AI Will Create Leaner Organizations with Human-Agent Collaboration

Owen McCabe transformed Intercom from a plateauing SaaS business to an AI-first company with Fin, an AI agent for customer experience that's growing at over 300% and will reach $100M ARR in less than three quarters. His leadership perspective combines radical decisiveness with a clear-eyed view of AI's transformative power.

At the core of McCabe's philosophy is the conviction that AI will disrupt every industry "in the most aggressive, violent ways" and companies must adapt or perish. When ChatGPT launched, Intercom was facing declining growth and approaching negative territory. Rather than attempting incremental changes, McCabe embraced a wartime mentality, making unilateral decisions to completely reorient the company around AI.

McCabe believes the path to transformation requires founder-led, top-down decision making rather than democratic consensus. "Greatness is created when you find a CEO who's willing to make brave, hard decisions and own the results." This approach meant rewriting company values, implementing strict performance processes, and accepting significant employee turnover—ultimately about 40% of staff. Despite resistance and even a "soft coup" attempt, McCabe maintained course, believing that strong leadership requires moral authority and willingness to take risks that professional CEOs often avoid.

For teams navigating AI disruption, McCabe emphasizes several practical implications:

Bring in genuine AI talent. Success requires actual AI scientists and leaders, not just existing staff with AI training. "We would be nothing if we didn't have actual AI scientists and leaders."
Match the work ethic of AI-native startups. "All these little AI companies run by kids in their twenties are literally working twelve hours a day, literally 365 days a year." This intensity creates a competitive advantage that established companies must match.
Align pricing with value, not cost. Intercom charges 99¢ per resolved customer ticket, focusing on the outcome rather than the technology. "Value should come from value and not from costs. Cost is our problem."
Create employee-founder fit. Not everyone will thrive in a transformed organization. "You have to have the right employees for the type of business you're creating."
Embrace AI's paradoxical humanity. Despite initial resistance to bots, McCabe now believes AI can deliver more personal service than humans. "Providing a customer with a highly engaged, instantly available, expert, consistent, fast, charismatic, funny, friendly, personal agent available for literally every single customer... is so much more personal than making them wait days for a crappy canned response."

McCabe envisions future organizations as a complex mix of humans and AI agents, with humans providing oversight while agents handle repetitive operational work. This will create "epic levels of efficiency" and more competition, ultimately benefiting consumers with more and cheaper options.

The fundamental message is that AI transformation isn't optional. "You don't have a choice... if you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out of all of it." Companies must either fully commit to AI transformation or risk irrelevance in a rapidly changing landscape.