Des Traynor
Chief Strategy Officer & Co-founder, Intercom
Discussion
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
Hey, I'm Des Traynor, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Intercom.
Intercom is a fundamentally new way for internet businesses to communicate with customers, personally, at scale. We've raised $66M, we have have over 8,000 happy customers, including the good folks here at Product Hunt. (Look in the bottom right of this page :) ) You can learn more about Intercom here: http://www.intercom.io
I write and speak a lot about making products, specifically how to think about product strategy, and how to manage a product once it's out in the wild. You can see some of my writing here: https://blog.intercom.io/author/... - I've also authored 3 books on product management, customer engagement, and customer support. Ask about them if you're interested.
I studied computer science in college, am a designer by trade, and of late I've worked on all sorts of areas include: Marketing, Events, HR, Recruitment, Product Strategy, Company Values, and much more that I've forgotten. I mix my time between San Francisco, and Dublin, though I consider the latter 'home'. My favourite/only hobby is soccer. Please don't ask what my "regular day to day" is, as there really isn't one. Aside from that one, go ahead and ask me anything!
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Alex Flom
@alex_flom
Hi Des,
I am the maker of AddCharts.com , a free Intercom add-on that adds charts & metrics to Intercom.
We use intercom in our startup(kilometer.io) , and first created AddCharts for our own use, then decided to release it publicly as a free tool.
I have two questions:
1) AddCharts is used by 400+ intercom users, while it is still in private beta, and looks like there is a huge need for analytics inside intercom, are you planning to add such features?
2) A strong eco-system of apps built on top of Intercom can make your tool even better, any plans about building an "apps center" or something like this?
Thanks!
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@alex_flom Hey Alex,
re: 1. I know all about AddCharts, I added it to this page :) https://docs.intercom.io/buildin...
re:2. When we have anything to say here, you'll definitely hear about it.
To anyone looking to do what Alex did and build a product of interest to any of our 8,000 customers, you can start here: https://www.intercom.io/developers
Regards,
Des
Lukas Fittl
@lukasfittl · Product Hunt
@destraynor Hi Des, great to see you on here! Big fan of your work over the years - the Intercom blog is pure gold :)
How do you think "Lifecycle Messaging" (e.g. through Intercom's Auto Message feature), will change in the next few years? What are some old best practices that (soon) don't work anymore?
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@lukasfittl Hey Lukas,
Thanks for your feedback, really glad you like the blog.
I think we’re at “Peak Behaviour Driven Email Software” to paraphrase Eoghan, Intercom CEO ( https://twitter.com/eoghanmccabe... ) - and most of the new solutions are barely incremental on the existing solutions, which is such a waste of human capital.
I think this is a case where better targeting will continue to drive results, and better contextual messaging will out-perform “ye olde ‘day 3’ mail”. So I think in the short term we’ll (hopefully) see badly targetted messages, or emails that should have been in-apps, start to drop off as companies learn that there are far better ways to engage customers and prospects.
Speaking of customer engagement, here’s a book we wrote: https://www.intercom.io/books/cu...
Andreas Klinger
@andreasklinger · Tech at Product Hunt 💃
Another Q: Which product patterns currently really excite you - and which are under appreciated patterns that could have a comeback/breakthrough?
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@andreasklinger Hey Andreas,
Do you mean design patterns? What’s an example of a product pattern? (is it X for Y? )
Regards,
Des
Andreas Klinger
@andreasklinger · Tech at Product Hunt 💃
@destraynor yes as an example - but usually those stand proxy for the actual ux/product pattern - like "swipe left/right", "p2p market places", "usage of technology x", "realtime… etc"
thinking of it might be a very vague question ;)
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@topaz_tee Hey Topaz!
Hmmm, our first 100 specifically is kinda easy. We asked people we knew through the industry. Prior to Intercom we had a consultancy (Contrast), and a product (Exceptional), and had built an audience for our old blog (now gone). So I think our first 100 customers came from the audience we had been building since ‘08.
However we didn’t start charging straight away for Intercom, so if you mean the literal “100 people who paid us first” it’s harder to tell.
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@destraynor if you ever to DJ in front of employees at Intercom then what would be your opening song?
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@arpitgupta It would depend on the occasion, naturally. Specifically the job-to-be-done of the song if you like. That said, if I ever ended up DJing in front of Intercom people, it's a safe bet something has gone sideways :)
I think I'd go with In Bloom by Nirvana (as my safe choice) and **** * ** * **** *** ****** as my non-safe-for-work choice ;)
Topaz Tee
@topaz_tee
If you weren't involved with intercom what other 'area' do you see need distrupting/solved?
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@topaz_tee
I guess it comes down to pains I experience frequently that I think I can imagine a solution to.
For example, I like to watch soccer, and that whole world is a shit show right now that someone is gonna come in do a Spotify on. I've long thought, and tweeted that "Spotify for Soccer" is a great idea, and honestly I'm surprised it's taking so long for someone to get on it. I think it's likely related to the fact that it's only a small % of, for example, SV, that would appreciate the challenge (as they likely don't watch/play soccer) and the scale of the opportunity (it's not very well known that soccer is way bigger than any other sport)
But the opportunity, to me, is this: The biggest sport in the world can't easily be watched online, so the vast majority are turning to piracy and dodgy sites to watch instead. The parallels with music pre-iTunes are pretty staggering.
Regards,
Des
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@destraynor @topaz_tee I share the similar pain for when I want to watch cricket live.
Andreas Klinger
@andreasklinger · Tech at Product Hunt 💃
Hey Des
first of all thanks for all the advice and help you gave me in the last years - highly appreciate. From my pov you are one of the best product people in our industry - but i wouldnt be surprised if you are not that much known in SF because of the inwards looking mentality they kinda have here.
Q: Is there typical mistakes you notice done by product makers - and more importantly do you notice different typical mistakes in EU / rest-of-US and SF / rest-of-world?
thanks in advance
andreas
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@andreasklinger
Hey Andreas,
You are more than welcome :)
Product makers biggest strength is that there is nothing they believe a better product won’t solve. Product makers biggest weakness is that there is nothing they believe a better won’t solve. Every strength is a weakness.
I think what this means is that they focus way too much on over-polishing something, when the key to a successful company might lie in unlocking something else. Sometimes it’s sales, marketing, support, finance, etc.
I don’t really know how to answer your second question, but, at a basic level, I think the biggest difference is the scale of thought is much bigger in SF, and again that’s a strength and a weakness. Not every product idea needs to be scaled to change the world on a global level, and many break when you try to force that. But if you have a very big idea, I think SF is the right place.
Ciara Coughlan
@ciaracirl
We're looking at integration of a partner like Intercom. How much customisation is there in iOS, could we customise e.g. branding and UX for our various clients?
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@ciaracirl
Hey Ciara,
Short answer is yes. We 100% appreciate that our mobile solutions need a great degree of customisation so we fully support it. Mail team@intercom.io with specific questions and you should hear back quickly!
Thanks!
Des
Ciara Coughlan
@ciaracirl
@destraynor @ciaracirl Cool thanks Des, good news and we'll follow-up with the team contact and give them more context for the request. Appreciate it.
Barry Magennis
@barrymagennis · SEO Manager
Hi Des,
Just read loads of the blog on intercom today - fantastic content. Fellow Irishman here. I had a few questions if that was OK.
In your experience and knowledge would you recommend any idea validation method above all others?
What steps did you take to gain initial traction? What would be your recommended approach if you were to do it again?
What marketing channel did you find worked best for intercom in order to get the word out there at the start and bring in paying members? Did you start with any free plans, why/why not?
Thanks so much in advance!
Barry
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Des Traynor
@destraynor · Co-founder Intercom
@barrymagennis
Hey Barry,
Nice to hear from you.
1. Honestly I don’t believe in pseudo science around idea validation, so this answer might disappoint, but generally it’s some version of “understrand the crap out of the problem” and then “build a solution and bring it to people”. That’s all we did, we directly personally experienced a problem very well frequently and built the best solution we could think of for us. Turns out we weren’t alone :)
2. If we were to do it all again I think the only change is that I’d advocate is to add a bit more reluctance to build or do anything that solves a problem we don’t yet fully understand.
3. We launched free, on Hacker News, back in 2011. We were free for a year. I’ve answer the “first 100” question else where.
Hope that’s useful!
Des
Barry Magennis
@barrymagennis · SEO Manager
@destraynor @barrymagennis Hi Des, Thanks very much for the answer :) Very useful indeed. Barry