How Intercom rose from the ashes by betting everything on AI

Eoghan McCabe, founder and CEO of Intercom, describes how he steered a late-stage SaaS business with stalling growth into an AI-first company built around its Fin agent. The conversation covers the turnaround's strategy, pricing shift to outcome-based fees, the top-down culture reset and resulting turnover, and his views on AI's impact on jobs and work.

01Key learnings

• When growth stalls in a late-stage SaaS business, cut costs hard and pick one clear strategic lane instead of trying to serve every customer type.
• Simplify and fairly price your product even at short-term revenue cost; McCabe gave away roughly $50M ARR to replace confusing pricing with simpler terms.
• Price AI products on outcomes that align with customer value, like charging 99 cents per resolved ticket, rather than on the vendor's underlying costs.
• Rewrite company values and tie quarterly reviews to them; McCabe hard-coded a formula that let go of people scoring low on both goals and behavior.
• Expect significant turnover when resetting culture; McCabe estimated roughly 40% of employees left, and says the right people for the new direction are then hired.
• Build AI capability with dedicated talent and younger AI practitioners, and accept that competing in AI requires an intense, high-effort pace.
• Use reflection and personal development to lose defensive ego edges; McCabe credits long-term therapy with improving his leadership and communication.
• Expect AI to disrupt most categories aggressively; organizations that don't adopt it risk being pushed out, so start by identifying what will disrupt your business.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.