Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO

Eoghan McCabe is the CEO and cofounder at Intercom, an AI customer service platform. Intercom has raised over $240M, and was last valued at $1.3B in 2018. After spending 9 years building the company, Eoghan left Intercom in 2020, but he’s since returned, reshaping Intercom and pioneering its pivot to an AI-first service. This episode highlights his unabashed takes on leaning into your intuition as a founder, and his perspectives on the critical junctures in company building. In today’s episode, we also discuss: • Eoghan's reflections since leaving Intercom • The value of intuition and first-principles thinking • The changes Eoghan made upon returning to Intercom • How Eoghan increased Intercom's productivity by 41% • Tactical advice on hiring top talent • Why you can't make small improvements in big categories • Crafting a culture of ruthless honesty and transparency • Why software branding is in crisis Referenced: • 37signals: https://37signals.com/ • Basecamp: https://basecamp.com/ • Brian Halligan (HubSpot): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhalligan/ • David Heinemeier Hansson (37signals, Basecamp): https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-heinemeier-hansson-374b18221/ • Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/ • Jason Fried (37signals, Basecamp): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-fried/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Marc Benioff (Salesforce): https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff/ • Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/ Where to find Eoghan: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoghanmccabe/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/eoghan Where to find Brett Berson: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: • Website: https://firstround.com/ • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps 0:00:00 - Founder intuition vs. standard practice 0:25:00 - Silicon Valley knowledge loops 0:28:13 - Building an executive team 0:36:38 - Eoghan’s return to Intercom 0:42:02 - Transparent and honest leadership 0:46:42 - Changing Intercom’s strategy 0:54:22 - AI and category disruption 1:03:17 - How Intercom thinks about brand 1:10:40 - Eoghan’s inspirations