Des Traynor on building and growing Intercom to $400M ARR
A love of Web 2.0
My background is entirely in computer science and software engineering. After graduating college, I pursued a PhD, which I eventually abandoned. I lectured for a while before discovering my love for Web 2.0.
Blogging and participating in Web 2.0 communities cemented my position in software and helped me meet my cofounders, leading to Intercom and Fin.
I work solely for Intercom, developing Fin, the best AI agent for customer service, and soon the best customer agent, full stop. It's a truly exciting time for software. So much uncertainty, so much opportunity — a combination of fear and excitement at every single turn.
Currently, Intercom is at $400M ARR, and Fin is about to cross $100M ARR.
Starting Intercom
When we initially built Intercom, our goal was simply to connect internet businesses with their customers. That is, to make it really easy for businesses and customers to communicate.
We thought that would be relatively straightforward, but 15 years and $400M in ARR later, it proved not as simple as we first hoped!
The first release included a JavaScript snippet, a user list, and an inbox. That was enough for every SaaS business back then to realize what they had been missing out on. It was a relatively large MVP at the time, because making it work reliably, securely, and at scale was no joke.
We primarily Ruby on Rails and React, but these days, most of the complexity in our domain is in the AI architecture, not the web app. You can learn about the technical challenges we face in our AI research blog, and see the Fin CX models we've shared data on.
Intentionally damaging the company
Our biggest challenge was reacting to AI. Before AI, we sold help desk seats to humans who manually answered questions. When we first saw ChatGPT, it became incredibly obvious that nothing would be the same again. No humans would buy seats, there would be no seats, and possibly no help desk. We had to adapt and react to survive.
We scrambled, and about 14 weeks later, we unveiled Fin. Fin has grown into one of the fastest-growing initiatives I've ever been involved with, certainly far faster than the original Intercom. It has significantly changed every aspect of our company: how we build, price, and market our technology, who buys our products, and how we sell them. Every aspect had to change.
I credit this to reading "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Professor Clayton Christensen in 2011, back when we were starting out. It has been massively beneficial as we've realized we're going through this extreme tectonic shift.
Had we perhaps not been as aware of how these technological trends play out over time, we might have been caught more flat-footed. Understanding the true nature of disruptive innovation—that it can happen very fast and that the path to survival almost always involves damaging your existing business — is essential.
So I'll say this: Being well-versed in classic business literature — not popular here-and-now blog posts, but things that have stood the test of time — has been really advantageous as we've navigated this kind of shift in tech.
If we started over, we would likely begin with an AI-native mindset, which would have upsides and downsides. The upsides would be not having to undo or unwork 15 years of tried-and-tested progress and processes. The downside would be lacking the same business stature, customer base, team, and so on.
I think it's right for a startup to constantly ask: "If you were reincorporated or reincarnated as a YC startup tomorrow, what would you build and why? Why aren't you building that today?"
Pioneering a new business model
Our SaaS business, Intercom, charges per seat. We've had trials and tribulations with our pricing, but it is now clear, and I'm quite proud of it. Our CEO, Eoghan, made many bold decisions to get it to this point, and it has paid off for us.
With Fin, we pioneered outcome-based pricing. We only get paid when our product does customer support properly for you. Neat, right?
Outreach, content, and webinars
People often ask me how Intercom got its first customers, so I wrote a post about it. The short answer is cold emails. And we did it 100% by hand. Then, we switched to content and webinars.
However, I warn readers that I don't think this advice is timeless.
We're moving to a post-trust world where people assume all content and outbound are slop (or at least AI-Generated), so punching through the noise is getting harder.
Where to focus when even AI faces the threat of AI
To paraphrase the unnamed narrator played by Ed Norton in Fight Club: "You've met software at a very interesting time in its life."
I don't know how to advise anyone these days. All my old principles are dead and gone, and the young ones are turning gray. Sometimes, restating the problem more clearly helps people, so here's how I see it.
You need to build a software business that still matters at a time when everything is becoming promptable. Even AI itself faces the threat of AI. So, I would focus on needs that don't change (à la Bezos), but also in areas where you credibly believe no company should ever solve them.
That might mean your price point has to change or the amount of ownership you take — e.g., don't be a small tool in a daisy chain, be a complete solve. I don't know.
But no matter what you build, assume someone will upload your screenshots, your HTML, and your feature list into Claude Code and effectively clone it. Make sure you still have a business when that happens — because it'll happen 5-10 seconds after you launch.
What's next?
From here, my goal is to ensure Fin and Intercom achieve their full potential, thereby improving the default internet experience for customers and the lives of internet business owners.
We share lots everywhere, our Fin Ideas blog, our AI research blog — and check out Fin, which has 8,000 customers from Anthropic to Asana and from Mercury to Miro — it works very well.
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