/ideas

Hosted by Intercom

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Oct 2025

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About the show

/ideas podcast is all about what it really takes to become an AI-first company. Hosted by the visionary minds behind Fin, the show brings together leaders from forward-thinking companies to share how they’re reworking the way they build, operate, and think in the age of AI. These are honest, fast-moving conversations - the kind that usually happen off the record. From overhauling product and engineering processes to reshaping marketing teams, /ideas captures how companies are navigating the biggest shifts in modern work. https://fin.ai/ideas/ ]]>

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43 recent

October 22, 202559 min

Pioneer 2025 Product Keynote: Fin 3 and Customer Agent

Catch up on all the big announcements from the Product Keynote at Pioneer, our in-person summit hosted in New York City on October 9. Eoghan McCabe, Founder and CEO, and Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer, share the latest in Intercom’s AI innovation – including the launch of Fin 3 and our vision for the future of Fin as a Customer Agent. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3e5PPtY_CSs?si=kqwQPGpr5twJiZH7For more keynotes & conversation visit https://pioneer.fin.aiFollow our Fin/ideas Substack - stories from the team at Intercom building Fin: https://ideas.fin.ai/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

October 22, 202520 min

Convergence and Transformation in the Post-AI World – Pioneer 2025

Des Traynor, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Intercom, explores how AI is transforming not just products and interfaces, but entire companies. He shares his vision for how AI will act as a powerful, convergent force – collapsing boundaries between tools, teams, and functions – and what that means for the future of work and customer experience.Recorded at Pioneer 2025, a summit for AI customer service leaders.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3e5PPtY_CSs?si=kqwQPGpr5twJiZH7For more keynotes & conversation visit https://pioneer.fin.aiFollow our Fin/ideas Substack - stories from the team at Intercom building Fin: https://ideas.fin.ai/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

September 7, 20251 hr 1 min

The state of AI in 2025: Reasoning, regulation, and rethinking scale

Intercom's Chief AI Officer Fergal Reid and VP of Design Emmet Connolly sit down to chart the current state of AI – why scaling pre-training hit limits, how reasoning models and reinforcement learning surged, and what the “DeepSeek moment” revealed about costs and competitiveness. They dig into massive CapEx and data centers, the shrinking gap between frontier and open-weight models, and why value is shifting up the stack from models to the AI layer and product UX. The conversation explores world models and representational convergence, where real breakthroughs may show up, evolving regulation and copyright, and practical implications for builders in a post-training-first world.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8ISy0PswHvE?si=TBooKTEXH191DfIgFollow the peoplehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/fergalreid/https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmetconnolly/https://fin.ai/ideas/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

June 18, 202532 min

Be careful you don't build a MiniDisc

In the first episode of /ideas, Chief Product Officer Paul Adams talks with Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Des Traynor about how AI is reshaping everything: how we build products, structure teams, and go to market.Follow the peoplehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/destraynor/https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauladams/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/fin/X: https://x.com/intercomhttps://fin.ai/ideas/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

March 6, 202526 min

Designing for Clarity

As Intercom’s product scaled, we struggled to keep the navigation clear and user-friendly. So how do you redesign information architecture without disrupting users? Senior Product Designer Pranava Tandra breaks down the process, from balancing simplicity with depth to making AI features more discoverable. She chats with Senior Director of Product Management Michelle Fitzpatrick about the challenges, trade-offs, and lessons learned in structuring a fast-evolving product for clarity and ease of use.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/R59AZsGDffY?si=if7eoqxIRinGiaOWRead Pranava's blog post: https://www.intercom.com/blog/designing-for-clarity-restructuring-intercoms-information-architecture/😁 Follow the people:https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranavatandra/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellefitzpatrick/Follow our podcast:🍏 Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intercom-on-product/id1462264923🎧 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6d9s4PBzvdESARqUadlCpo🎥 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlCIldMZCaFrcO10XuO7JtPpsZ7EyK0fg💻 RSS Feed https://rss.art19.com/intercom-on-productSign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI.https://intercomonproduct.substack.com/Say hi on 👋LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/X: https://x.com/intercomGet a free trial of Fin, our breakthrough AI chatbot, here: https://www.intercom.com/finwww.intercom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

February 13, 202547 min

DeepSeek, Agents, and the Future of AI with Benedict Evans

AI models are getting cheaper, faster, and more accessible – but what does that mean for businesses and product builders? Renowned tech analyst Benedict Evans joins us to unpack the latest AI shifts, from DeepSeek’s rapid rise to the ongoing debate between deterministic and probabilistic AI. He chats with our Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Des Traynor about the implications of falling compute costs, the race to refine AI agents, and how companies should think about building in an unpredictable landscape.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QkpqBCaUvS4😁 Follow the people:https://www.linkedin.com/in/destraynor/https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/Follow our podcast:🍏 Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intercom-on-product/id1462264923🎧 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6d9s4PBzvdESARqUadlCpo🎥 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlCIldMZCaFrcO10XuO7JtPpsZ7EyK0fg💻 RSS Feed https://rss.art19.com/intercom-on-productSign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI.https://intercomonproduct.substack.com/Say hi on 👋Twitter: https://twitter.com/intercomLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/Get a free trial of Fin, our breakthrough AI chatbot, here: https://www.intercom.com/fin🏠 www.intercom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

December 19, 202446 min

Intercom on Product: How we became an AI-first company

How is AI changing the way we build product, the rituals we rely on to ship consistently innovative software, and our fundamental strategy as a customer service platform? In the latest episode of Intercom on Product, our Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Des Traynor and our Chief Product Officer Paul Adams discuss all the far-reaching ways we are rethinking the basics and reinventing the company to adapt to the era of AI.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/etre_aw6_0o?si=fkWII4slHlsYnxpNNewsletters:Sign up for The Ticket: A twice-monthly newsletter bursting with all the insights, trends, tips, and assets your team needs to embrace the future of customer service. https://www.intercom.com/blog/newsletterSign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI. https://inter.com/productpodcastSay hi on 👋X: https://twitter.com/intercomLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/www.intercom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

December 5, 202437 min

Mastering SaaS metrics with Equals CEO Bobby Pinero

Bobby Pinero, the co-founder and CEO of Equals, sits down with Mark Iafrate, Principal of Integrated Marketing at Intercom, to discuss the challenges of navigating product-market fit, the importance of understanding key metrics in the SaaS industry, common mistakes founders make in evaluating metrics, and the significance of storytelling in presenting data.Watch Start Good trouble on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlCIldMZCaFpAwM39seMpQCUyexY98tUFNewsletters:Sign up for The Ticket: A twice-monthly newsletter bursting with all the insights, trends, tips, and assets your team needs to embrace the future of customer service. https://www.intercom.com/blog/newsletterSign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI. https://inter.com/productpodcastSay hi on 👋X: https://twitter.com/intercomLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/www.intercom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

November 14, 202425 min

Beyond the AI hype: Understanding technological transformation with Benedict Evans

Is the AI hype justified, or is there more to the story? Hear renowned industry analyst Benedict Evans as he cuts through the noise and reveals what AI really means for industries like customer service.Watch this episode here: https://events.intercom.com/on-demand/69b135d5-09ad-4023-a52e-b8a4ea0ee939/?referrer_page=de35aee1-a86c-48bb-8967-f5620d766eabTo check out all the sessions in full, check out: https://pioneer.intercom.com/Newsletters:Sign up for The Ticket: A twice-monthly newsletter bursting with all the insights, trends, tips, and assets your team needs to embrace the future of customer service. https://www.intercom.com/blog/newsletterSign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI.https://inter.com/productpodcastSay hi on 👋X: https://twitter.com/intercomLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/www.intercom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

November 1, 202420 min

Off Script: Imagining the next era of customer service

Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe breaks down how AI is about to disrupt customer service on a scale we’ve never seen before. From bots talking to bots to AI surpassing human expertise—this is just the beginning. The race to build and ship the future is on.Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WIBibfv3SKkFollow the people:https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoghanmccabe/https://x.com/eoghanFollow Intercom:Twitter: https://x.com/intercomLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intercom/Sign up for Intercom on Product: a monthly newsletter sharing our latest thinking on building and designing great products, and how that's changing in the age of AI. www.inter.com/productpodcastwww.intercom.com#customerservice #Customersupport #aiinsightsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.