Eoghan McCabe
Co-founder and CEO at Intercom
Co-founder and CEO of Intercom who successfully transformed the company from a plateauing late-stage SaaS business into an AI-first company with Fin, their AI agent now on track to pass $100M ARR in under three quarters.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Eoghan McCabe shares the raw, honest story of transforming Intercom from a plateauing SaaS business approaching negative growth into an AI-first company with Fin, their customer service AI agent now growing at over 300%. He details the wartime measures required — rewriting company values, turning over 40% of employees, surviving a soft coup attempt — and makes the case that established software companies must embrace radical transformation or face extinction from AI disruption.
Leadership Principles
- → You don't have a choice — AI will disrupt in the most aggressive, violent ways; if you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out
- → The way greatness is created is finding a CEO willing to make brave, hard decisions and own the results
- → When facing disruption, become a wartime company — rewrite your values as a sharp knife to cut out ineffective parts
Notable Quotes
"You don't have a choice. AI is going to disrupt in the most aggressive violent ways. If you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out of all of it."
— On why established SaaS companies must transform or die
"We were about to hit $0 net new ARR, which means we would've been in negative growth territory."
— On the dire state of Intercom's business before the AI transformation
"I said, we need to become a wartime company. If we don't fight for this, we are dead. I rewrote the values designed to be a sharp knife to cut out the parts of the company that I just knew wouldn't be effective."
— On the extreme cultural measures required to transform Intercom
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