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 1000’s 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 subsequent six months. McCabe will even keep on as chairman, and the change is efficient instantly.

McCabe, you may 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 present, McCabe burdened that the 2 occasions weren’t linked: 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 once I began this firm. But it surely was completely investigated, first by HR after which the board after which exterior legal professionals, who decided no motion towards me and voted unanimously to help me. It was closed and my departure passed off one of the best a part of the yr 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 might 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 specific 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 beneath Peacock, however it’s been feeling the identical pinch as a number of different tech corporations within the final a number of months. Most not too long ago, the corporate introduced an enormous software program overhaul on the product entrance. But it surely 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 lift more cash past the $239 million it’s picked up so removed from Kleiner Perkins, GV, Index and others which have backed it thus far. 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 subsequent 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 part 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 corporations globally. McCabe says he desires 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 need to choose a lane. Buyer help is a huge house.” He describes Zendesk because the “dominant participant” within the mid-market. “We’ll come after them,” he added.

That might be a tall process — Zendesk is in no way the one firm on the planet of buyer help. Salesforce, McCabe himself identified, at the moment makes more cash from buyer help than from gross sales software program.

Nonetheless, with over 25,000 clients — with names reminiscent of Atlassian, Amazon and Lyft Enterprise amongst them — utilizing its platform, amounting to 500 million+ messages monthly and interactions with 600 million month-to-month lively finish customers, that’s an viewers that it is going to be capable of leverage to intention to take action.

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