--- title: How I Rebuilt a $1.3B Giant with an AI Agent While... description: Intercom's founder shares his journey of returning as CEO during a health crisis to rebuild the $1.3B company. He implemented aggressive cultural changes,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-rebuilt-a-1-3b-giant-with-an-ai-agent-while-facing-my-own-death-intercom-eoghan-mccabe-kgdydqjtn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How I Rebuilt a $1.3B Giant with an AI Agent While Facing My Own Death | Intercom, Eoghan McCabe | daily.dev og:description: Intercom's founder shares his journey of returning as CEO during a health crisis to rebuild the $1.3B company. He implemented aggressive cultural changes,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-rebuilt-a-1-3b-giant-with-an-ai-agent-while-facing-my-own-death-intercom-eoghan-mccabe-kgdydqjtn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/KgdYDQjtn.png og:image:alt: How I Rebuilt a $1.3B Giant with an AI Agent While Facing My Own Death | Intercom, Eoghan McCabe og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How I Rebuilt a $1.3B Giant with an AI Agent While Facing My Own Death | Intercom, Eoghan McCabe **[EO](https://daily.dev/sources/entreprenueropp)** · 14 min read · 27 upvotes · 4 comments ## Summary Intercom's founder shares his journey of returning as CEO during a health crisis to rebuild the $1.3B company. He implemented aggressive cultural changes, performance management reforms, and bet heavily on AI agents (Finn), sacrificing $60M in revenue to pivot the business. The story covers lessons on founder mentality, authentic leadership, willingness to make unilateral decisions, and the necessity of constant reinvention in tech companies, especially with AI disruption. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@telli** · 8 upvotes > Being kind makes you human. Don't mix inhumanity with risk analysis and tough decision-making. **@grantkennedy** · 7 upvotes > "founder mentality, authentic leadership, willingness to make unilateral decisions, and the necessity of constant reinvention"... yeah that's not self-aggrandizing at all. > > I think a more important point that is brushed over is that they COULD burn 60m in revenue. That's a pretty nice cushion that a lot of businesses don't have. > > Anyone with an IQ over 90 could turn a company around if it had a $60m safety net. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Doubling the productivity of your engineering team using AI \(Brian Scanlan\)](https://daily.dev/posts/doubling-the-productivity-of-your-engineering-team-using-ai-brian-scanlan--rvqe3vf4r) · Software Engineering Research · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-rebuilt-a-1-3b-giant-with-an-ai-agent-while-facing-my-own-death-intercom-eoghan-mccabe-kgdydqjtn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How I Rebuilt a $1.3B Giant with an AI Agent While Facing My Own Death | Intercom, Eoghan McCabe","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-rebuilt-a-1-3b-giant-with-an-ai-agent-while-facing-my-own-death-intercom-eoghan-mccabe-kgdydqjtn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-i-rebuilt-a-1-3b-giant-with-an-ai-agent-while-facing-my-own-death-intercom-eoghan-mccabe-kgdydqjtn"},"datePublished":"2026-01-19T14:35:05.126Z","dateModified":"2026-01-19T14:35:29.978Z","description":"Intercom's founder shares his journey of returning as CEO during a health crisis to rebuild the $1.3B company. 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Don’t mix inhumanity with risk analysis and tough decision-making.","datePublished":"2026-02-02T07:50:45.664Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/KgdYDQjtn#c-DxW0M1xud","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Gökhan Yesilyayla","url":"https://daily.dev/telli","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--uvOVZKth--/f_auto/v1747040086/avatars/avatar_8OZxUEpFYzWHRGdCLpAZa?_a=BAMClqUq0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":8}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"“founder mentality, authentic leadership, willingness to make unilateral decisions, and the necessity of constant reinvention”… yeah that’s not self-aggrandizing at all.\nI think a more important point that is brushed over is that they COULD burn 60m in revenue. 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