NEW: Interview with Paul Adams, Chief Product Officer of Fin (formerly Intercom) @Padday helped lead one of the most successful AI refoundings in software: @intercom bet a $300M/yr business to build @fin_ai, an AI customer service agent. We sat down on Onward to talk about what that bet looked like from the inside, and where he thinks AI takes knowledge work next. Full disclosure: $VCX is a proud investor in Fin. In this episode, we cover: - The internal memo that called ChatGPT "the iPhone moment" and the $300M business Intercom bet on it - Why going all-in on AI was the easy decision, and why the culture change nearly broke the company - How the bet refortified the legacy business instead of killing it - Customer service as the canary in the coal mine for AI and knowledge work - The three layers Fin runs on, including the models Intercom trains itself - Read vs. write: the line where an AI agent's risk and power both live - Why we judge AI against a standard no human meets (a chaotic Vodafone call center) - Claude Code as "magic": a non-coder turning one prompt into a finished video - @Fundrise is a customer of Fin with: ~94% resolution and ~$600K in support cost reduced - Why technology moves fast and people move slowly (and what retail's collapse teaches) - Scenario planning the next few years: real pain and a wave of one-person companies - Why Paul calls himself a "delusional optimist," not a doomer Watch the full episode below → 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Paul Adams, CPO of Fin (formerly Intercom) (00:51) Competing with the AI labs, and the three layers Fin runs on (05:46) Technology moves fast, people move slowly (09:33) The Block layoffs (12:24) Intercom's refounding: IPO, ChatGPT, all-in on AI (15:31) Why the culture change was the hardest part (15:59) How the AI bet refortified the legacy business (20:20) Customer interview: Fundrise on Fin (22:48) The economics (~$600K saved vs. ~$80K) (24:45) Customer service as the canary in the coal mine (26:12) New jobs that didn't exist, like agent orchestration (30:11) Read vs. write to the database (the Delta story) (31:53) Hallucinations and the Vodafone call center (37:00) Claude Code as "magic" (40:25) Scenario planning the next few years (44:35) Europe vs. the US and China (49:37) Cancer, optimism, and governing AI well (52:40) Wrap