How Intercom redefined itself by defining a competitor

If you've used the live chat functionality on a website in the last ten years, there's a good chance you've used an Intercom product, even if you don't realise it. Intercom, an Irish-founded unicorn, has achieved near ubiquity, and been at the forefront of customer conversation technology. Started in 2011, the four founders wanted to make internet business more personal, and helped create an entire sector of tools to do so, redefining how we interact with brands in the process.

And while the competition in their space was always there, it wasn't until 2023 that the Intercom came out and defined explicitly, aggressively who's clients they were gunning for – Zendesk.

There are a bunch of reasons why the when, the timing of this declaration of intent makes sense, even though it comes more than ten years and almost a quarter of a billion dollars of investment into Intercom's story. But let's park that and talk about the why.

Defining your competitors is almost as important as defining yourself in business. By acknowleding your competitive set, you're mapping the territory in which you will compete, or seek to avoid competition. If you're trying to define whitespace into which you want to move, you're looking for areas where you don't overlap directly with competitors and their offerings. If you intent to take them on in a head-on way, defining your competitors is just as important. You want to define their weaknesses so that you can outpace them, and message the disparity between you and them to the customer. There is an entire industry built up to enable companies to do this (and it's expected to be worth $55billion by 2032).

Business is competition, the ultimate competition is war, and many alpha types will draw comparisons between war and business at any given opportunity. And if they love war analogies, you can be they'll quote you Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, strategist and philosopher credited with writing 'The Art of War'. The most famous quote attributed to him is 'Know Thy Enemy', a distilled version of the longer quote: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

So, back to Intercom vs Zendesk.

Putting one major competitor in the crosshairs wasn't just wanton aggression. It came at a time when Intercom needed to reclaim scrappiness and rekindle the fire that had started the company. After a somewhat corporate period, wherein they were rumored to be preparing for an IPO that never materialised, Eoghan McCabe returned to retake the CEO role, pulling back most of the founder team, some of whom had drifted away from the company. All of a sudden the band was back together. All of a sudden Zendesk, both a source of inspiration for Intercom, and a major competitor, was looking flabby and weak after having been acquired.

Intercom dared to say the quiet part out loud: They wanted Zendesk's business and they were willing to take some big risks to get it. Companies owned by private equity firms don't like big risks. They like stability and predictable returns. Intercom was willing to be the dog nipping their heels.

As he told The Currency: “If you’re Zendesk, acquired by a private equity firm, you don’t have the inclination, interest, or room to go and do a bunch of crazy new stuff,” he said. “It’s hard for them to move on a dime and take the kind of risks that we can take. They are, however, a great go-to-market organisation, and that is a big challenge for us.”

McCabe did a few big interviews where he reiterated that Zendesk were the target. By doing so he signalled to his team and the market what Intercom was, what it could be, what it would need to be to succeed, and what it would all take. By defining the competition, Intercom redefined itself.

"Before I went back, we were calling ourselves an engagement operating system. No one knew what that was. It was just so vague, and we sold to so many teams. We could go out now and declare on a billboard We’re the next Zendesk. But we probably won’t do that."

Probably.