Fin's Rapid Growth to $100M ARR

Intercom's AI-First Transformation: From Plateauing SaaS to Explosive Growth with Fin

Intercom's transformation from a plateauing SaaS business to an AI-first company with Fin, their AI customer service agent, represents one of the most dramatic pivots in recent tech history. When Owen McCabe returned as CEO, the company was facing five consecutive quarters of declining net new ARR and was about to hit $0 net new ARR—essentially negative growth territory for a business that was already generating hundreds of millions in revenue.

The timing was fortuitous. Just one month after McCabe's return, ChatGPT launched. Intercom already had an AI team working on rudimentary bots, and they quickly recognized the potential of this new technology. Within six weeks of GPT-3.5's release, they had a working beta version of what would become Fin.

What made this transformation successful was the combination of strategic focus, cultural overhaul, and technical execution:

Strategic Focus and Pricing Clarity

McCabe ruthlessly narrowed Intercom's sprawling strategy to focus on customer service, an area where they saw opportunity as Zendesk had been acquired and was "strategically, energetically, culturally dead." They also completely reimagined their pricing approach, which had previously been notoriously complex and disliked.

For Fin, they created a beautifully simple, outcome-based pricing model: 99¢ per resolved customer ticket. This aligned perfectly with the value delivered and made the proposition crystal clear to customers. Initially, this pricing meant they were losing money on every transaction (it cost them $1.20 to resolve a ticket they charged 99¢ for), but they had conviction that costs would decrease over time as the technology improved.

Cultural Revolution

McCabe implemented a dramatic cultural shift, rewriting company values to emphasize resilience, high standards, hard work, and shareholder value. He implemented quarterly performance processes that scored employees not just on goal achievement but on alignment with these values. Those who scored below certain thresholds were let go.

This approach was controversial and led to significant turnover—approximately 40% of employees eventually left, including some who attempted what McCabe described as a "soft coup" against his leadership. However, the result was a more aligned, entrepreneurial organization. An anonymous employee survey 15-16 months later showed 98-99% approval of management, leadership, and the new strategy.

Technical Execution

Intercom's existing AI team was crucial to their ability to move quickly. They leveraged their massive data advantage—30,000 paying customers, hundreds of thousands of active users, and billions of data points—to train and improve their AI agent rapidly.

The results have been extraordinary. Fin grew from $1M to $12M ARR in its first year and is now growing at over 300%. It's already reached "solid mid-eight digit ARR" and is projected to pass $100M ARR within three quarters. The AI agent has become the company's future, with performance metrics that outpace all competitors—highest customer count, highest revenue, best performance benchmarks, and #1 rating on G2.

The Broader Lesson

McCabe's experience offers a stark lesson for established companies facing AI disruption: "You don't have a choice. AI is gonna disrupt in the most aggressive violent ways. If you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out of all of it."

His advice for other leaders is pragmatic: bring in actual AI talent (including young talent who understand the technology natively), be willing to work as hard as the startups competing in this space, and make bold decisions even when they're unpopular. As he puts it, "Greatness is created when you find a CEO who's willing to make brave hard decisions and own the results."

The Intercom story demonstrates that even large, established companies can successfully transform themselves in the face of AI disruption—but it requires a willingness to fundamentally reimagine the business, make painful changes, and move with the speed and focus of a startup.