How Intercom rose from the ashes by betting everything on AI | Eoghan McCabe (founder and CEO)

0:00 You don't have a choice. AI's gonna disrupt in the most aggressive, violent ways. If you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out of all of it. You have very successfully shifted late stage SAS business to an AI first agent based business. Finn is our AI agent will pass a hundred million error with Finn in less than three quarters. Let's talk about how you made this actually happen. We were about to hit like zero dollars in N U AR, which means we would have been in negative growth territory. So ChatGPT launches, was it just like this is it, we gotta go all in on this thing? I said we need to become a wartime company. If we don't fight for this, we are dead. I jumped hard on AI. But I also restarted the culture. 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. If you're trying to make the shift and it's just not moving, you may need to go hardcore founder mode. The way that greatness is created is that you find a C Yo, who's willing to make brave hard decisions and own the results. Ultimately like forty percent. You said there was a a soft coup, is there more you could share about that? Today my guest is Own McCabe.

1:11 This is the first in a series of conversations that I'm having with founders who have successfully transformed their established SaaS or marketplace businesses into an AI first company that is growing like crazy and overtaking their decade plus old business. So many companies and product teams and founders are trying to navigate this very tricky time where every industry is being disrupted by AI. And my goal here is to help you essentially disrupt yourself before somebody else does. The story of Intercom's transformation into Finn is incredible. Their traditional business was valued at billions of dollars, was making hundreds of millions of dollars in ARR, but growth started to plateau and was even about to go negative. Six weeks after GPT three point five came out. They had a working prototype of what is now Finn.

1:54 And Owen and the team decided to go all in on AI. Today Finn is growing like crazy, already at eight digits in ARR, and Intercom is on track to be growing faster than every public software company by next year. In our conversation, Own gets very real and honest about what it takes to win right now. What do you have to do to turn the ship around at Intercom in spite of a lot of pushback and even a soft coup attempt? What do you believe people still don't understand about what is happening in software and AI, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

2:28 Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of incredible products. including Lovable, Replit, Bold, N8N, Linear, Superhuman, Descript, Whisperflow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chapier D, and Mobbin. Check it out at Lenny's Newsletter.com and click Bundle. With that. I bring you. Owen McCain.

2:48 This episode is brought to you by Great Question, the all-in-one UX research platform loved by teams at Brex, Canva, Intuit, and more. One of the most common things I hear from PMs and founders that I talk to is I know I should be speaking to customers more, but I just don't have the time or the tools. That's exactly the gap Great Question fills. Great Question makes it easy for anyone on your team, not just researchers, to recruit participants, run interviews, send surveys, test prototypes. And then share it all with powerful video clips. It's everything you need to put your customers at the center of your product decisions. With a prompt as simple as why did users choose us over competitors, great question not only reveals what your customers have already shared, but it also makes it incredibly easy to ask them in the moment for fresh insights from the right segment.

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4:48 It's a drop-in replacement for Ots Zero and supports up to 1 million monthly active users for free. Check it out at work.com to learn more. That's work oas.com. Oh, and thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Great to be here.

5:10 You have done something quite extraordinary with Intercom. Something that a lot of founders and product teams are trying to do. Which is to navigate this very scary disruption that's happening. as a result of AI to most businesses. You have very successfully shifted.

5:27 Uh, as you described a late stage SaaS business. to an AI first agent based, very successful Business. I wanna use the time to extract as much as I can out of your journey so that people that are trying to navigate this and having a hard time.

5:42 Can uh have less pain, less suffering and and hopefully get to something that works. To give people a sense of just how well things have gone. Can you share some stats about the current state of the business, how it's going? Currently across the business.

5:55 You know, we we benchmark ourselves against all the public software companies. There's like on twenty something B2B software companies. Or like in the fifteenth percentile for Air Or growth. So we're up there. Finn, which is our AI agent, which is, you know, the future of the business, the thing that will disrupt the old business. It's

6:12 You know, growing north of three hundred percent. It took off really fast, like all these other AI companies you hear of the first year. The crew from one to twelve million air or we're now in. Solid mid Eight digit.

6:25 air or growth there, we'll pass a hundred million air or Whip Finn in less than three quarters. And yeah, Finn i you know, we're we're in the customer experience category with Finn. So it's one of these agents that helps Do all your customer work. And it they all started with service. And in that category we are

6:42 That Because By customer count, biggest by revenue. Best by performance benchmarks. We win all our head to heads and our direct competitor

6:51 Bick offs. Rated number one on G two. So I think we're doing we're doing pretty well. We're doing far better than we.

6:59 Imagine at this point. Okay. Uh, this sounds like the dream for a lot of founders, especially ones that are stuck with their existing business that isn't going very far. So let's get to that. Let's talk about the beginning of this journey. You had a business that was working, people used it, love didn't over over a hundred million AR, I believe. Talk about just w the state of the business at the m point roughly when you decided I really need to make a big change and go AI and A AI first.

7:23 It was already in the hundreds of millions. And your comments. Fourteen years and change now. Part of the story is that in twenty twenty I've been sick for a couple of years, the background is I had mold toxins and later I found out that I had it got a tick bite.

7:39 And that messed me up. And so I left the CEO role in twenty twenty. And You know, a lot of the mistakes I had been making. When I was sick got worse. w we became what a lot of late stage software companies are today, which is

7:58 It bloated. We lost some energy. Our strategy was diluted and unfocused. We're trying to do all the things for all the people. We didn't know what problems we were really solving and for who.

8:09 And the result was very slow revenue growth in like the low Single digit percent. And I was away for two years.

8:20 unsatisfied with where the business was going. We had this Post Covid sugar rush. Which a lot of big companies at that stage did in twenty twenty one.

8:31 Everyone's valuation and revenue was Through the roof. And that hit a lot of Problems. A lot of these companies.

8:41 And we had five quarters of Successive You know, sequential. decline in our net U air or And we were about to hit

8:51 Like zero. dollars in anywhere or which means we would have been in negative growth territory. We never got there. I And it's just stopped before we got there, but we were. Falling. Each quarter.

9:03 And I found that I despite my wishes to go and have new adventures, still had a lot of pride for this damn thing. And didn't want to See it. And in a

9:17 way that was so different from the way it started. It started with so much hop and optimism, like so many companies do, and it was about to fade away. So that was when I felt like I need to go back and I need to make a change. I went back and one month later. Chat GPT was announced. So

9:34 It would be really neat and tidy to be able to say that. The AI transformation came. I knew I couldn't be on the sidelines. I had to save this thing from the coming disruption.

9:47 Actually I got. whacked across the head by This AI thing. But it also ended up being a gift. Okay, so uh ChatGPT launches

9:57 Was it just like This is it. We gotta go all in on this thing? Was it like, hmm, let's swatch this thing? How quickly was it clear that This is the future. This isn't working what we're doing. We and I We're very lucky in that we had an AI group already.

10:12 We were in the customer communication business, chiefly doing customer service. We were building bots, but they were rudimentary AI. We had a bunch of our own machine learning. That did. Q and A for customer service, but It required a phenomenal amount of setup and was kinda crappy.

10:29 But we had a number of AI. engineers in the company already. And so When CPT three point five came out, they said this is different. And it didn't take long for people to start to imagine that this is gonna be pretty disruptive to service.

10:43 And it started Where we imagine that This was gonna just wreck everyone selling seats. Everyone in the conventional sauce game. And we believe

10:53 that was quite possible for some couple of years after that moment. But We were only six weeks into the launch of GPT three point five when we actually had a beta version of FIN So I got a

11:08 Text from Des my Co founder. a week or so after the launch of GPT three point five and he said The AI team have something Interesting. And they actually think we could make it.

11:21 a product out of this. And this was long before there's now like no doubt a hundred Service agents. we had something very early working. And and part of what we had to our advantage also was that we had this Giant base three hundred.

11:36 You know, hundreds of thousands of active Users. you know, millions of their users, billions of data points. So we had a lot to play with. And so we jumped on it. Now Obviously it's fun to tell that once again as a

11:51 you know, to to to to support the idea of this brave Maverick move. And I won't discount the fact that we were brave. But we we're coming from a point of having nothing to lose. So

12:03 You know? Like we certainly are unique. I I don't know a a single company of our size and age. that is pivoted this hard to AI and being as successful as we have been. We we also

12:16 Previously were screwed. We ran a really tough spot, so hard no choice. So I'll take the kudos and credit. But also have a lot of empathy for companies that weren't as In as much trouble as we were. And so

12:27 try to thread the needle and sustain the old business well. adding to it with the new AI stuff. Something I heard from someone that worked at Intercom. Correct me if this is not correct. You've always been very anti bot. In the customer support.

12:42 Business because it just You didn't like how impersonal it was, it just didn't feel like the way you wanted to build a business and then now that's what you do talk about just that transition. I know it's a it's a fun and Ironic. Twist.

12:55 Um, our mission from the early days was make internet business personal. And when I came back and we started to lean into AI, I started to wonder, does that mission make any sense anymore? Now part of our lean into AI is that we had no choice. Not only for the business, we needed something new.

13:11 But also we saw that this is the future. You can't fight the future. You must be part of it. And so, okay, fuck, we're gonna be part of it. And Ultimately.

13:23 And it's very easy to tell yourself these little stories. So I'm open that Anyone tell me. This is bullshit. But when I interrogate myself.

13:33 My Soul in my mind. I don't think it is. When I interrogate my heart and my mind, I don't think it is. But

13:44 I I'm now of the belief That Providing it Customer. With uh

13:51 highly engaged Instantly available. Expert consistent. Fast. Charismatic, funny.

14:00 friendly personal agent. Available for Literally every single customer and every minute of the day. Round the clock. It's

14:09 So much more personal. Done. Making them wait. Two. Three.

14:15 Four days. For it. Crappy kind response. And so That's the irony.

14:23 And uh magic. And the wonder of AI. Even if it does. Make us ask some hard questions of ourselves. And think.

14:33 carefully about its impact on humanity. Okay. Actually Is superior at the things we describe as personal.

14:44 And human. relative to humans themselves. And so that that's where I'm at today. Yeah. Maybe it's a bunch of Fancy post rationalization. But

14:54 Hm, honestly, that's That's really where I stand. Yeah, I think I think data has shown people Often Prefer not to talk to humans to just to solve problems that can just be solved.

15:05 Like it's it's it's a lot of stress to try to figure out how to talk to some support agent that doesn't know anything about what's going on. Yes. And the AIs. Just better. Look at Waymo. So

15:16 Way no. Doesn't crash. It has three point five times less crashes than Humans. It doesn't bother you or bug you. I like to chat with

15:27 A new driver as much as the next guy, but not always. Doesn't have hygiene problems. Doesn't take wrong turns. I mean It just doesn't do all these things that

15:37 Really bug people. And it's really interesting to see Uber now. Offer Women the option. Two.

15:46 Call only. Female drivers. And I guarantee the reason they're doing that is because women love Way more. Because they feel safer.

15:56 Like A I is So often. Superior. And humans are gonna be far better at all the things. I'm pro human.

16:04 I love humans. I really want humans in the mix for it. All things in the rest of my life. When it comes to practical, productive, efficient, and effective.

16:15 Value. The glue in between The human parts of our lives actually want AI and robotics. Before we start talking about how you actually made this transformation a success. One other.

16:25 Piece of history is Just your pricing strategy historically has been Not liked by people. For example, I once had a Twitter poll.

16:33 Or a survey on my newsletter, just like what products do you pay the most for of all your staff products in Intercoms by far the most. I know people constantly complain about just how unclear it was and how high it was and now You guys are at the forefront of how to price AI product. So we're gonna get to that, but just talk about the lessons and what happened there with pricing back in the day. Yeah, so I wanna just m validate your survey data. Yes, people.

16:58 Abhorred our pricing. Uh it was a meme. They were like actual Funny. popular viral memes.

17:06 On Twitter that were Making fun of our pricing. Part of the problem If not all the problem. Well there's two problems.

17:16 One was our strategy. Super unfocus, as you said. We're trying to do all the things for all the people. And when you're trying to do all the things for all the people Your mm efforts to capture all that different types of value.

17:30 Are gonna Necessitate. Pretty complex pricing. If you're like Customer service and you're selling seats.

17:38 And you're doing outbound messaging and you need to charge for messages. And you're doing like SD or messenger on a website and you need to charge for leads. Already that's just metrics in every direction. And then if you're trying to sell to many different sizes of customers, you need tiers. And gates.

17:55 And it just became a behemoth, so Part of the problem was the on focus strategy. And then the other part of the problem was an unwillingness to Frankly make bold decisions.

18:07 Say no. Pick a lane. And actually Take pain in the short term for the long term. We rolled out this new pricing and this is even before the fin pricing you're talking about.

18:18 When I came back. And I said, Yes, we're gonna lose a lot of revenue here. Like I can't remember how much we wrote down. But we actually l have already given away something like

18:29 Something like fifty million dollars in air or We've reduced the prices for a lot of customers. Just to give them way simpler pricing. Because surprise, surprise. When people feel like they have far.

18:41 Simpler. More predictable, fair pricing. They'll stick around longer. And it create so much more ease in the company.

18:51 And promotes a healthier relationship with the customer too. When our people saw that we were Screw screwing customers effectively in every direction. It

19:02 Starts to Around the idea that we care about our customers. And then they make other customer unfriendly decisions. And so one of the values I promoted when I came back was that we would be customer obsessed. And so We had to kill our own pri our own pricing and give away a lot of revenue. So that was the the the spirit behind the changes, but We can talk about the fin pricing if you want to also.

19:22 Let's save that'cause that's a really important topic that I think people need to hear. Let's talk about the s the shift and the how you made this actually happen. You make you make it sound like oh Like not fully, but it's oh we have to do s like it wasn't working anyway. We There's no risk they go all in on this AI thing. You're making hundred fifty million dollars a year, AR

19:41 You're worth at least a billion dollars at that point, right? as a business. Yeah. I mean m multiple billions but we were moving more money than that. So we were like multi multiple hundreds of millions. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. Very difficult to actually do, you know, even if things don't feel like they're growing anywhere.

19:56 So first of all, just what was the moment if there was one of just like okay the six week ex Experiment of someone building thin internally. Was it that being like this is it, or was there another moment of like let's go all in on this? It was the combination of The company being older. Us all me and the founders being impatient.

20:16 Like, are we gonna make something out of this? We went through a time when the company's worth a lot. We're private, so we don't have like a daily mark to market. But all the other public software companed eighty percent. Eighty five, ninety percent.

20:31 We saw our revenue growth. Crater. We were used to nice double digits, we were in low single digits. So part of it was Like

20:42 Let's do something here. Another part of it was my own kinda anger and dissatisfaction with how the company was being run. And the m mistakes that I made myself. I made a lot of compromises as a lot of founders and founding CEOs do.

20:59 Two Click. Employees Or do it out of fear. to bring investors along

21:08 You know. Following advice in the industry and best practices. You know, you betray your intuition. In a little bit. Bits and pieces over the years.

21:19 When the bright spark of your original idea turns into this Big. Unstoppable. Scary corporate beast. And a little bit of you dies every single time you go and

21:31 Tray yourself in that way. It's very r like you you know, if you could pick in your mind Three or four Protect darlings from ten years ago.

21:41 When you meet the CEO and talk to them privately. Very few of them feel. Outstanding about the state of their culture and the decisions that they make and the way in which they have to work. All of them have portrayed themselves in little ways.

21:55 And I was I had left the business. I was super sick. I was burned out, frankly, from the revenue.

22:02 Even having started to slow down before I left. I have been Attacked unfairly in the press. Just All of me was just

22:10 Fed up? And I decided to take A very Authoritarian Top down.

22:17 Aggressive found our first approach to all the things. And I found that deeply cathartic. And that was The thing that led to me

22:28 Yeah. In part. The other was just a little bit. good old fashioned logic and the other was desperation. Saying.

22:35 We're doing the AI thing. The AI thing citing and s and and sex exciting and sexy. We need some new energy thing here. The new AI thing makes sense. And also just my intuition says, Go for it. And so

22:48 You know. When People tell these Stories they rewrite history in their minds.

22:55 For the stories Mm. narratives about their brilliance. Actually it's a big messy cocktail of things and

23:07 Anyway, that's my attempt at explaining the cocktail. I saw a stat that when you first launched when you first had this kind of prototype. You were losing money on every transaction.

23:18 That you're charging like a dollar, you're cost you a hundred twenty dollars, something like that. On twenty point. Yeah, yeah. And twenty cents, okay. So there's a lot of vision here if this is going to get to a place where this actually will be great and affordable.

23:32 You know, it's really funny. Like we charge ninety nine cent To resolve. Tickets. You know. Customer.

23:41 problems and we have a higher resolution rate than anyone else. And we are very proud of that and we obsess over that. It is the metric by which These agents are assessed. And

23:52 We wanted our revenue to be One hundred percent align it with. the value that they attain because We had all this scar tissue from pricing prior that felt unfair to customers. And we so we said, what's the most fair that we can possibly find? And when we did all our research we found that

24:10 Many SaaS businesses were expanding between twenty and thirty dollars. Per ticket resolved, we were spanning twenty two. Now consumer businesses Maybe.

24:21 They go down to five dollars. We were thinking Like Can we charge Ten dollars? That seems fair. It's half price. Can we charge five dollars? Can we even charge two and a half dollars?

24:34 But Early on we started to sense that people just wouldn't value the digital work as much as the human work. Even though the digital workers

24:44 Better. More consistent. Always available. Makes the customer far happier. And so we actually started to lean into

24:52 A price that We thought would be. You know, was the nexus between Us earning the most and it being the most palatable. We basically said that

25:02 If someone is not prepared to pay Ninety nine cent. For us to Rapidly and Elegantly.

25:09 Perfectly and excellent. Solve their customers' problem. We need to wrap this up. We don't have a business here. So That was where the ninety nine cent came from.

25:19 And And I always believe that value should That pricing should come from value and not from costs. Cost is our problem. And we just have this

25:27 sense and intuition early on that There's And it got a lot cheaper. And so You know. You know, the margin moves around, but we we make a margin that

25:38 Next test. more than worth our while. And we know our customers get in. Excellent deal. And are able to live to

25:46 Ever able to deliver to their customers. A level of service that they never could before. It's a very clear pitch. We just had uh Modavan on the podcast and Pricing expert and he Has this phrase, beautifully simple pricing is where you want to get to. Also, he's a huge fan of outcome based pricing, which is what you're describing here, where you pay for an outcome.

26:04 So you guys are in the magic quadrant is pricing advice. Yes, thank God. Our pricing worlds are over. Finally. Yeah. Okay, so going back to how you actually did this thing, so you basically you just you described what many people think of now as founder mode. Just top down.

26:20 As you said, third theory and just here's what we're doing. We're not gonna Sit around waiting for you to give me Ideas. How did what did you do? What did that look like internally?

26:30 Um Yeah, there was a couple of things. One was we were burning a lot of money, so I Cut a lot of costs aggressively. Kind of bunch of different projects. We have this like

26:39 Big, glorious office we were about to fit out, and I'm like We're about to hit negative growth territory like Stop it. And a lot of companies were really stuck in the prior

26:51 World where they just We're used to being super successful. Rich and wealthy and spent like drunken sailors. So I stopped. All of that got really frugal.

27:01 In ways I never thought I would. I still haven't touched the interior design of this. office I'm in here, even though I though I call it the hotel Marriott. Um Sick of it. Anyway. That was one.

27:11 Another was I picked a lane. Strategically, we were all over the place, and I said Or doing service. Sandesk had been acquired a couple years prior.

27:20 They were strategically, energetically, culturally. Dead, they were upsetting customers in the market. There's an opportunity there. We're doing service. Forget all the other stuff. Even though there was a lot of people in the company saying, Oh shit. We still have to do it. eighty million dollars of air orb that were

27:36 Getting from the other thing. And we're really good at that. And there's a big opportunity. There's other companies in this space where Billions. The type of decision that

27:46 where I to practice the professional CEO. Approach which is Hey folks. What do you all think? Let's take everyone's input.

27:54 Let's put it all down on a spreadsheet. Everyone out of color. beside all of the different options that we may take. Let's make a group decision. I said Sorry, this is what we're doing. So I was very dictatorial in that respect.

28:07 we had no one making decisions so somebody needed to, even if I had some qualms about the decisions myself. I couldn't predict the future, but someone had to make a call. You know, obviously as soon as AI came around, I jumped hard on AI and and announced that we were gonna spend nearly a hundred million dollars of our own cash on that. We allocated a lot of capital.

28:25 But I also restarted the culture. We had just a very comfortable culture, as a lot of companies did. There was a lot of focus on social issues and A lot of complaining and dissatisfaction. And I rewrote the values. Designed to be a sharp knife to cut out the parts of the company that

28:41 I just knew it wouldn't be effective. So I said that people must be resilient. That we had very high standards. That we'd work incredibly hard. that shareholder value.

28:51 was the most important thing that we'd optimize for. A lot of things that were controversial for this. Prior crowd. And then I design these quarterly performance Processes where Not only would you get a mark.

29:03 or a grade for your performance against your goals that quarter. But you'd also get a score for your behavior against the values. And I hard coded a formula myself, and so I took it out of the manager's hands to say,

29:16 If people got below A certain mark. Respectfully and lovingly, we would say thank you for your service. We're gonna go forward without you. And so you do that just a small number of quarters. And you can start to shape an organization that's designed and the image of the values you want to create.

29:31 And obviously there was a lot of pain. A lot of sat satisfaction. There were attempts at a soft coup, those letters sent to the board. People really aren't happy. But on the other side of it.

29:44 The people left were The most incredible entrepreneurial Brave, inspiring. happy individuals you could possibly imagine.

29:57 And then you hire in Their image. We ran an anonymous employee survey like I think

30:05 fifteen or sixteen months after I started aggressively working through the org and rebuilding the org and rebuilding the culture. And we had Ninety eight to ninety nine percent approval. of management, leadership and new strategy. And this is coming from Me having the lowest class door rating.

30:23 For a CEO I had ever seen when I came back. So I I just want to explain that. Like being that deliberate about your culture and upsetting a lot of people. is the path through which you can create a culture where people are.

30:39 Super happy. Super engaged. Super lion. And now we have just this highly performant organization. Yes, we're messy in many ways. So That was a big part of it too. So

30:51 It was kind of strategically picking a lane. You know, remaking how we go to market, the pricing was a really, really big piece. That had a big effect. Banning on AI. And then culture. And I kinda bury the AI thing because frankly

31:08 None of this would matter if we didn't bet on AI. So The story could all be summed up by saying. When you ask what did I do? Is that We we built fan. And that changed everything.

31:19 You said that this was very unpopular, I imagine. Many people were not happy with all the change and how top down this was. You said there was a a soft coup, is there more you could share about that? Never heard that story. Que when you make that degree of change. And you

31:33 Tell people that they're in Control. like we did in the previous generation of late stage businesses. There's gonna be some friction when you change the rules. And it's

31:44 My strong belief Yeah. great employees and great companies. want and are constructed out of. A very clear and strong hierarchy.

31:55 Where It is The responsibility of the CEO to make brave and hard decisions. Unilaterally. Yes, using their experts.

32:04 as inputs. And be responsible for the outcome. If I make decisions That Hell the company in the way that

32:12 Thankfully. My decisions have I get Rewards and kudos, and I get to go back to the board and say I want a bigger grant. If

32:20 I don't I get fired. And I should get fired. If my big brave unilateral decisions Put us in the toilet.

32:27 then I have to take responsibility for that also. So That's how, in my humble opinion, it should work and I for one don't know that Great company. That doesn't work that way.

32:38 You'll see from time to time I did this a couple of years ago. People will construct these indexes of the performance of companies. that our founder led. And of course this is a self serving statement, but it's also true. And Surprise, surprise the founder of that companies.

32:53 performed substantially. Better. Because they have the moral authority and the willingness to take The risks. That the professional CEOs don't have the remit for.

33:03 Professional COs are typically told don't mess things up. And the founders are Bored if they're not. taking the risk th of messing things up from time to time. And so that's, in my opinion, what creates greatness and great innovation, but Like I said, there will be friction.

33:19 changing a company that's configured for democracy and committee decisions. And Soft and gentle.

33:27 Interactions and communication to be Properly founder led. And top down. So a big lesson here is if you're trying to make the shift and it's just not. Moving, there's a lot of resistance.

33:37 You may need to go hardcore founder mode and make some significant change. the employees kinda turned over during this period. Could be something ultimately like forty percent. Um, so it's a big big turnover over

33:53 Some couple number years. You know? Often the culture is set by a very small number of people, so it only took a quarter to really start to change the Tenure of the uh the tenor of the conversations.

34:06 That were happening. But to bring in the people that were that new level of ambition And w wanted to work as hard as the rest of us. And

34:17 Working in a chore. And Engaged and excited way. That took a little bit Longer time.

34:23 You know. There's such a thing as Product market fit. There's a thing as Founder.

34:29 market fit. There's a thing as found a product market fit, you know, that's how you're doing it right. But there's also su such a thing as Employee founder, product, market fit. You have to have the right employees for the type of business you're creating. And there are Companies that want the need to be more stable.

34:45 And they're gonna want the need to hire more stable individuals. There's gonna be companies that wanna do The highly collaborative More democratic thing. I won't invest in them, but there's companies that want to do it. If you're an employee that enjoys that, there are a lot of positions out there. There are big companies like Google that do that.

35:02 There are startups that hire the Crazy You know. Young, wild, messy early start of people.

35:12 And that's great for them and the company too. So It's really all about having the right individuals. And when you create that not only do you create great success, but you just create a lot more happiness and

35:23 Balance and harmony. You know. Ultimately the employees who wanted them more you know, gentle, democratic environment, they're not gonna be happy in a company like Intercom. or Coinbase or any of these strong organizations.

35:37 They'll be more happy somewhere else. So Even if It requires a little bit of a loving Plush out the door. I know that you're actually doing them a favor in the medium to long run.

35:48 I was gonna say that a lot of these people will be happier working in a different company. Who wants to go? to war every day with your organization and in Slack. That's just not fun. Let's not go for the nervous system or the soul. Yeah.

36:03 So this whole period sounds very stressful for you. Did you ever regret coming back and just like, What the hell did I get myself into? What am I what am I doing to myself? I never regretted coming back. But I have many moments where

36:19 I Don't enjoy the job. I didn't I didn't regret coming back because It was deeply cathartic for me. When a founder runs away from their business

36:29 It is the ultimate Betrayal of You know, there Heart. And the dream that they

36:36 Have no. It's okay to wrap things up and quit. When you kinda run away like I kinda had to'cause I was sick and burned out. And and and kind of disenchanted. I don't know, it didn't feel good. So

36:49 Especially when I had done that having betrayed in a million Or a thousand small ways. My intuition. There was Something I needed to exercise.

36:59 It has been deeply meaningful in that respect. And then of course I've Fortunate that it worked out. I get to be on the second most popular podcast in tech. I get to like pat myself on the back in front of all these people. Who wouldn't want that?

37:13 That said. The reality is that For Particularly people like me. Who like the adventure

37:22 And uh You know. I Agency mean you know, unilateral

37:30 Day to day mm movement where you're trying to make big wild bull decisions. The reality is that If you're successful Most of your days will not be that.

37:43 It'll be Reviewing The bonus. policy for next year. And reviewing.

37:51 You know. the comp proposal for your execs. for the next year. It will be you know, showing up for accountability meetings.

38:00 And stepping through. The status of different work streams. It'll be rushing from meeting to meeting, having eight, nine, ten meetings a day. I don't happen to believe that that's a great way to Live your life.

38:12 It'll be trying to get to all the emails you need to get to such that All those people aren't offended and hurt and You know Try to

38:20 Communicate. And the ways with your staff and your team that is empathetic and thoughtful and keeps in mind that they may be having as shit a day as you are. Like Mm.

38:30 It's not You know, I you're giving me an opportunity to paint the story. Of this. You know. m mavered adventure that you might imagine.

38:41 In a Comic like Yeah, like I'm For some reason. picturing tin tin, you you know, sail the seas, you know, this swashbuckling adventure.

38:51 It's not, it's corporate life kinda sucks, particularly for people like me. So I have many of those days, and so The only reason I'm still around is that I have a broader mission that makes it worth Wow.

39:04 For now. But that's why you see so many of our. Best founders get to a point where they're like Okay. I've had enough.

39:12 Corporate fun. So that's the most authentic answer I could give you. No regrets coming back, but Plenty of pain on A day to day. Basis.

39:22 Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers to thrive in the AI era. Organizations need to adapt quickly. But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like, which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? Дік проводиться дата and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift.

39:45 With DX, companies like Dropbox, Booking.com, Adion, and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and what impact AI is having on engineering productivity. To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com Slash Lenny. That's get dx dot com slash Lenny. One of the interesting things about this space of agents, there's all stock agents who are taking over. It's the future of software, SaaS is gonna

40:12 Be replaced with agents. CX is like a classic. It just feels like Like I imagine looking forward it was not obvious. Now looking back it's like Obviously this is an amazing place for agents to take over work. But there's always this talk of agents will do everything and all the SaaS software is gonna be replaced by agents. Do you have a sense of just like how far this disruption will go outside of C X'cause it's already happening in your businesses.

40:35 The first thing I'll say is that CX. Is Deceptively Large

40:43 Give and it's hidden behind just Two. Words, two letters. You know, customer experience really is Service success sales and marketing in my opinion.

40:52 It's all engagement with all customers. It's the biggest Heart. By headcount. Of

41:01 Any business. Any Consumer business. and any B to B business. The biggest

41:09 organizations are Sales. Service. Success. So

41:15 I'll talk about things other than CX in a moment, but I wanna emphasize that C X is Uh The majority of business operations.

41:26 Of course it'll go beyond CX. Any Uh function. that requires a lot of repetitive operational Mechanical work will be automated, whether it's

41:38 Chasing or collecting or Yeah, issuing invoices. It could be onboarding, offboarding employees. You know. There are so many

41:48 repetitive jobs in an organization that it'll start to replace. One of the Interesting question is How much will be Generic

42:00 operations bots, how much will be? Expert. Agents. You know, there are expert agents for law and contract review. They'll probably be expert agents for

42:11 Accounting. Um, but you'll need the glue in between. All of these agents too. But Future organizations will be agents everywhere.

42:21 I I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what does it all look like in the future and You know, I imagine it As a

42:30 Metally. Of humans and agents And I don't think It's Obviously gonna be

42:37 humans on the top and the agents all on the in the A C ro I C rolls. I think that'll be more of a complex mix. Where you're gonna have You know, people that are like managers and leaders.

42:53 But they'll B and I C roles. Working with agents to configure them for success. And monitor and manage their

43:03 Progress. kind of add that oversight and cover for Edge cases. And so You know.

43:10 I think we're gonna be surprised in which the way that these organizations go. They'll definitely be smaller, they'll be flatter because of that. I I won't be surprised if There are agents at the highest level too. I mean, I've been thinking about how and we do have a great human chief of staff here, but imagine a future human chief of staff. That

43:29 like understands your priorities and actually talks to you and does a check in each day. And reaches out to different people and ask for updates. And uh helps organize your priorities and helps you remember who you need to keep accountable. You know, uh clearly there's an opportunity for that. And so you can imagine agents

43:47 In specific roles like customer. Service. In operational roles being glue. And it being kind of like Co pilot.

43:56 or assistant roles like that which I mentioned. But Uh You know, what I think that all brings is just Epic levels of

44:05 Efficiency It's gonna be super deflationary. There'll be a lot more competition. AI itself is in

44:15 Insanely competitive right now. It's so intense in a way that was never before. That's gonna come to all industries. When so much of their Inner workings.

44:26 becomes automated. And ultimately I think it's gonna be great for the consumer. They'll have more options Cheaper options. And I can't but see that be great for the economy. A lot of economic lubricant as it were, and a lot of new movement and activity.

44:44 And if we were to really go off the reservation, but I'll stop here. That means that we need more humans too. We need population growth to Show up for this big growth economically.

44:55 And Yeah, I just see the hum the future as just a beautiful collaboration between humans and agents in every direction. I love the optimism. Uh someone described this once as a A society, uh what is it, a agentic society.

45:09 Right. Us and agents living together. Right. This begs the question around just jobs. We had Mark Benny off on the podcast. He's, you know, all agent force, agent force, agent force. And asked him just like what jobs do you think are

45:21 Going away. He's just like CX. Going away. Gone. Sales not going away. We need salespeople. Just what's your sense? I know it's like touchy subject. No one ever wants to say jobs are going away.

45:31 But just with your sense of where jobs might be disappearing more most. Yeah. Well I don't find it to be particularly touchy because Jobs have always gone away. Yeah. And technology has done a really good job.

45:42 at stealing jobs. That were repetitive. Demeaning. Dangerous. We have less people losing limbs and dangerous factories, or

45:52 Dying and suffocating down minds. Because of the technology that we now have available to us. People breaking their backs on Farms. Um

46:02 uh or just doing things that's highly demeaning to The great Beautiful creative potential of each human individual life. So

46:11 I won't apologize for Competing with Are competing for shit work. because All the while technology has

46:20 Done that in the past. Population has increased, GDP has increased. Longevity. Um, crime rates have diminished in The Western world

46:30 The world that is enjoy the most technology. So we've no good reason to not believe that that won't Continue. Even while there is difficulty and there has been in the past.

46:41 No doubt. People who were gainfully employed in dangerous Work in mind. I have to find new work. And so Uh I

46:50 don't take that for granted, but I think that this is part of the long arc of humanity flourishing. And getting. Healthier and happier. Um What are the work?

47:01 the types of work that will go away. It's all the demeanor crappy stuff. And and that exists in You know, digital businesses. You ask a human To sit at a keyboard. Answering.

47:13 The same Question. Day in. Day out. And you get to a point where

47:20 You don't even ask them to answer the question. Manually. You ask them to click the button. That brings up. The macro.

47:30 Like What a Horrible. Use of a human life. I've met thousands of people that have worked at Inter intercom.

47:37 A broad range of talents. People who They might not describe themselves as particularly high IQ. Maybe they're were suited at that point in their life for this highly repetitive work.

47:47 You talk to them. For two or three minutes. You'll see the bright spark a beautiful human. That if I if they got to do the right thing. They would.

47:56 light up and bring so much happiness and joy. To the world. So like That's the mission we're all on. I'm not

48:03 Paul Ash here. Like I said, and I'm suggesting that there won't be. Fiction. But for the most part we're doing good.

48:12 And to get specific, there will be CX roles. And a lot of basic repetitive roles. There is a lot of repetitive stuff in sales. So you'll you'll do more sales with less people. And there are S D or roles qualifying You know, basic questions.

48:26 You're not gonna need as many people in sales organizations. So I'm a little misaligned with Mark in that respect, but what he's getting at Is that What sales people bring to the table. Is human connection and trust.

48:40 And that is not about to go away any time soon. Uh and thank God for that. I had uh Ben Mann, the co founder of Anthropic on the podcast. recently and he said that he's like even my job is Uh probably gonna go at some point.

48:55 Like, Lenny, your job is gonna be replaced by A at some point. That was pretty uh compelling. Did not expect him to say that. Yeah, I don't know. I I like It will in many ways. We're gonna have agents and AI to aggregate content and create content. But

49:12 Humans As much as When it comes to productivity. Value efficiency. Efficiency is not the number one thing.

49:24 That we value. You know? If efficiency was the number one thing We value, I'd always buy The cheapest clothes.

49:32 Furniture. Computers Even paper for my printer. But I think

49:37 Humans value things like beauty. And human stories. And human heart and connection. And

49:48 Not only will they still want those. And they'll still want A Lani? that his has his own story. And his own take and opinions and it's a little imperfect.

50:00 But they'll pay more for it. The opponents of AI is gonna make automated Things. Worth zero.

50:11 Just like Yeah, the value of cheap content on YouTube. Why do people subscribe? to some channels and pay more. Why do people pay To rent movies.

50:24 because some things have more quality, more beauty, more craft, more art, more humanity. So I think there'll always be a place for that. View. All right. We got a couple more years at least.

50:36 Yeah. Before I move on to a a different topic, just kind of reflecting back on this shift of Finn and the success that you've had. Are there any other just lessons that we haven't touched on that you think might be helpful for folks that are trying to go through this? Journey. You know, I think it's

50:53 Ultimately that You don't have a choice. Uh, my co founder Des is writing a book at the moment. And that's Court of

51:02 Idea here. You don't have a choice. The story of the technology industry or digital technology is really short. And it's been

51:13 It's punctuated by a small number of things, microprocessors, personal computers. The internet may be mobile. Now there's AI. I think AI is bigger than all these things. And All of these things.

51:26 disrupted essentially all categories. So not only is this slightly disrupt all the categories It's gonna disrupt it in the most aggressive. Violent ways. And if you're not

51:38 In it. You're about to get kicked out of. All of it. And so My strongest advice is

51:45 Roll your sleeves up. Figure out what's gonna disrupt you. Have fun with it. You need to bring in actual talent. We and I would be nothing if we didn't have actual AI scientists and leaders.

51:59 It's the only way we can be successful here. We have an incredible Person who by the time this is out. Will have received a promotion to chief officer. I keep announcing all these things and confidence to you. Fergal Reed. And he's just one of the

52:16 very best in AI applications. And we happened to be working with him for many years. Yeah. So Part of it is finding the talent.

52:24 And part of it is bringing in the young talent too. AI is kind of a young man's game. And I'm young, but I'm not as young as a lot of the kids building AI. And so learning to empower and enable enable them.

52:38 And learn from them too is a really big deal. And unfortunately Part of what you learn from them is The only way you're gonna win right now is if you work your ass off. Because all these little AI companies

52:50 Run by kids in their twenties. Are literally working. Twelve hours a day. Literally.

52:59 Three hundred and sixty five days a year. No joke. All of them. And that's not a fun idea for many of us. Especially those who've

53:07 grown up, some some people in our generation have kids. Or a lot of them do. There's like comfort and stability in your life. You don't want to work like that, but If

53:17 You want in That's part of the Price. And that's how. So many of these young new AI companies are gonna win.

53:26 'Cause very few of the previous generation companies Are willing to make All of those changes. And go all the way in. And so my actual advice, which is

53:35 Not that helpful is that Yeah. fanners of previous generation companies are themselves Not willing to roll up their sleeves. And get into it.

53:46 And work as hard as the kids. Hire a kid. You can be a Chairperson like I was. Have a lot of fun. You can mentor the kid.

53:55 Hire a kid. 'Cause you're in the wrong job, buddy. I love how pragmatic this device is. It what's interesting as you talk about twelve hours a day, every day. It's like we're trying to get close to what agents are doing. Uh which is half. That's basically fifty percent of an agents. But that that's not just a poetic

54:11 Cute fra thing to say. That Comes from something very real. Which is These younger companies

54:19 Know how to use AI. Older companies don't. The younger companies are vibe coding and using AI for their Creative work.

54:29 and for their job descriptions. Ай гарантії You go to companies of our generation and even We have had to push people. You go to companies of our generation

54:40 most people in most organizations, particularly non technical organizations They're not using any AI. Maybe they're Starting. to use chat GPT to write a job description. But they're not doing it by default.

54:53 Uh and so That's more than a joke. You're competing with young Companies that are In part AI.

55:02 This reminds me I did um interview with the perplexity founders. Uh it was I just checked April twenty twenty four, so just over a year ago. And they were saying that the way they operated and this sounded so crazy at the time is any time they were They had a question for anyone else on the team. They first asked Chat GPT. About it.

55:19 And then they go ask the person as like that is insane. And now it's just like obvious. That's what we all do now. It's just like hey, I'm just gonna talk voice, what didn't what Yeah. It's a it's a prime example. They're doing many such things. Um when I say three hundred and sixty five days a year.

55:35 They're the company I think of because they're doing exactly that. All these young companies Are doing Wild, weird And ridiculous things that people you're in my age

55:45 Kinda chuckle that. But it's Business as usual for them. So there's a just a big mind shift, cultural shift, and there's a culture clash. The new generation.

56:00 The sooner you kinda wrap your head around that, the sooner you can start to onstate yourself, I think. And just to build on that, like the sounds Crazy to work this hard, like It sounds very stressful, not fun. Why would I do this? This sucks. But at the same time, this is as you said, such an unusual rare opportunity. There's so much opportunity. There's so much wealth being created. There's so many businesses being created. This is the time, if you were to ever work really hard, this is a good time to do it.

56:26 I I think so. I don't Actually generally promote working. That hard. I try to not fetishise it.

56:35 I actually think A life well lived. Includes Taking slow walks in nature where you're not thinking about A or growth or hiring your

56:46 Chief Revenue Officer. you know, not going to eight meetings a day. Maybe you should go to no meetings a day. Certainly not working. twelve hours a day. I don't actually promote that.

56:57 In general. as a thing one should do with their life. I'm simply saying that If you want to compete.

57:07 And And enjoy success. In This age, which means you need to Be doing AI.

57:14 That is their price. So You either decide to pay the price. Or Get out.

57:21 Don't Acid. You see all these companies saying We do AI and they've just sprinkle a little bit of crappy AI and they've got the same cultures.

57:29 It won't work. The one thing I will say The one little asterisk to my first point is that All great people and great things. have been achieved through hard work.

57:41 And so I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth here. To younger people. To let them know that. Every

57:51 Way of living is valid. But people who've achieved things have always worked hard and they find a way to enjoy it too. And particularly in twenty twenty five in AI. I wanna follow this thread. I was gonna ask you this earlier, but I didn't and I wanna see if this takes us somewhere interesting.

58:05 Just watching you. Speak and talk. You're very Self reflective, very centered. Uh you these you have these really good breaths you take when you think about something.

58:17 I met you a long time ago randomly at a party when you were just starting Intercom. I don't think you were like that. Was there During this kind of two year period was there kind of a transformation that you went through to kind of Absolutely. Yeah. Th there's a couple of things. First I mean there's three things that come to mind.

58:33 Working In a startup? For fourteen years. has a certain way of kicking you in the head. Many times a day.

58:45 That either kills you or makes you far stronger. So that's one piece. There's no elegance to that point. But I think we can all ensure that that level of experience

58:55 Teaches you something. You grow up very fast. Point two is I did a lot of therapy. I found this amazing guy. Twelve years ago.

59:06 He started a couple of his own tech companies and took them public. He only coached and was a therapist to CEOs. He's now kind of in a later stage of his career, but this amazing guy.

59:18 His name is Yelsey Amram. Amazing guy. I just landed on my feet. I just didn't know who I was dealing with, but You know, one of the greatest minds and teachers

59:31 And of kind of The last year. I don't know, many decades. People don't even know him, but he's th he's he's Thought and worked with many CEOs.

59:40 And He just Help me get to know me. And take time for myself. And

59:46 People like to hate on therapy right now, I think a lot of Therapy sucks. And a lot of therapists are not good. And They fear that actually

59:57 Therapy will lobotomize them. And turn them into Thumb sucking. Naval gazing. Yeah.

1:00:06 You know. Soft. Irrelevant. Losers. That won't have that edge anymore.

1:00:13 And the interesting thing about Twelve years. Oh Weekly Therapy and spiritual work.

1:00:19 Is that It takes your address off. But they're all edges that are super counterproductive. All the edges that made you an asshole, got you triggered. miscommunicated or like You know, fought back when it

1:00:33 When you w were insecure. They take all the edges away. Then help you see yourself and love yourself so much more for who you are. P. Completely unafraid to acknowledge the things you're not good at, but

1:00:46 Oh, the things you are. And in understanding yourself, you understand others better. and can communicate in a substantially more connected and authentic way. Great. Great.

1:00:57 Therapy. And it has to be great. Is A recipe for brilliant leadership, in my opinion. And then the third part is

1:01:09 Two years away where I ran away. Where I was sick, revenue growth wasn't doing so hot. I unsuccessfully tried to defend myself from a bunch of fake bullsh in the in the newspapers. I mean I was Beat up.

1:01:23 And In a moment like that. Your ego, your sense any sense you have of your Greatness is eviscerated. And

1:01:34 That's painful. It it can be so painful that many people don't come back from it. And I credit the ten years at that point, or nine years of therapy I did at that point. Plus the support of this therapist and coach that I had.

1:01:47 To survive it. But if you can survive it. What you end up with on the other side is All of those insecur a lot of the insecurities And all that ego bullshit.

1:01:58 That made you super ineffective. jealous or triggered for all sorts of different reasons. It's gone. And Your image that you are this perfect brilliant leader that

1:02:09 All successful founders form. When they are successful. Had to die. And the reason that's so good is that that's so limiting. When you have this Ego identity of yourself about

1:02:23 How Fucking amazing you are. Any moment that challenges that is super scary. Anyone who questions it is offensive.

1:02:33 And so I credit wherever I am today and I have Decades of learning still to go. to those three components. And I feel super fortunate to have

1:02:44 had all of them, even though the last one sucked. I can finally say Wow, it really helped. Hm. Thank you for sharing all that. Um I'm glad I went there. I want to show you something that I randomly have in my office my wife just got me that I think you're gonna love.

1:02:59 It's a pe it's a piece of art that I think will resonate. Yeah, what am I looking at here? So it's a hand. It's a hand with a snap, and then let me see if he can see I can't see what it says. It says ego death now. Right.

1:03:13 Like at this. Good. Exactly. There it is. Peacefully. become smaller and

1:03:21 And even great. There was you know, Ram Das is this great spiritual teacher who died a few years ago. And someone asked him on his deathbed.

1:03:35 Something like You know. How did you get over your bullshit or your ego? And he said Mm. I never did just the edges got smoothed away.

1:03:46 Mm. This is a guy who had like seventy years of the Deepest wildest spiritual. Work. He acknowledged, no, still my same self.

1:03:57 So the ego's still there and we we we actually need to acknowledge it and love it and When you When you acknowledge it then, it's not a surprise when you're like a little jealous and you're like huh I'm jealous. That's funny. Okay. And it's all it's all good.

1:04:09 Reminds me of Daniel Conneman, who wrote all these books about biases that we have and like here's all the ways we're flawed. People ask him, have you like learned to live more rationally? He's like not not at all. Knowing all these things about how we're flawed in the way we think all these biases doesn't actually I can't use it in life. We're human and we should let ourselves be human. I think it's beautiful.

1:04:28 Where we're where logic systems But we're also heart systems and body systems and soul systems, so All of it. Is good. Okay. I wanna go in a completely different direction. The last thing I wanna talk about. I I needed to mention this.

1:04:40 I don't know if you've seen this, but I've been doing research on which companies produce the best product leaders. And I've been doing this by looking at which alumni of companies go on to become CPOs at the highest rate, get promoted the most at their next job. become the first product manager at a few startups, start their own companies. Intercom has come in number one.

1:05:00 Across this research next to like Palantir and Stripe. Revolute. So The question that's back says what are you what are you guys doing that produces such great product leaders? There's kinda like the hiring piece and then there's the what they do at intercom piece.

1:05:14 So what do you think? What do you think is is as creating these sort of Really big successes from your alumni group. Yeah. I don't have a really succinct answer, unfortunately.

1:05:24 I can say in the abstract. Our culture is a very producty culture. So like Myself and Des you know, there's four founders and me and Des trainer. control of a lot like m all the strategy.

1:05:39 We're product guys. You know, I was I was like a a pr I was a software designer. You know, I study computer science, so I'm tech technical, but never did it. Professionally. So

1:05:48 The first part is that just product innovation design just core what's just core to our culture. And people always picked up on that. So I think good people want it to work. Here. We were good at

1:05:59 Finding good people. The other part was that Because We had this sprawling strategy. We had all these

1:06:08 Products. That we needed A complex Structure for it. Not included.

1:06:14 W lots of PMs and PM groups that we gave a lot of Autonomy too. And so like kind of uh the product of our Big messy strategy was that We had PMs that got to act like many CEOs.

1:06:27 And so I think that they got to learn the broader skill sets beyond designing wireframes and interviewing some customers. They really own it like a mini CEO to some degree. I think there's one other thing which is You know

1:06:42 Part to our approach was this Deeply first principles uh thinking methodology. Almost to a fault. Although I don't think it's a fault.

1:06:53 We would w I and we would create frameworks for Everything. It's like okay. We want to Do these events.

1:07:02 Who are the events for What? Is the ultimate goal of the event. What's the mechanism by which events work? What are other mechanisms?

1:07:11 That can achieve that same goal. How do we define success for an event like that? How does the user or the attendee define

1:07:21 Value. What other things do those people find valuable? Like we create this like complex systems to try and approach everything, but the net effect was we'd have really joined up considered strategy. And it's everywhere. Like

1:07:37 Paul Adams, our chief product officer. I didn't even plan to show this. He made this Well, crease meet the AI age and the transformation of customer service. And it's a bunch of frameworks. For how to think about

1:07:49 AI Et cetera. So It's part of what we do. And so we would hire people who are good at that, but we teach that. That's teachable. And not everyone

1:07:58 does that. And so the conversations that Des and I would have You know, we still love being on whiteboards. Our very first office, our own office in Dublin. with tiny office One. War was like

1:08:12 For Five computer. Computers. The other wall was just all whiteboards. We love that we had a whiteboard wall. In our next office We had a room, square room.

1:08:22 And all walls were whiteboards. So we just love to like draw diagrams. So you can teach all that stuff. So yeah, it it's just all that good energy product. product energy, first principles.

1:08:33 The people we chose. And and on the founder side, I was talking to Daz about this this morning. Like Why have so many intercom people gone on to be fanners, I think it's because we've

1:08:45 We hired founder types. And my pitch to people was always Come to Atrecom, figure out how great companies are built and build it with us, and then go on to start your own. I would say that often at all hands. But the irony is that

1:08:59 the people we hired back then, the founder types, were probably not great employees. But they were better founders. I'm not a good employee. And so I I it'll be interesting to see if this current cohort we'll get money founders out of this current cohort. But will they convert as well as they did before? Because

1:09:17 We're now hiring people who Wanna be part of something bigger. They're more mature and grown up. More stable and consistent. They're part of

1:09:25 you know, they have a certain expertise and a certain lane they want to work in. And maybe they're not the crazy types that went on the star companies, but it's wild. I did see some of that research By you. Particularly the one where you show the

1:09:39 the company's rank by the number of fans that they have. And I'm like What is happening? I was s a surpr I was I'm surprised that we were that high as you were.

1:09:48 Because there are many other great companies on that list. So Surprised I'm proud. I love uh I love when people say I don't really have like a clear answer and then you have exactly a clear answer. And it resonates, uh

1:10:01 A a lot with other companies on this list that I've had on. of what the themes are and I'll just reflect back with you them. One is complexity. That comes up a lot. So like and interestingly, most of the other companies in the list I'll read them real quick, Intercompal, NTA Revolute, N twenty six, Dropbox, Chime, Stripe. And then Coinbase and

1:10:19 Notions down there. So many are FinTech. Almost all are fintech. Right. And The complexity there is really high. So there's like a really interesting trend there for just like complexity.

1:10:29 Ownership is another one that comes up a lot. Mini COs, GMs kind of roles. Right. Um first principles thinking and just like going to the bare metal comes up a lot in these conversations. Yes. And then hiring senior people, hiring foundry types. Yes. Like Stripe did a lot of that. I think Stripe did a lot of first principle stuff and fan types. The uh the other thing, we're not we didn't even talk about this, but you guys invented rice. You guys uh popularized jobs to be done. Like speaking of frameworks, you guys are a wealth of frameworks that we all use to running and frameworks. Yeah.

1:11:00 Drowning slash uh changing the way everyone builds product in a really positive way. Okay. Um Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on or leave listeners with before we get to a very exciting Lightning round. When

1:11:13 Someone like me comes on a podcast like this. They always have an ulterior motive. And that's Healthy and good. It's part of the transaction.

1:11:23 Some of it is to You know. Enjoy feeling like an expert. But my m ulterior motive today is To make sure that people understand that.

1:11:34 Intercom is a fundamentally different type of late stage company. We are A large Old startup.

1:11:42 Every single way in which we work is As a startup. And are competing with And crushing

1:11:50 The actual startup. competition in our agent categories. And the reason that that's important for people to know is just like I said earlier that Yeah. Handicap?

1:12:02 Yeah. good but late stage companies have is that they're late stage and people Don't Mentally put them in the same Box.

1:12:10 They just don't imagine these older companies. If if I tell you that IBM. Had made the most wildly

1:12:20 Innovative. Coding assistant. Mm, you'd find it hard to believe. Most people would. It's maybe so interesting such that it would stick in your mind and you'd go look at it, but

1:12:30 By default, people aren't gonna look at IBM. And so I want people to take a new look at Intercom'cause it's a brand new company. And Our mission is to

1:12:40 Help. Every single type of business deliver. Impeccable. Incredible. Beautiful.

1:12:50 personal service to every single one of their users. And people, many thousands of people are using Fin for that today. So Go check out Finn, please. Finn.ai. And y I don't know if you mentioned this at the beginning, but let's mention it. You

1:13:03 You predict that you'll be The fastest growing So May you know, two years ago we were in the low single digits Growth rate.

1:13:16 We doubled our growth rate on last year we were in the Low double digits. This year we're in the fifteenth percentile of all public software companies. So you take the hundred and twenty something. public software companies we're in the fifteenth percent though. So we're like getting up there fast. And if we sustain this trajectory,

1:13:34 And it's obviously dangerous to But these types of things out publicly, but I'll you know I'll tell you, I look at the charts and it's hard not to imagine where this Uh goes. I think we're gonna find ourselves

1:13:45 being the fastest growing out of all relative to all public software companies. So let's let's see. But That's the level of shock, surprise, and transformation that has actually happened here. All because of Finn. So I'm uh you know.

1:13:58 Check in with me in a year and maybe I'll be embarrassed or maybe I'll be Feel like a genius. Or underselling it. This is just reflects back on exactly how started our conversation. You've done something extraordinary in their commentum Really happy that we're hearing the we're sharing this story.

1:14:11 Thank you. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Please ready. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? So I f I found I lost the habit of reading as I started to get more and more stressed. Um with my startup and so I would listen to audio books here and there, but the

1:14:30 The most recent book I read is a book called Nuclear war scenario. And It's a uh very much a non fiction and scare the shit out of me. So if you like nightmares, it'll be beautiful.

1:14:45 Bad time reading. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's a recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? I love movies.

1:14:51 Uh. I I want T V to be better, but I very rarely find T V To be great. the the one the the first and last TV show I loved was True Detective One. It was just like incredible.

1:15:03 But And the Last movie I watched was Twenty eight years later. And that's by Danny Boyle.

1:15:11 I'm I'm like I you know, I was born in the eighties, grew up as a kid in the nineties. And she grew up with. You know Yeah, tr train spotting was twenty eight days later. Then he made a movie called Sunshine. So twenty eight years later.

1:15:26 is a type of movie that's just not made anymore. It's the most nineties movie. made since the nineties. It's like very rock and roll. And also deeply touching, so

1:15:39 I was really surprised by that. I bet I would love to know the younger generations that are watching this, what they may think. They may hate it. Yeah. But I love twenty eight years later. So this is the same person I made twenty eight days later. Yeah. Twenty nine years later. Twenty eight years later. Wow, okay, very cool. Didn't know about that.

1:15:55 Yeah. Do you have a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? Could be a gadget, could be an app. Can be close. I very rarely Light products. I'm s s such a perfectionist that

1:16:08 It has to be really simple. With very little moving parts. Like a bowl. Good.

1:16:18 I've started to get more into coffee. I've been buying products by fellow. They're remarkably good for consumer products. Like different. It's a on a different level. So there's some sort of Level of taste and craft.

1:16:31 Happening there that I don't see. Basically any other consumer hardware type products. And of all things I bought a Porsche nine eleven recently.

1:16:40 And that is a Beautiful product. The interiors are exquisite. And There's still a bunch of shit that

1:16:48 It's gonna annoy you. So it's like far from perfect. So Yeah. Perfectionism is Sometimes a gift if you're in the business a cranium.

1:16:58 Products, but also quite the curse. You're never happy. Including with the Porsche nine eleven. I think that's the third time someone recommended a car. Someone recommended I think Boz at Facebook recommended a fancy Mercedes and then someone once suggested a Rivian. So now we got Porsche on list. Uh I always thought maybe one day I'll give someone All the prizes, all the products people have ever mentioned, and this and those are getting those are getting, you know, portion might be a little high. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself repeating?

1:17:25 Coming back to in work or life, sharing with friends. You know it's Uh It's it's it's trite, it's not sophisticated. Yeah.

1:17:33 You know, and it's more of a concept than a phrase, but it's something around the idea that life is short. I'm just so aware that Time takes by. And we all live on autopilot.

1:17:45 so much of what we do is inspired by either our insecurities or Things that other people we look up to or envy do. very rarely making contact with what we really want and following our Hearts and our heads. And

1:18:01 Yeah, we just kind of like get stuck in these lanes and just live out our days. And certainly when you get you know, forty one now. Get to forty one. Thankfully.

1:18:13 Still very young. Anyone in their forties, congrats. Should feel good about that. But I know if you're in your twenties or thirties, forty feels old. But when you're when you're in your forties

1:18:25 My experience is that The weeks and the months and then the years go by. Like it's not a big deal. I'm like back at intercom two and a half years now. To s to to any of these kids in AI in their twenties.

1:18:38 If they don't get something done or achieved by next month, they'll be so disappointed in themselves and so impatient. And in some ways At least when it comes to productivity, they're better at getting more out of out of the time. But

1:18:51 I'm now trying to get more life out of the time too, so Yeah. Just That's If if if there is a model, it's like

1:18:58 Life is short or like Memento Mori. You know? W we're we're all on the way out, so make the use of what you've got. Fun fact I built uh an app once called Savorable. that helped you save at the moment. It's called Savorable and it sent you a text.

1:19:12 Every few hours, I don't know, maybe once a day. Uh with little reminder of way to say mem Saved for the moment. And one of the texts was just like Remember you will die. Yeah.

1:19:22 And and and the problem is that like Івен да адія We don't we forget it instantly. And if you start getting text every day, you'll ignore the text. Like

1:19:33 By default. We just Don't want to acknowledge that reality on a day to day basis. Maybe that's important. Yeah, maybe for the best. Yeah.

1:19:41 Yeah. Okay. Final question. Speaking of apps, I was doing research on you in preparation for this and I didn't realize you built Quitter. Back in the day. I love Twitter. I found it so fun. It basically told you anytime someone unfollowed you on Twitter. Right. Uh so the question is just what happened to that app?

1:19:58 Um, I think we eventually sold it. for like fourteen K. Wow. Um On one of these I think there's a website called Flipper where you could sell websites. It really blew up. It was like a little experiment.

1:20:13 Kind of a social experiment. It was the first time That I had this feeling. That There's no reason

1:20:22 Uh S someone wouldn't want to use this. Like Obviously people are gonna want to use this. And it was really instructive for me because

1:20:30 It taught me that that feeling is possible. You meet so many founders, young founders particularly. And they don't have a sense within themselves about the value of the stuff they're building. Will this be good? Let's get customer feedback.

1:20:45 And it is possible to build things that you Deeply know makes sense. That's why my formula for building things was to always build things for myself. And that was what Quitter was like. You know, followers go followers go down. At that point in time, people had

1:20:59 One hundred followers or two hundred followers. You'd want to know. Who who is not my friend anymore? Oh man. I know I love that that was your bar of like

1:21:08 That led you to this success later is like if it's as good as Quitter in terms of product market fit and so on. I mean it was it had the best fit ever. About everyone on Twitter tried to sign up for it. And it broke. Well I loved it. Uh, Owen, thank you so much for doing this. Uh I love just how real and open you are about everything and just how

1:21:28 uh much insight you have to share. Uh I also just love the vibe. I feel like I just am more centered just watching you speak. Uh two final questions where can folks Check out Finn, follow you if they want to follow up on anything, and then how can listeners be useful to you? Check out Finn dot

1:21:44 AI. If they wanna follow me, I'm E O G H A N on Twitter. So it's Irish spelling of own. But if they want to be helpful to me

1:21:55 You know, I love them to try Finn. I love them too. You know, have their friends that run any kind of customer operations try it too. Um This

1:22:06 AI thing is noisy. There's so much hype. But It's also really real. And the weird thing about Finn, even relative to the coding apps, the coding apps are blowing up and yet

1:22:19 There's a lot of people experimenting and kicking tires. You can't kick tires with Finn. We only deliver value when you expose it to your customers and it closes tickets and makes them happy. And so like AI is really really happening. And so

1:22:33 If you know anyone out there that has customers, they should be using Finn. It's it's it's the smartest Cheapest easiest way to dramatically enhance their business. So if they do that, they'll be helping me sincerely.

1:22:46 I'm sold. Oh. Pretty fun. This was amazing. Yeah. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

1:22:55 Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show. at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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