Key Moments
Be Wary of Solving a Small, Rare Problem - Des Traynor of Intercom
Y CombinatorKey Moments
Des Traynor of Intercom discusses product strategy, marketing, scaling, and the importance of solving big, frequent problems.
Key Insights
Product strategy requires saying 'no' to opportunities that don't align with the core mission.
Content marketing should focus on genuinely helping the target audience, not just product promotion.
Solving small, rare problems is less viable than addressing large, frequent issues for business success.
Founders often need to shift roles as a company scales, learning new skills along the way.
Effective marketing requires understanding diverse customer journeys and varying levels of abstraction.
Aligning product, marketing, and brand is crucial for sustained company growth and coherence.
THE ORIGINS OF INTERCOM AND UNIQUE PROBLEM-SOLVING
Des Traynor's journey began with a computer science background and a PhD exploring programmer assessment. Frustrated by academic resistance to his findings, he turned to blogging about design and usability. A serendipitous coffee morning led to meeting his co-founder, and after working in a consultancy, they launched an agency called Contrast. Their initial product, Exceptional, a Rails error handler, was a side project, a common strategy then. However, communication with the thousands of users of Exceptional became a significant pain point, driving the need for a better way to interact with customers.
THE PIVOT TO CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION AND INTERCOM'S BIRTH
The limitations of communicating with users in 2010, which involved manual processes like exporting PayPal subscriptions and mailing lists, pushed Des and his team to innovate. They introduced a simple in-product message feature, which garnered significant engagement, far more than emails. Realizing the potential, they added reply functionality and features like seeing who read messages, forming the basis of what became Intercom. The success of this communication tool was so pronounced that they eventually sold Exceptional and focused entirely on building Intercom, a product born from a critical need to connect with users.
CONTENT MARKETING AS A STRATEGY FOR ATTRACTING AUDIENCE
Intercom's content strategy, much like their previous venture, heavily relied on creating valuable content to attract an audience. Traynor initially wrote most of the posts, focusing on topics relevant to startup founders, like product strategy, naming, and user growth. The philosophy wasn't to constantly push their product but to offer genuine help and expertise. By addressing problems their target users faced, they built trust and readership, making content their dominant traffic source, a strategy that took time and consistent effort to establish.
THE EVOLUTION OF ROLES AND MANAGING GROWTH
As Intercom scaled, Des Traynor’s role evolved significantly. He moved from product and vision to customer support, then to recruiting and marketing. This adaptability is crucial for founders. Learning new skills, particularly in areas like marketing which lacks rigid '101' structures, involved immersing himself in how other successful companies operated. He emphasizes identifying and addressing the biggest problems within the company, whether it's aligning teams, onboarding new hires effectively, or managing multiple offices across different time zones, all while maintaining company vision.
MARKETING CHALLENGES: ATTRIBUTION, ABSTRACTION, AND BRAND RESONANCE
Traynor highlights the complexities of marketing, particularly the difficulty in attributing direct success and the need to cater to various customer abstraction levels. He advises against solely focusing on direct sales pitches, advocating instead for understanding how customers buy and being present at different stages of their journey, from initial problem awareness to specific solution seeking. Building brand resonance and relevance is key, rather than just optimizing for immediate, attributed conversions, which can lead to short-sighted decisions and neglect of long-term brand health.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: ALIGNMENT AND SOLVING SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS
Intercom's product development is guided by its core mission: 'to make internet business personal.' Any new product must align with this principle. They prioritize solving big, frequent problems that users are willing to pay for, rather than small, rare ones. The team learned that customers often buy solutions to specific problems (like customer support or marketing) rather than a monolithic product, leading to a decision to unbundle their offerings. This specificity allows for more tailored onboarding and clearer value propositions, striking a balance between a cohesive brand and individual customer needs.
STRATEGIES FOR SCALING AND ALIGNMENT
Scaling Intercom involved numerous challenges, including hiring senior leaders in unfamiliar functional areas and managing a growing, multi-office presence. Traynor stresses the importance of rigorous new hire onboarding to maintain company alignment and prevent drift. This involves not just functional training but also instilling the company's core mission and values. He acknowledges that mistakes are inevitable, especially when hiring externally for specialized roles, but emphasizes continuous learning and a commitment to making new hires successful.
PERSONAL ADVICE FOR STARTUPS AND FUTURE VISION
For aspiring entrepreneurs, Traynor advises having a strong vision and being wary of tackling only small, rare problems. He suggests identifying and addressing significant, frequent challenges that offer substantial value. He also touched upon his future ambitions beyond Intercom, including revolutionizing sports technology, particularly soccer broadcasting, and simplifying complex industries like pensions and mortgages. These areas present large-scale problems ripe for innovative, user-centric solutions, mirroring the principles that led to Intercom's success.
Mentioned in This Episode
●Products
●Software & Apps
●Companies
●Organizations
●People Referenced
Common Questions
Des Traynor's PhD research on measuring programmer proficiency revealed uncomfortable truths about university exam grading. This led him to blog about design and usability, where he met his future co-founder, eventually leading to the creation of Intercom. The frustration with existing communication tools also played a key role.
Topics
Mentioned in this video
Mentioned in the context of discussions about incubation, implying his insights or work are relevant.
His concept of 'schlep work' is mentioned in relation to founders undertaking difficult but necessary tasks for simplification.
Discussed as having a conversation with Des Traynor about the growth of Y Combinator's YouTube channel.
Co-founder of Intercom, discusses his journey from computer science PhD to building a successful SaaS company, focusing on product strategy, marketing, and company growth.
Author of 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things,' his style is compared to the book 'Monitoring Humans' by Rounds.
Though not explicitly named, the reference to 'Kara' or a similar interviewer might be implied in the context of 'interviews'.
CEO of Intercom, who stated 'build what you sell, sell what you build,' a principle emphasized in the discussion about product and marketing alignment.
Mentioned as a model for following their approach of having a side project to eventually pivot to.
A design agency co-founded by Des Traynor and a colleague, which served as a precursor to their pivot to product.
Acquired the product 'Exceptional', the error handling tool created by Des Traynor's team.
A customer communications platform co-founded by Des Traynor, discussed extensively regarding its founding, product strategy, marketing, and growth.
A New York-based insurance company mentioned for its innovative approach to simplifying property insurance using a chatbot.
An accelerator program whose strategies for attracting founders and its own approach to content and brand are discussed.
Mentioned in the context of the difficulties in communicating with customers in 2010, requiring login to export subscription data.
Mentioned multiple times as a successful company with strong product and marketing alignment, used as a benchmark and example for other startups.
Cited as an example of a successful company that simplified a complex financial process (index funds) and shared efficiencies with users.
Used as an example of a company with a strong brand (Michelin stars) that is orthogonal to its core product (tires), illustrating potential brand disconnects.
Used in the early days of Intercom for onboarding customers, with the CTO walking them through installation.
An email marketing service mentioned as part of the process of sending customer notifications in 2010.
An email marketing service used in 2010 for sending out notifications to customers, highlighting the manual and cumbersome process.
Intercom gained attention by reaching the top of Hacker News shortly after its launch in July 2011.
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