers game right you really have to realize that for a lot of people that are very successful once they're successful just making money or just being successful or company's not enough really is there's a time where now helping others is a way more interesting and satisfying right and so I believe like people want to help you just have to find the right person at the right time that has the availability to do it right and so sometimes you gotta be careful of like not try to you know get you know the CEO of Apple right to mentor you if you're just starting out you got to find the right people that are just a few steps ahead of you and that are willing to help but there's a lot of people that they really desire to do that I think is it's part of our human nature but it's tough sometimes right because you're not gonna it's like enterpreneur build be an entrepreneur you can't just sit and expect people to give you money you're gonna have to knock on a lot of doors until you find the right people so we kind of left off in the story you are jumping into the startup world out of IBM you're in Boston correct talk to me about your first startup venture and what that was like starting in Boston picture 2008 what happened in 2008 a Bitcoin yeah true so no I was 2008 right before the the crash right I quit IBM after 10 years I have three young children they were aged like three two and one my wife is staying at home and I said to her like I'm quitting IBM I want to go join the startup ten person startup about a million in funding and everything seems to be great and two weeks later the market crashes and we lay off half of the company I work out of my house that out of a bedroom in out of our bedroom and that's how my entrepreneurial journey began right so it was it was a little tense I'm in the year before that I had put all my investments in real estate in my 401k and so my 401k is basically gone yeah and I have like two months of savings in the bank why did you continue to stick through that and not go back to say IBM please can I come back no plan B you gotta just keep going the boats burn the ships you can't go back so what turned things around well I stuck with my partner right I had an opportunity to sell their company and I could go with that company and get a job at a larger company but we talked and we said um he's he's like I'm gonna start another company you want to join and I'm like yeah I have no job let's go and so we took that opportunity and we build a company called performing well where I now I was the founder and so I got to learn a lot there and my partner has done but the ten years that I spent at IBM he spent building companies so he had a lot more experience and that was very useful and we started that company and in about a year in nine month we reach about a million in recurring revenue and it was just that you know that was kind of really the beginning of that speed that him and I have together when it comes to execution and that success we started with the three million funding we're about to raise the series B we had a lot term-sheet for seven million and we sold two and we were in conversations with HubSpot to sell the company for 25 million in 2011 and so that was like the first break where I was able to do that it was funny because uh we need our mash when you're Brian Halligan from the community in Boston and I interviewed to work at HubSpot when they were about 45 people and I said no to join David and so I then came back about three years later into HubSpot do an offer you can refuse a better offer than the one they had made initially so that's how kind of things went full circle back into hubspot and then went into that incredible journey of taking that public the HubSpot story if you guys aren't familiar with it incredible incredible story incredible growth you guys had continued to be a wildly successful company let's fast forward now to drift you know your your third company when did you decide that okay it's time to leave HubSpot and start this company and were you still in Boston at this time I'm still in Boston I think that um it's really about role models and mentors right Brian Halligan is a mentor there mesh in you know when I first met Dharma and he was starting HubSpot before interview with them I'm there was like a tech dinner that I was invited to and he says I'm starting this thing called inbound marketing and website grader and I could just seed and I would see their mesh all the time on the news like I just raised another 17 million dollars I just raised it's not a 25 minute something my dad and we're like what is this thing even do and so but the thing is that when we see people doing those things and they're just like right there next to you and you're like this guy's it's not that good you know it's just like it's just like me I can coach just as well as he does and so when you have that when you see when you're a young person you're a young girl and you see a gymnast in a gymnast on Olympic so you see somebody going downhill skiing or whatever it inspires you to do the same right and so after being there for three years we felt that it was we took it public and I just can't rest I just don't like to just relax and I felt that going public was gonna change things right for me and and it might end up being good right and so we we decided to just bring the ships again and we David and I agreed to start drift and we left two months before the IPO left a lot on the table but I don't really I'm not really calculating my career or my net worth in that way I'm just simply looking for the journey where I can keep on learning and so we just like left and it was just two of us starting from scratch again and that feeling is it's crazy it's nerve-wracking because we left such a company that we had position to go to this growth that you see today to now 7 billion and we're like start from nothing at a rock climbing gym and so but I really that's what I wanted you know and and the other thing is that what hit me was there's not many people that look like me that are starting you know I'm building multi-billion dollar global companies right and so I felt like if I stayed there I would be wasting an opportunity of all the training I had to that day to build something like this and like if I go you know there's so many so many Latinas are struggling Latinos Latinas Riya are struggling to to fundraise and to have opportunity to have a network to have build experience that you know earns their trust to go at it again and so if I stay there I felt like I would be wasting that and I have more of a social responsibility to go out there and prove it that we can build something from scratch and not just raw the successes of others and so that's kind of that chip on the shoulder that I have and I want to really be a be a role model right and let other people know that hey you can start a company as well because I'm just a normal guy - it's like so it's like if I can do it you can do it I want to touch on that point because you mentioned you know when you have close proximity to somebody that's doing something that seems really really impressive and amazing but you know them personally so it's like you're no different than I it gives you this confidence to keep going how does that translate between the Boston community and now the Tampa community you know is you you hear things about Boston New York San Francisco they make us sound like these are these incredible places that are unlike anything else and if you're gonna start a company you got to be in one of these places how does Tampa compare to a place like Boston when it comes to being around people that you can look to and say well you're no different than me I can do this - look the truth is that talent it's everywhere right what we don't have is access to resources I see every day I mean 20 years in Boston and I see entrepreneurs leave Boston to go to San Francisco because they spent years trying to fundraise and they couldn't and they show up in San Francisco and a week later they have you know five million dollars and it's in proceed it's it's crazy right that the access that they have in San Francisco is way way way bigger orders of magnitude bigger than what we have in Boston so I'm very used to that feeling right I'm very used to that feeling of being the underdog and compared when we get compared to San Francisco and so I know the feeling that you feel here but the truth is that we have to believe that we can actually make it happen because there are successes all over the world what happens is that investors do not want to attend a board meeting that is outside of the valley it really boils down to basic things like that of why they don't want to invest in other places and and there's two types of investor that the investor that is very analytical that comes from from private banking from PE and from up there where they calculate everything just numerically and there are the great investors that are thinking of the seed stages and taking risks on people and so I think that we need to keep in finding and accessing those those those investors that that make the big bets on people and so people are everywhere and in Tampa is really exciting because it has so many variables going for it that I already that I seen in Boston and that when we can that there's a there's a mutual need for for intrapreneur for America to succeed we need more entrepreneurs right we need more investors but we need people and we can't expect everybody to go to San Francisco we can't expect everyone to go to New York and so we need to kind of work together and that's why we brought drift to Tampa right so we can invest and grow the community grow the talent but at the same time help us succeed and grow right in in a capital efficient way totally and you know you guys you guys are still a business and you you want to be successful so as much as responsibility and draw I'm sure you feel to come back home to Tampa you must also be seeing something else that you're saying this is just a good business decision is that talent what what what is it about Tampa that made you guys say this is where we're going to stake a claim to put another headquarters in the tech in the tech world the hardest thing is really finding the right people talent is really your number one expense is your number one focus of growth and success and and and effectiveness of the or the way the company executes retaining them it's extremely vital and very difficult the more success you have the more people want to come and everybody wants to come in hire from Jeff because we we attract the best talent they learn the fastest when you're in a hyper growth company people experience so many things in like a year that other people would take them you know five years to experience and so when you have a new company starting in Boston they're like oh where should we get somebody let's go get someone from giraffe right and so it's very difficult right for us it makes my job a lot tougher and so we figured why don't we go to other places the advice that I've had from many of my mentors is to not be reliant on a single office location so we have offices in Boston San Francisco Seattle Tampa and now we're looking to open one in London but Tampa is very key is special for me I personal because we can develop 10 talent in a community that is up-and-coming and we can invest many people that I meet in San Francisco all over the world they say why Tampa and I'm like because I can go help build it and I'm gonna have an advantage there and so I want to come here and grow that talent and then be able to have and retain my people for much longer right so we can actually be successful and move faster can you talk to me a little bit more about when you have these different offices this isn't more personal curiosity anything else when you have these different offices do you make them all cross-functional and have all aspects of the business and all offices or do you specialize those offices depending on location yeah we'd like to specialize offices we did this when we open Ireland with the top spot in Dublin and and then other subsequent offices about 10 offices now worldwide is that the more cross-functional you make an organization a company the more dependencies in the slower it is going to move so you really want to create pockets of excellence in every place and when it comes to product especially we like to have completely self-contained product units you know squads in a location so they can move as fast as possible right they can take advantage of the horizontal infrastructure that we built globally but we want people to just the least number of people that you involve in a decision the faster you'll be able to make it so that's really the approach you talked about this social responsibility to being a role model and supporting other Latin ex founders we know that from Amy's talk there's just a sliver of venture capital that goes to most regions outside of three cities or so and there's a smaller subset of that of capital that goes to Latin X founders so what can what needs to be done to start to shift those tides and what can people in this room do to help be an ally and move those tides faster I wish I knew the answer but I'm just one is what I what I see in the ecosystem is there's a lot of successful people from from any companies that they they make a huge exit right I was like a CEO retreat with people that have had like billion-dollar exits and now I see them investing in their angel investors in people but they tend to be investors into people that look like them that they know right so one of the things that we have to do is we have to have some success of our own first and really and and figure out which groups we can we can build bridges with but we have to take care of our own community first like it is no one's gonna have the love for Latin X as Latin accent himself right and so we have to have success and we have to invest in one another and we need to find them manny medina is from ecuador a CEO of outreach in Seattle's the billion-dollar unicorn company so we're building relationships together him and I the hala CEO page of duty so we're building that network of people and so we can get together some of the capital we are scouts to invest invest in firms and and figure out how to bring those people and network them and in and for example one thing that I do is that anybody that works for me a drifter HubSpot any company before I will be an angel investor to them and that's my promise right you work for me you're going to do that and so one things I'm doing is focusing in hiring more lionex people and more underrepresented minorities adrift so I can pay them forward and then launch them into entrepreneurship in the future this is going to take many many years we have to do that I'm involved with one of the firms in the valley where they have 50 board seats available and this person a white male has been charged you know in his heart to help and bring some of that social justice and so he's asking me for like how him find the network of people that he can suggest to the companies to get on boards so then those you know it's just like we have to work this from so many angles and really begins from you know basic shelter and food and education from the early days to like high school today in college to then jobs to doing be included and and supported to work and their be successful get capital to then invest I mean it's it's a long journey and it's something that I'm just really becoming aware now and I'm trying to figure out where do I need to focus my energy mentioned hiring you know I would imagine and I'd like to hear this is true from your experience I would imagine that the same inequality of venture capital happens at the hiring level you know is there anything that employers or startup companies could be doing differently to find diverse and differentiated talent to bring into their companies it's very difficult because I I tell you that it's very difficult even for me to do a higher under represented minorities in Boston and that's why I wanted to come here when you have USF which is like a number one you know Latin X successful success story and the United number one success in the United States it's really difficult the we we are invisible really to to the rest of the community in Boston and people say like I don't know where to find underrepresented minorities right they're not in the network is the very you know Boston tends to be a very segregated City and I struggle with that because to get a candidate from like finding who I am that I'm interested in meeting them that they're gonna have an equal opportunity during an interview in the entire process to be selected the odds are against us so it's very difficult there's something that because I'm I'm a founder of the company and David and I were both Latin X founders it's something that we we push and we push and we push and it takes a lot of work we doing a lot of unconscious buying training we have a D not Dei you know person dedicated to focus on on those initiatives but it's very difficult I think that's something that I'm learning myself how to how to help and get getting more people through the through the funnel so they can be successful I'm gonna shift gears here for a couple questions and I'd love to open it up to the audience if you guys have some questions from Performa below HubSpot to drift you mentioned your perform bubble story you and your co-founder you know have a history of spinning things up quickly what are some of the levers that you pull and starting a new technology company to get things up to speed so quickly you know what the successes you've seen it's it's obvious that that is true so if you're gonna start a new company tomorrow what would some of those levers that you pull look like you know one of our principles our drift is you have to be biased for action delivered daily results you have to whatever you build you have to put it in front of customers you have to charge for stuff quickly if people don't pay you then you don't have something valuable you cannot go sit in a garage and build something forever and and then think is going to be perfect people hold on to their ideas too closely and they think is a great idea and somebody's going to steal it ideas are a dime a dozen it's execution that really matters marketing people underestimate marketing and don't create a brand don't create a movement don't create a category you also have to bring sales people early a lot of people think that oh we don't we don't want to have sales it will build we'll build a touchless product and touch the sales process and it's we're gonna be rich and no no it doesn't work that way you really need every function very quickly you need to hire the best people you need to go get access to to funding you have to move as fast as possible I wear five years into it 350 people 107 in funding and I still think is day one and I'm as paranoid as this not working as I was the day that we left HubSpot so you just gotta get done when you talk about moving really fast and getting done and building quickly is there a line you draw as founders with your employees for how many hours is too many hours or is everybody sold on the mission and they're working all day every day no absolutely not this is a marathon right it's like I go to bed like a 9:30 you know it's like whatever I did from like 5:00 a.m. to 9:30 that's what I got done that day but I'm gonna focus on how do I use my calendar how do I use my time am i do I have the right people should I be doing that job and should I be delegating to somebody else and who I delegated it's not doing it well I need to find another person and so it's really how you use your time we all have the same 24 hours and not sleeping you know I did that I perform well and I look like then you know it was like I was like you know my partner makes fun of me all the time because those days I did not know how to balance I would code till like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning show up at the office like 9:00 or 10:00 and it was not it's not good for my health Doreen so I think that we do have to have a balance and it's very doable because we all have the same amount of hours the problem is that people need to build the stamina and that discipline in the training especially young people that don't know whether they're like working really hard or not or they don't know when they need to go to bed they don't know when what is stressful and what's not stressful and so it's a lot of it is mental I think and people need examples in teaching on that how do you screen for that in the hiring process you talked about the importance of hiring the best people what are some of the things that you look for to indicate that this is the best or the quality of the caliber of person that we want adrift so there's personally assessment this assessment tools that you can use to attract for those profiles really is we're looking for winners I don't know if you know about ROI actuary hiring but it's like you look at what they've done in every step and if they're succeeding and they have that competitive does any of that intelligence and whatever is it that they did whether there was a club where there was so every aspect of every person's journey you can look at it dissect it and find out if they have what it takes to take on the challenges if they're not taking risks if they're not being promoted within whatever they're doing if they join a club and they don't become the president then you know they might not have that it factor that you need to be in a start-up alright last question for me and then I'll open it up to the audience here drift has raised 107 million at this point we talked about the the struggles of fundraising when you're not in Silicon Valley or when you're when you're a minority or underrepresented founder what are some of the tips that you would give four founders in this building or founders listening to this to help them fundraise effectively and successfully well what I did is I work with people that were more experienced and I was there was times where people were asking me to join the startups what people there was going to be their first time so I went with people David canceled had a lot more experience how to raise money in the past so I chose to work for for somebody else you know as a listener partner but I gained a lot more right and you want people that have a they have a reputation they have successes in their belt already and so by us doing performer ball by us brought us into HubSpot by us being at HubSpot we met you know Sequoia Sierra VGC our investors they knew what we did for house pond so it was much easier for them to write that check because they already had a personal relationship with us so I think that you need to you know if you can work out companies that have the great investors the hyper-growth companies join those like Jeff and then and then you'll have the founders be investors in you and then you have the board there would know you you work there because you've seen a successful movie and that's really important back to role models like if you never worked at a successful startup how do you know what a successful startup looks like and so that that that brings a lot of weight you know when it comes to a discussion with the VC with besides when you like start from scratch and I'm just gonna start this company thing but what do you know you have to know you have to get experience all right guys any questions from the audience got a hand back there one of the last three parts of the question struggle make them feel pain what is it would you would you would you support it you know absolutely I would so my son is on LinkedIn no authority feature software engineer adrift I bring my daughter I bring my sons every time I can in the summer to spend a day with me and they shadow me they're reading the same books I read there's been like already about two years now that I give him like the everything store from Jeff Bezos built from scratch Home Depot Chris Vaz never split the difference so I carry books everywhere I can with me and they and they're reading them Noah's reading shoe dog right now as we speak Phil Knight and he the other day he says can you buy me a book a thousand ways to make a thousand dollars and and so definitely I encouraged them I I went to USF and I went to Harvard for a master's but I really don't care for school I think that I've hired many people in in my journey that I actually kind of encouraged them to drop out because they were there were geniuses they already had learned more than then what I've seen in other people when they after they graduated and so I said to them just come over and join me I have people join me as freshmen I have people that draft that work for me for two years full-time for four years full-time they're fully vested and they were a freshman or sophomore when I met them at Northeastern so northeastern kind of loves me and hates me I'm on the advisory board for for the computer science school but they're successful the entrepreneurs are hard so I'm definitely a big proponent especially when it comes to computer science because you can learn everything online and so there's people that are learning from from high school or from much earlier and so I'm very supportive very flexible and when you have children I don't know if you have but I'm just here on my knees praying like they whatever they want to do as long as they find their passion I'm like supportive I can't control where they're gonna end up and where they gonna go it's painful as I can control more and I drift than I do at home more questions sure I let the most aggressive ones get through you know have people that just keep texting me and ask me questions and I I give him help one thing I'm doing right now is I started there's a Latin X webinar what I'm trying to do things at scale and so I'm holding like a su meeting where a lot of people can come and ask questions than one then we record it and then we post it out there for people to watch and so I need to write more create more videos you know that's something that when you're at early-stage company you're like 40 employees you can talk to everybody but it's the same principles that I apply at work we use a product called a drift video product where I can record myself and so I don't have a laptop I don't have an office I don't have a desk and so whenever something is on my mind that it's urgent to the company I'll just record it on my phone and then I send it and people can watch it and forward it to other people and so I'm just trying to find ways to scale and then some people that are very aggressive and they push and they push in their push I let them come through but back to the numbers numbers just two things you either contact a whole bunch of people or you contact the people that you want until you get access to them and that persistence eventually a you gained my respect and and I will do it but it's really hard definitely it's busy days time for one or two more questions sure thank you I mean there's nothing more satisfying right then then doing that instead of just yeah it's life is very special and there's so much to do and to give and there's so many people that want to do well and there's room for many of us to do well right there's no like there's only ten people that can be successful entrepreneurs like there's no limit I don't know what the limit is so why not help him is there anything that I didn't ask that I should have asked I call this the soapbox question more about tompa why it's gonna be great yeah yeah well I mean I'm sure you looked at other markets when you when you open at the Tampa office so what ultimately sold you on Tampa well it all started what like almost two and a half years ago Marvin I don't know if Marvin is here i Erik you on CEO of zoom you know I was having lunch with him and he's like how many are you it's like 350 270 215 it's like you don't have another office you're only in Boston's like yeah oh that's not gonna work you got to find other people I know the founders of Wayfarer found there's a bullhorn and that's when he just started to hit me that I'm like wow I need to open another office for growth and so I was really busy we were not at the size that we're now I was like my hands were like in too many things at the time but I started thinking like where could we go and everybody's like just go to a tier two to your three city it has a great school and then you can like go and take over the city and I'm like where can I go it's like I come here for 16 since 1993 I've been here every Christmas right and I'm like where can I go that has talent and community and story and I'm literally thinking about the Midwest's or like Salt Lake City because they have great salespeople you know like that Mormon like you know training and discipline and then you have Nashville coming up Austin it's great bowlder was too white for me and so I was like no I can't do it everybody's just like triathlon everyday and like you know they hiked the Flatirons and the I can't be here and or what drinks PBR anyway sorry but I'm like where can I go the day like dislike alot next community and they might know me and they might welcome me and is it I'm that dumb like it just took me a while to figure it out I was like wait a minute let me go to Tampa and so I started making some connections and they introduced me to Vinick I was crazy story for another time I didn't know who Jeff was and like I was only an email CC with him and and he replies and they're like come over and I'm like no I'm busy sorry sir and and then I find out who he was and I reply and I said can we have coffee please and they introduced me to Lakshmi and two years and plus ago and she's like we're gonna build something great here and I'm like really gonna do something and to be here today after this journey is just feels amazing we have 22 people from Jeff now started industrious December first we open the office and we probably reach 60 by the end of this year the team is so excited we have moved people from from Boston to transfer the DNA in the culture and not have its own thing we've been building executives here as well so they have representation in the executive team at the company and more and more people wherever I go I'm telling them about Tampa and they're like really why and then when I tell them what's happening like we're going to bring a lot more companies and definitely we're gonna make this a successful place but you know it's gonna take time five 10 years and it's going to be a Tier two successful the future of tech in the United States well if this event is any indication it's it's gonna be a really great five to 10 years so please join me in giving a hand to Elias [Applause]