INTERCOM — first pitch deck ("DRAFT"), late 2011 (published by Intercom
itself, intercom.com/blog/first-pitch-deck, 2016; the $600K convertible-note
raise). Transcription note: cleaned OCR transcript from slide images;
statements verbatim.

Intercom. DRAFT.

The team:
Eoghan McCabe (CEO, product, visual design), Des Traynor (COO, customer
development, user experience design), Ciaran Lee (CTO, software engineering),
David Barrett (front-end engineering).
Prolific speakers / bloggers about software design / development and SaaS
business.
Ran Contrast for four years, a popular web software design consultancy.
Launched Qwitter and Exceptional (both acquired).

The problem:
Building meaningful relationships with customers is hard / impossible for
SaaS providers (meaningful relationships -> loyal customers -> profitable
customers and organic growth).
Building meaningful relationships requires: 1. customer discovery,
2. customer research, 3. customer communication, 4. relationship management.
The current tools available are complex, ineffective, not built for SaaS...
there's no one tool to do customer relationship management and messaging for
SaaS providers.
(Even e-mail fails: generating targeted e-mail lists takes a lot of work,
e-mail campaigns have terrible engagement because e-mail is out of context.)

The solution:
Intercom is... simple install like Google Analytics; customer base browsing
(e.g. signed-up today, on premium plan); individual customer research (e.g.
see Twitter followers, company); advanced in-app messaging (user sees message
on next login or at specific event and can reply); customer relationship
management (Intercom calculates relationship metric over time and allows app
owner to find people who need attention).

The market:
Now: SaaS providers ($21 billion market, $93 billion in 2016 — Forrester).
Later: mobile and desktop app providers.

Landscape / competitors:
Social media research/management: Radian6, Sprout Social, Hootsuite,
Crowdbooster. Customer feedback/support: Uservoice, Tender, Get Satisfaction,
Assistly, Zendesk, KISSinsights. Email campaigns: Campaign Monitor,
MailChimp. In-app messages: Hello Bar. User analytics: KISSmetrics, Mixpanel.

Progress:
Product in development and testing since January, ready for public beta.
intercomapp.com. Private beta testers love the product, many are psyched to
try it.
@jasonfried: "What a fantastic product idea. Wish I'd thought of this:
intercomapp.com"

What we're looking for:
$600k convertible note.
18 months of runway to work on: product-market fit, customer dev, early
marketing efforts, profitability.
Plan to raise further round in 12-18 months to turn up heat on marketing.

[Transcript revision 3, 2026-08-17: re-issued unchanged; revisions 1-2 burned analysis budgets against gateway 502s (openrouter credit exhaustion). No content changes.]