#191

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