Opinion
McCabe: Acquired Zendesk was culturally and strategically dead
“Zendesk had been acquired a couple of years prior. They were strategically, energetically, culturally dead. They were upsetting customers in the market. There's an opportunity there. We're doing service.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom Will Outgrow Every Public Software Company Next Year
“I think we're going to find ourselves being the fastest growing out of all relative to all public software companies.”
Opinion
McCabe: AI is superior to humans at things described as personal
“Even if it does make us ask some hard questions of ourselves and think carefully about its impact on humanity, it actually is superior at the things we describe as personal and human relative to humans themselves.”
Insight
McCabe: Great Companies Require Clear Hierarchy and Unilateral CEO Decision-Making
“And it's my strong belief that great employees and great companies want and are constructed out of a very clear and strong hierarchy. Where it is the responsibility of the CEO to make brave and hard decisions unilaterally. Yes, using their experts as inputs an…”
Opinion
McCabe: Founder-Led Companies Substantially Outperform Professional CEO-Led Ones
“You'll see from time to time, I did this a couple years ago, people will construct these indexes of the performance of companies that are founder-led, and of course, this is a self-serving statement, but it's also true, and surprise, surprise, the founder-led …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom Had Around 40% Employee Turnover During Turnaround
“Could be something ultimately like 40%. So it was a big, big turnover over some couple number years.”
Disclosure
McCabe refuses to invest in democratic or highly collaborative companies
“There's going to be companies that want to do the highly collaborative, more democratic thing. I won't invest in them, but there's companies that want to do it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Enterprise AI automation will be super deflationary and boost competition
“What I think that all brings is just epic levels of efficiency. It's going to be super deflationary. There'll be a lot more competition.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Sales teams will shrink as AI automates repetitive SDR tasks
“There is a lot of repetitive stuff in sales. And so you'll, you'll do more sales with less people. And there are SDR roles, qualifying, you know, basic questions. You're not going to need as many people in sales organizations.”
Opinion
McCabe: Incumbents sprinkling superficial AI onto existing cultures will fail
“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. It won't work.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom's Fin Will Surpass $100M ARR in Under Three Quarters
“We'll pass a hundred million air ore with Finn in less than three quarters.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom Leads CX AI Agents in Revenue, Customers, and G2 Rating
“And in that category, we are the biggest by customer count, biggest by revenue, best by performance benchmarks. We win all our head to heads and our direct competitor bake offs. We're rated number one on G two.”
Insight
McCabe: Instant AI support is more personal than delayed human canned responses
“Providing a customer with a highly engaged, instantly available, expert, consistent, fast, charismatic, funny, friendly, personal agent. Available for literally every single customer at every minute of the day around the clock is so much more personal than mak…”
Opinion
McCabe: Uber added female driver options because women feel safer in Waymo
“And I guarantee the reason they're doing that is because women love Waymo because they feel safer.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom surrendered ~$50M in ARR to simplify pricing
“Like, I can't remember how much we wrote down, but we actually have already given away 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”
Insight
McCabe: Unfair customer pricing prompts employees to make anti-customer decisions
“When our people saw that we were screwing customers effectively in every direction, it starts to erode the idea that we care about our customers. And then they make other customer unfriendly decisions.”
Disclosure
McCabe: Intercom committed nearly $100M in cash to AI
“You know, obviously, as soon as AI came around, I jumped hard on AI and announced that we were going to spend nearly a hundred million dollars of our own cash on that.”
Opinion
McCabe: A founder running away from their startup is the ultimate betrayal
“When a founder runs away from their business, it is the ultimate betrayal of You know, their heart and the dream that they have now. It's okay to wrap things up and quit when you kind of run away. Like I kind of had to, cause I was sick and burned out and kind…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Future organizations will definitely be smaller and flatter with AI
“They'll definitely be smaller. They'll be flatter because of that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCabe: AI abundance will drive the value of automated content to zero
“The abundance of AI is going to make automated things worth zero, just like The value of cheap content on YouTube. Why do people subscribe to some channels and pay more? Why do people pay to rent movies? Because some things have more quality, more beauty, more…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom's Fin Grew From $1M to $12M ARR in Year One
“Fin, which is our AI agent, which is, you know, the future of the business, the thing that will disrupt the old business. It's, you know, growing north of 300%. It took off really fast, like all these other AI companies you hear of the first year. It grew from…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom built Fin beta within six weeks of GPT-3.5
“We were only six weeks into the launch of GPT. 3.5 when we actually had a beta version of fin.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCabe: Intercom reached 98% to 99% leadership approval after overhaul
“We ran an anonymous employee survey, like, I think, It was 15 or 16 months after I started aggressively working through the org and rebuilding the org and rebuilding the culture. And we had a 98 to 99% approval of management, leadership, and new strategy.”
Insight
McCabe: Founder ego identities make any challenge terrifying and offensive
“When you have this ego identity of yourself about How fucking amazing you are. Then any moment that challenges that is super scary. Anyone who questions it is offensive.”
Eoghan McCabe