Intercom's Nothing To Lose AI Pivot

Intercom's transformation from a plateauing SaaS business to an AI-first company required embracing disruptive change with founder-led decisiveness. When Owen McCabe returned to Intercom as CEO, the company was approaching zero net new ARR after five quarters of sequential decline. Six weeks after ChatGPT launched, they had a working prototype of what would become Fin, their AI agent for customer service.

McCabe believes that in the AI era, half-measures and incremental approaches fail. "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." This perspective led him to make bold, unilateral decisions despite resistance, including a cultural reset and significant team turnover.

The transformation required several key elements. First, strategic focus - abandoning their sprawling product strategy to concentrate on customer service. Second, a cultural shift toward higher standards, resilience, and shareholder value. Third, bringing in AI talent and empowering younger team members who understood the technology. And finally, a willingness to work with extraordinary intensity to match the pace of AI-native startups.

McCabe's approach to leadership during this transition was deliberately authoritarian. "Greatness is created when you find a CEO who's willing to make brave hard decisions and own the results." He believes that founder-led companies perform better because they have the moral authority and willingness to take risks that professional CEOs often avoid. This led to approximately 40% employee turnover, including what he described as a "soft coup" attempt.

For leaders navigating AI disruption, McCabe's experience suggests that incremental approaches may be insufficient. The companies succeeding in AI are working with unprecedented intensity - "literally twelve hours a day, literally 365 days a year." This creates a stark choice: commit fully to transformation or risk being left behind.

For individual contributors, this leadership philosophy means working in an environment that values decisive action over consensus, where strategic shifts may happen rapidly, and where performance expectations are extremely high. The tradeoff is the opportunity to be part of transformative growth - Fin grew from $1M to $12M ARR in its first year and is now projected to reach $100M ARR within three quarters.

McCabe's perspective challenges the collaborative, democratic approach many tech companies have embraced. He argues that while such environments may be more comfortable, they often lack the decisiveness needed in times of disruption. The result is a clear message: in the AI era, the greatest risk is not moving fast enough.