Inside Intercom’s AI Turnaround, Why Software Companies Must Train Their Own Models | Eoghan McCabe, Co-founder and CEO

The Peel with Turner Novak

Eoghan McCabe is the Co-founder and CEO of Intercom, building Fin.ai, the AI customer service company.

This was an extremely candid, two hour conversation going inside every detail of how Intercom was the first late stage software company to successfully re-architect itself to be AI-native.

Intercom just announced they’ve built their own customer service-focused AI models, and Eoghan explains why most software companies will have to do the same.

We also talk through the lessons he learned coming back to run Intercom in 2022 after stepping back in 2020, why many AI companies have strong negative gross margins despite the narrative, how Intercom designed AI’s first outcome-based pricing model, the challenges of buying AI software today, the importance of brand when building new products, and we get in the wayback machine, talking through the pain raising Intercom’s initial million dollar Seed round, and how venture capital has changed since then.

Thank you to Eoghan’s Co-founder Des Traynor for helping me brainstorm topics for the conversation.

Special thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here: https://ramp.com/ThePeel

Timestamps:

(4:18) We’re at peak SaaS

(9:11) Inside early days of Intercom’s turnaround

(16:43) AI will beat humans at everything

(21:17) Making trade-offs building AI products

(24:25) Why Intercom trained their own AI models

(28:33) Lessons from returning as CEO

(34:19) Overcoming initial AI skepticism in 2022

(40:02) Creating AI’s first outcome-based pricing

(45:15) Intercom’s best-in-class gross margins

(49:25) Why its so hard to buy AI software today

(51:28) Unpacking AI’s negative gross margins

(58:12) Being perfectly positioned for AI

(1:09:47) Why AI products need their own brand

(1:16:13) Founder CEOs vs Manager CEOs in AI

(1:21:29) AI startup opportunities

(1:24:57) Lessons running a team in Dublin and SF

(1:28:25) How media has changed over time

(1:37:32) Raising Intercom’s first $1 million Seed round

(1:43:53) Why there are so many VC’s

(1:47:38) Advice for investors

Referenced

Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/

Fin: https://fin.ai/

Intercom Careers: https://www.intercom.com/careers

Eoghan’s website: https://eoghanmccabe.com

Intercom’s first pitch deck: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/intercompitchdeckpdf/253317574

Follow Eoghan

Twitter: https://x.com/eoghan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoghanmccabe

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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