Eoghan McCabe, the controversial Intercom co-founder who left the CEO position in 2020, is stepping again in • TechCrunch

A notable altering of the guard is afoot at Intercom, the unicorn SaaS startup that powers the ever present smiley customer support bots that sit on tens of hundreds of firm homepages: the corporate has reappointed co-founder, and present chairman, Eoghan McCabe as CEO. He’s changing Karen Peacock, who’s taking an advisory position for the following six months. McCabe may also keep on as chairman, and the change is efficient instantly.

McCabe, you would possibly recall, stepped down from the CEO position in July 2020. That transfer happened 10 months after a narrative broke alleging harassment and different misconduct on his half.

However in an interview at this time, McCabe pressured that the 2 occasions weren’t related: his departure was long-planned, and by that time his title had been cleared by the board and an investigation physique.

“Within the very early days I made an advance on somebody,” he mentioned of the darkish historical past. “I used to be naive… I used to be 26 after I began this firm. However it was totally investigated, first by HR after which the board after which outdoors attorneys, who decided no motion in opposition to me and voted unanimously to help me. It was closed and my departure passed off the very best a part of the 12 months after that.”

McCabe mentioned that his choice to return was because of the board not too long ago approaching him and asking him to take action.

“I may by no means actually stray too removed from the corporate,” he mentioned of the time away from the CEO position. “Intercom was a car to precise and show myself, and I continued to care about it.”

The corporate notes that when McCabe stepped away the primary time, it had annual revenues of about $100 million. It’s not clear how a lot Intercom grew below Peacock, however it’s been feeling the identical pinch as a variety of different tech firms within the final a number of months. Most not too long ago, the corporate introduced a giant software program overhaul on the product entrance. However it has not been proof against restructuring, too: it downsized and lower 5% of its workforce final month.

The corporate has no plans, he mentioned, to boost extra money past the $239 million it’s picked up so removed from Kleiner Perkins, GV, Index and others which have backed it up to now. Its final valuation was $1.2 billion again in 2018 and McCabe mentioned it’s been “on and off” cashflow constructive standing since then, and the following step on that entrance, it appears, might be an exit both as a public firm or via a consolidation plan.

For now, although, the plan is to tackle the duty of bringing Intercom into a brand new section of enterprise, particularly to search for income and enterprise past the chatbot that has made it well-known, and is in use by some 25,000 firms globally. McCabe says he needs to tackle Zendesk with a deeper transfer into the broader world of customer support.

“The subsequent step is to get extra particular,” he mentioned. “We wish to choose a lane. Buyer help is a huge area.” He describes Zendesk because the “dominant participant” within the mid-market. “We’ll come after them,” he added.

That might be a tall job — Zendesk is under no circumstances the one firm on this planet of buyer help. Salesforce, McCabe himself identified, at the moment makes extra money from buyer help than from gross sales software program.

Nonetheless, with over 25,000 prospects — with names comparable to Atlassian, Amazon and Lyft Enterprise amongst them — utilizing its platform, amounting to 500 million+ messages per 30 days and interactions with 600 million month-to-month energetic finish customers, that’s an viewers that it is going to be capable of leverage to purpose to take action.

“Intercom has remodeled the client help business, and Eoghan’s creativity and drive will assist usher us into an thrilling new chapter,” mentioned Ethan Kurzweil, Companion at Bessemer Enterprise Companions in a press release. “Eoghan is an impressive chief, so we’re very constructive about his plans for the way forward for the corporate, and we are going to profit from Karen’s continued position as an advisor to the board.”