Guest: Eoghan McCabe, CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Intercom

“We are not ready for the degree to which our world is going to change,” says Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe, “in insane and incredible ways.” When he co-founded the company in 2011, the Irish-born entrepreneur was making it easier for companies to offer human customer service to their customers. But Eoghan believes “every single type of knowledge work” will soon be done by AI, and Intercom is well on its way to that destination: 45 percent of all tickets are being answered by bots now, and he expects that number to climb to 70 percent by 2026. “The agents no longer have to do the repetitive, painful, boring work,” Eoghan says. “They can focus on the more human, creative, interesting work that requires their empathy and creativity.”

In this episode, Eoghan and Joubin discuss fitting in, Archana Agrawal, authentic comms, taking risks, returning to the company you founded, politics at work, celebrating innovation, therapy for founders, and Ram Dass.

Chapters:

(01:04) - Insecurity and success
(06:16) - What Intercom does
(08:20) - Reinvention and “big company values”
(15:50) - Becoming an AI company
(16:53) - 2011 vs. 2024 in San Francisco
(21:03) - AI for customer service — and more
(25:07) - “The shitty gift that being attacked brings”
(30:25) - Expectations vs. reality, part one
(33:16) - What success means now
(36:08) - Running away
(39:56) - Coming back
(41:58) - Being busy is BS
(44:10) - Expectations vs. reality, part two
(45:44) - Self-mastery
(50:38) - Sanding off the rough edges
(55:08) - Who Intercom is hiring and what “grit” means to Eoghan

Links:

#191 CEO and Co-Founder Intercom, Eoghan McCabe: Second Beginning

Grit