Newly appointed Intercom CEO Karen Peacock. Image: Intercom
After almost 10 years in the role, Eoghan McCabe will be stepping aside as CEO of Intercom and handing the reins over to Karen Peacock.
As part of its efforts to build towards an IPO, software company Intercom has announced a major change in leadership. In an email to staff, co-founder and CEO Eoghan McCabe said he is to stand down as head of the company after almost 10 years, with COO Karen Peacock to become the company’s new CEO.
Now assuming the role of Intercom chair, McCabe said that he had hoped to one day see Peacock step into the CEO role when she was hired by the company three years ago.
“Karen will be a great CEO for us in our new strategic push and for the big milestones ahead. She’s a brave and highly strategic leader who loves big bets,” McCabe wrote.
“She’s incredibly ambitious for Intercom and knows we’re only getting started. She’s a product nerd through and through, who gets very excited about not only the things we’re building but how we build them.”
‘A big product vision’
Speaking of her ambitions in the new role, Peacock added: “We have a big product vision, and we are audacious. Our messenger and platform are changing the way businesses build relationships with their customers.
“Very soon we are going to re-invent customer support, turning it from reactive to proactive, from blind to contextual, from all human or all mechanical to the best of both worlds, learning every day.”
San Francisco-headquartered Intercom was founded in Dublin in 2011 by McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciarán Lee and David Barrett, and has since become a multinational developer of messaging tools and chatbots for major tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Lyft.
To date, the company has raised $241m in funding. This includes a bumper round of $125m in Series D funding back in 2018, making it a ‘unicorn’ with a valuation of more than $1bn. By the end of last year, Intercom had more than 30,000 paying customers and made approximately $150m in revenue.
Last month, it was revealed that Intercom was letting go 39 out of its 649 employees, with 47 roles to be relocated to Dublin as part of cost-saving measures.
