Opinion
Traynor: There is no line of sight to a trillion-dollar European company
“Like I don't see a line of sight to a trillion dollar company in Europe full stop.”
Opinion
Traynor: Customer service is extremely vulnerable in AI's 'kill zone'
“I think genuinely customer service is very much in like the kill zone of AI or whatever. I think it's really you know, it's a very vulnerable space if you don't move with the times.”
Insight
Traynor: AI builders must automate complete outcomes rather than individual minor tasks
“We shouldn't be approaching AI from just simply, how can we automate a task? Or how can we automate a little step? Or like, you know, how can we summarize this paragraph? Or you have to actually look at how can we automate the outcome?”
Insight
Traynor: The era of SaaS is an era of "right-click view source"
“The era of SaaS is an era of like right click view source. You know, ultimately like if there's a single thing you've done, other people can do it. The job is to build a brand around having the best product. And to do that, you often, you have to have the fres…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Traynor: AI will accelerate the death of seat-based SaaS pricing
“I do think separate to all this, SaaS is going to be a bit more usage-based and metered anyway. I think the days of, like, seats above all are starting to fade away. AI is going to accelerate it, but I think generally speaking, people are kind of realizing tha…”
Disclosure
Traynor: Many startups in his angel portfolio build thin AI wrappers
“When I like, you know, I also invest in companies and I talk to companies in my portfolio and a lot of them are kind of building these thin wrapper solutions.”
Insight
Traynor: Higher AI resolution rates come at the cost of worse answers
“If you're willing to tolerate worse answers you can hit a higher resolution rate, but that's a very conscious trade-off that I think people aren't honest enough about.”
Disclosure
Traynor: Intercom plans to push customer support automation from 50% to 90%
“Does it like, you know, we have genuinely a sort of full spectrum of how we're going to automate support to get from our current, say, 40, 50% total automation up to like maybe seventies, eighties, nineties, depending on the business.”
Disclosure
Traynor: Intercom's AI bot Fin charges $0.99 per resolution
“Fin charges, 99 cents per answer.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Traynor: Any company enabling Intercom's Fin gets 25% to 30% resolution rate
“On average, I would be confident any business who turns on fin will get at least like 25, 30.”
Insight
Traynor: Test AI safely on free users, unstaffed hours, and unsupported languages
“What we encourage those people to do is just work out a way to dip their toe in. So like, hey, how about if Fin only works with your free customers? How about if Fin only works in the languages you don't speak? How about if Fin only works on the errors that yo…”
Disclosure
Traynor: Intercom's AI chatbot Fin handles millions of customer resolutions
“Like we have like thousands of people using it to do millions of full resolutions for people”
Insight
Traynor: For routine support, customers value speed over personal tone
“And people actually care about instancy more than they care about like you know, let's just say the personal tone in those types of things.”
Opinion
Traynor: Intercom had no choice but to rapidly adopt an AI strategy
“I think we moved fast, but I genuinely think that, like, there was no other option. I think, were we sitting here without an AI strategy today, we'd be deeply worried.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Traynor predicts broad adoption of natural language input for AI chatbots
“I think you're seeing a bit more people just saying, like, they've gone back to the whole, I will tell you what you need to know, and I'll trust when I enter, you're going to figure it out, and I think that has taken a while, but I think we're going to see a k…”
Insight
Traynor: Public quickly accepted that modern AI chatbots work
“The biggest learning for me has been how quickly the public have gotten on board with the idea that chatbots work now, you know.”
Disclosure
Traynor: Intercom is model-agnostic and will drop GPT-4 if a better model emerges
“I think all of our work is pretty model agnostic. We use four because it's best, but like the very second there's a better model out there, we'll do it.”
Insight
Traynor: AI builders should explore capabilities before optimizing for cost
“I would encourage anyone who's trying to do the You know, it's basically one of those explore then exploit. We are still deeply exploring how much we can transform the nature of CS with AI. When we were confident we finished that exploration, there will be an …”
Insight
Traynor: Operating multiple AI models carries significant ongoing maintenance work
“That's why we wouldn't necessarily be running with a bank of 10 of them, because to own any given one of them in any period, it doesn't ongoing work to it. It's not for free.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Traynor: AI chatbot errors usually stem from bad content, not hallucinations
“A lot of the times when Finn gives bad answers, it's not hallucination. It's actually usually just bad content and it's stale content on our customers help centers”
Insight
Traynor: AI support lets human teams answer a specific question only once
“The way I think about Finn in the lives of our customers who are customer service teams is that it should move them to being the, they answer questions for their first time because Finn has never seen it before, but also the last time, because once they've ans…”
Disclosure
Traynor: Intercom uses RAG rather than per-customer model fine-tuning
“We're not yet building models per customer or tuning models per customer. We're doing rag.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Traynor: AI robots will inevitably handle phone-based customer support
“Like, voice from a point of view of robots answering the phone, and hearing your query, and answering it as best as they can, and if not, failing over to a human voice. I think that's all certainly going to happen. Don't have a stated time frame for it yet.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Traynor: Intercom powers 500 million conversations a month
“Summarize every conversation Intercom powers every month. That would be summarizing five hundred million conversations a month.”
Des Traynor