Intercom CEO: How Finn Hit $100M ARR in Under 3 Quarters

How Eoghan McCabe Bet Everything on AI Agents

This is Eoghan McCabe - Intercom co-founder/CEO - being extremely candid about what it took to transform a stagnating SaaS company into the fastest-growing AI agent business in customer service. The story includes a soft coup attempt, 40% employee turnover, and a founder who decided to stop compromising.

"We were about to hit zero dollars net new ARR." Five quarters of sequential decline. Intercom was worth billions, making hundreds of millions, but heading toward negative growth. McCabe had left sick (mold toxins, tick bite), watched mistakes compound, and came back angry. One month later: ChatGPT launched.

"6 weeks after GPT-3.5, we had a working prototype." Intercom had an AI team building rudimentary bots already. When GPT dropped, they said "this is different." Having 30,000 paying customers with billions of data points meant they could move fast. By January, Finn was growing 300%+ and on track to pass $100M ARR.

The pricing experiment that validated the business. Early on, each 99-cent resolution cost $1.20 to serve. But McCabe believed value pricing beats cost pricing: "If someone won't pay 99 cents for us to perfectly solve their customer's problem, we need to wrap this up." Margins improved as models got cheaper.

"I rewrote the values to be a sharp knife." Resilience, high standards, shareholder value as top priority. Then he hardcoded a formula: quarterly performance scores times behavior scores. Below a threshold, "respectfully and lovingly, thank you for your service." Letters to the board. Soft coup attempts. 40% turnover. Then: 98-99% approval in anonymous surveys.

"Make internet business personal" still works. The irony: Intercom was anti-bot. Now their AI agent IS the product. McCabe's rationalization: 24/7 instant expert service is more personal than making customers wait 3 days for a canned response.

10 Insights From McCabe on Intercom's AI Pivot

• $100M ARR with Finn in <3 quarters - Fastest to this milestone in CS agents
• 6 weeks to prototype - From GPT-3.5 launch to working Finn beta
• 99 cents per resolution - Value pricing; customers spending $20-30 per ticket before
• 6x conversion rate vs traditional - LLM traffic converts way better
• 40% employee turnover - Values rewrite designed to "cut out" uncommitted
• Soft coup attempt - Letters to the board; McCabe didn't back down
• 98-99% approval after - Anonymous survey 15-16 months post-transformation
• "Wartime company" - McCabe's framing: fight or die
• Zendesk dead strategically - Post-acquisition created market opportunity
• 15th percentile ARR growth - Top 15 of 120 public B2B software companies

What This Means for SaaS Companies Facing AI Disruption

Intercom's transformation proves AI can turn a stagnating SaaS company into a growth rocket in under a year - but it required 40% employee turnover and a founder willing to face down a coup. The playbook exists; the question is whether incumbent leadership has the stomach to execute it.