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Early Entrepreneurship
Born and raised in Ireland, Eoghan McCabe built his first website on America Online (AOL) in 1996 and launched his first internet business in 2000, an internet portal for his hometown of just 10,000 people! He expanded his ambitions beyond that while he studied Computer Science at Trinity College, Dublin during which he studied every page of 37signals’ pivotal book on software, dreaming about starting his own business just like their Basecamp.
Fresh out of college in 2006, Eoghan started his own software development company, creatively named Eoghan McCabe Ltd. The company’s first software product was a website monitoring and analytics product called FoldSpy, a JavaScript app that helped website owners collect user metrics to help them better place ads on their pages. It was a major success and measured one billion screens within its first three months. Foldspy was acquired in 2007.
That same year, Eoghan met Paul Campbell and David Rice, who joined Eoghan McCabe Limited, which later became Contrast. Des Traynor joined them later, followed by David Barrett and Ciaran Lee, who would all go on to start Intercom with Eoghan.
At Contrast, Eoghan and his team designed and developed products for startups like Smartling and larger companies like Wells Fargo. They also experimented with their own products, one of which was Qwitter, an app that would notify Twitter users of users who had quit following them. This caused much controversy in the early days of the Twitter platform.
After Contrast, Eoghan co-founded Exceptional, a SaaS company that created developer tools for easily identifying and tracking bugs in web apps. The success of Exceptional led to the sale of the company and its eventual acquisition by Rackspace.
Intercom
As part of the Exceptional app, Eoghan and team built a small JavaScript chat bubble to ease communication with customers. Quickly realizing that many web-based companies had a need for a robust customer communications system, they started development on the product that eventually became Intercom.
Since co-founding the company in 2011, Eoghan served as Intercom’s CEO until 2020, then moved into the Chairman of the Board role, and finally returned to CEO in October 2022. Soon after the company was founded, Eoghan and the startup team moved to San Francisco and opened Intercom headquarters there. Since then, Intercom has grown to help thousands of companies reach millions of customers, and raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
In 2017, Eoghan joined Des Traynor and Paul Adams in co-authoring a book titled Intercom on Starting Up with stories about Intercom’s beginning days and advice to others looking to start their own companies.
Interviews, Podcasts, and Social Media
In addition to his posts on Inside Intercom, Eoghan has been active in sharing the story of his journey with Intercom on a variety of podcasts and interviews. Learn more about his background and business philosophy:
• Eoghan McCabe’s Counterintuitive Approach To Building A Unicorn Software Company – Inc.com
• People Leading People: Eoghan McCabe of Intercom talks finding your authentic leadership Style – Soapbox
• Eoghan McCabe chats about bots – Converge
• Founder Chats: Eoghan McCabe – Baremetrics
• How to be a Human Founder with Eoghan McCabe, Co-Founder + CEO of Intercom – Startup Grind
• How The 'Silly' Irish Founders At Intercom Built One Of Silicon Valley's Fastest-Growing Businesses – Forbes
• Intercom: The Next Chapter keynote – Intercom
• Design+Startup with Eoghan McCabe, Founder and CEO of Intercom (video) – FirstRoundCapital
You can read more about Eoghan on his personal web site and follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.