Owen McCabe

Founders unwilling to match the intense AI startup pace should hire a younger CEO and move into a chairperson role, Owen advises.

Fin scaled from $1 M to $12 M ARR in year one, now growing 300 %+ and projected to top $100 M within three quarters.

Automation will create leaner, flatter organisations where humans oversee a medley of specialist and glue agents.

He rewrote company values, scored employees each quarter on goals and behaviours, and automatically exited those below a threshold to reshape culture.

Intercom used data from 30k customers, hundreds of thousands of users and billions of events to train its Fin beta within six weeks.

Owen shares that Intercom’s sprawling product strategy required PMs to run areas like mini CEOs, broadening their skill sets beyond design.

Owen killed side projects and focused Intercom solely on service, ignoring other $80M ARR lines to create clarity and momentum.

Fin has doubled Intercom’s growth, moving it from low single digits to fifteenth percentile among public software firms, with aim to become fastest growing.

Surviving a painful two-year crisis destroyed his ‘perfect leader’ ego, removing insecurities and triggers that previously limited leadership impact.

Owen says Intercom pivoted fully to AI because they had "nothing to lose," embracing risk others might avoid.

Intercom simplified pricing, willingly cutting about $50M ARR, which improved retention and staff belief in customer care.

Burned-out founder left his company, later returned and found meaning despite ongoing daily pain in corporate life.

McCabe insists price should reflect ticket-resolution value rather than internal costs, charging 99¢ per solved case to align revenue and customer benefit.

Frustrated by compromises and slowing growth, McCabe switched to a top-down, founder-first style he calls deeply cathartic for steering the company decisively.