SaaStr 839: Why Most SaaS Companies Will Fail at AI (And How to Avoid It) with Intercom’s CPO

2026-01-28

Download

SaaStr 839: Why Most SaaS Companies Will Fail at AI (And How to Avoid It) with Intercom's CPO The Brutal Truth About Transforming a SaaS Company into an AI Company Intercom's Chief Product Officer, Paul Adams, shares the unfiltered story of how they transformed from a struggling SaaS company with 5 quarters of declining growth into an AI-first company with a breakthrough product (Fin) that now handles 1M+ customer resolutions per week. What You'll...

SaaStr 839: Why Most SaaS Companies Will Fail at AI (And How to Avoid It) with Intercom's CPO

The Brutal Truth About Transforming a SaaS Company into an AI Company

Intercom's Chief Product Officer, Paul Adams, shares the unfiltered story of how they transformed from a struggling SaaS company with 5 quarters of declining growth into an AI-first company with a breakthrough product (Fin) that now handles 1M+ customer resolutions per week.

What You'll Learn:

Why AI transformation requires "refounding" your entire company - not just adding AI features
The self-harming decisions you must make to win (including parting ways with ~33% of your team)
How to go from 0 to 6,000+ AI customers with 65% average resolution rate
Why demos ≠ products and the "marketing overhang" problem
The complete shift in how you build software (empirical evaluation vs. traditional product development)
Why designers now ship code to production at Intercom
How the buyer has changed (hint: it's no longer just the department head)

---------------------

This episode is Sponsored in part by HappyFox:

Imagine having AI agents for every support task — one that triages tickets, another that catches duplicates, one that spots churn risks. That'd be pretty amazing, right? HappyFox just made it real with Autopilot. These pre-built AI agents deploy in about 60 seconds and run for as low as 2 cents per successful action. All of it sits inside the HappyFox omnichannel, AI-first support stack — Chatbot, Copilot, and Autopilot working as one. Check them out at happyfox.com/saastr

---------------------

Hey everybody, the biggest B2B + AI event of the year will be back - SaaStr AI in the SF Bay Area, aka the SaaStr Annual, will be back in May 2026.

With 68% VP-level and above, 36% CEOs and founders and a growing 25% AI-first professional, this is the very best of the best S-tier attendees and decision makers that come to SaaStr each year.

But here's the reality, folks: the longer you wait, the higher ticket prices can get. Early bird tickets are available now, but once they're gone, you'll pay hundreds more so don't wait.

Lock in your spot today by going to podcast.saastrannual.com to get my exclusive discount SaaStr AI SF 2026. We'll see you there.

Comments (3)