Intercom co-founder Eoghan McCabe warns founders against competing in established software categories without a fundamentally disruptive technology model.
“Please don't take the egregious sacrifices to everything you value in your life by building an incrementally superior product in a big category. You will go All sorts of nowhere.”
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More from Eoghan McCabe
Insight
McCabe: Employees who complain about non-company issues are bad culture fits
“Hey, it turns out that the employees who would constantly complain about things not related to the company are actually not a good fit and not the type of people that we need to be really successful.”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 4:16Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
Disclosure
McCabe: Intercom stack ranks all employees quarterly using an algebraic score
“The manager simply rates the employee's performance against their goals for the quarter, because we set goals every quarter, and their behavior against each value from one to five. Plugs that into a little form. Some very basic algebra is done. Spits out a num…”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 20:09Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
Disclosure
McCabe: Intercom enforces quarterly bottom-tier quotas with fast-track termination PIPs
“So imagine two percent of people got the bottom rating, but I, my, by my own appraisal, look around the organization and say, this is not good enough. I want three, four, five percent of people to get the bottom rating. Then you're very prescriptive about what…”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 20:50Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
Disclosure
McCabe: Cut Intercom headcount by 27% and removed most HR upon return
“When I went back, I decreased the size of the company by 27%. Got rid of most of HR. Got rid of most of our policies and practices and all the grown-up stuff.”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 37:08Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
Opinion
Forcing sales contracts over self-serve hurt Intercom in the long term
“The co-commercial strategy of the company moved away from our intuition, which was customer friendly, self-serve, cheap and cheerful, sell to small companies to you must talk to sales. You must sign a contract. We will twist your arm every time you want to use…”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 8:27Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
Disclosure
McCabe: Intercom eliminated peer and self-reviews for formulaic values-based evaluation
“When I went back to Intercom, I found a culture I didn't like. And I ripped up the old values, wrote new values. And rather than these values be motivational posters, and I did specifically design them tongue-in-cheek as motivational posters I made them execut…”
Eoghan McCabeSep 5, 2024▶ 19:22Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
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