Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom.

In 2023, his company was stuck at 10% growth. Customer service teams were shrinking. The old model was dying.

So he did something radical: he launched an AI agent priced at $0.99 per resolved conversation. Not per seat. Per outcome.

The result? Growth doubled to 25%. $343M in revenue.

And a complete reinvention of a $1.3B company in 18 months.

TIMELINE :

00:00:00 - 00:01:02 : Des Traynor - Intercom

00:01:02 - 00:05:22 : The $1.3 billion bet on AI : moving 15 days after ChatGPT launched

00:05:22 - 00:09:08 : Why building AI is not building SaaS

00:09:08 - 00:12:51 : The "torture test" for engineering reliability

00:12:51 - 00:20:14 : Developing the "white smoke" moment for product

00:20:14 - 00:25:16 : Defining what "good" looks like in AI

00:25:16 - 00:34:53 : The Blockbuster warning: Adapt or die

00:34:53 - 00:40:27 : Killing hallucinations with actor-critic logic

00:40:27 - 00:48:55 : Outcome-based pricing and the future of CRM

00:48:55 - 00:55:56 : The end of frontline customer service jobs

REFERENCES :

• ⁠Fergal Reid⁠ 

• ⁠Ciarán Lee⁠ 

• ⁠Eoghan McCabe⁠

• ⁠Marc Andreessen⁠ 

• ⁠If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies⁠

• ⁠OpenAI / ChatGPT⁠

• ⁠Zendesk⁠

• ⁠Salesforce⁠ 

• ⁠Fin.AI⁠

• ⁠Gong⁠ 

• ⁠ClickUp⁠

• ⁠DALL-E⁠

• ⁠Cursor⁠ 

• ⁠Windsurf⁠

• ⁠Devin⁠

• ⁠Claude Code⁠

• ⁠Attio⁠

• ⁠Clarify⁠

• ⁠Netflix⁠

• ⁠The Cheeky Pint