A note from Eoghan McCabe

We’ve got an update to share.

Today, we announced that Eoghan McCabe, Intercom’s chairman, co-founder and former CEO, is returning to lead the company as CEO. Karen Peacock is stepping down as CEO and transitioning to an advisory role to support through the transition. Below is the email that Eoghan sent to the company after sharing the news with employees at All Hands.

All,

Thanks for your time at the All Hands today. Here’s a summary of what I had to say.

First, for those who don’t know me, I started this company in 2011 with Des, Ciaran Lee, and David Barrett, and ran it as CEO until 2020 when I decided to move to the chairman role and asked Karen to be CEO.

Karen was our COO at the time and the hope when I brought her on was that she’d some day become CEO. In the summer of that year I was ready for a break and wanting some change and the time finally felt right.

In the two years since, I got the break I needed, started some new passion projects, and found more time for investing in and helping some great new founders, a number of which are former Intercom employees. But I could never stay too far from this company. I still deeply cared about its success and its place in the world. Recently, some of our board members asked if I’d come back and I felt called to finish what I started. And so here I am!

I have a very specific vision for what we need to be and what we need to do to get there. It involves going back to our roots, some extreme focus, and a bet that we’ve never been willing to make before: picking a lane and being clear about what we’re not going to do. I’ll speak in-depth about this on Monday and explain the reasons myself and Des are so fired up about it. But for now I’ll give you the punch line: We’re going to become the dominant platform in the customer support space, and redefine that space. We will go head-to-head with Zendesk.

But the more important thing to discuss today is Karen. We and I owe a debt of gratitude to her for everything she’s done for this company. In her role as COO and then CEO she has fundamentally redefined the way we work. She brought a very large amount of maturity and sophistication to Intercom that will live on well past her time here. And she oversaw a ton of growth and change that’s provided us with the raw materials we’ll use to build our path to this new vision for the future.

Karen, thank you sincerely for everything you’ve done for this company. For your incredibly hard work and your loyalty to Intercom. We appreciate you deeply and we wish you the very best.

Last but not least, I want to thank you all for your hard work and your resilience these past years. Through it you’ve continued to make us proud. I’m excited to do some of the best work of our careers together and have some fun along the way too. I’m looking forward to connecting and answering your questions and getting started! :)

More soon!

Eoghan