"You don't have a choice. AI is going to disrupt in the most aggressive, violent ways. If you're not in it, you're about to get kicked out of all of it. You have very successfully shifted latestage SAS..."

"push back and even a soft coup attempt, what he believes people still don't understand about what is happening in software and AI, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscrib..."

"more. That's works.com. [Music] Thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. >> Thank you. Great to be here. >> You have done something quite extraordinary with intercom something that..."

">> Okay. Uh this sounds like the dream for a lot of founders especially ones that are stuck with their existing business that isn't going very far. So let's get to that. Let's talk about the beginning..."

"announced. So it would be really neat and tidy to be able to say that the AI transformation came. I knew I couldn't be on the sidelines. I had to save this thing from the coming disruption. Actually, ..."

"having nothing to lose. So, you know, like we certainly are unique. I I don't know a a single company of our size and age that has pivoted this hard to AI and being as successful as we have been, but ..."

"Yeah, maybe it's a bunch of fancy postrationalization, but honestly, that's that's really where I stand. >> Yeah, I think I think data has shown people often prefer not to talk to humans to just to so..."

"when it comes to practical, productive, efficient, and effective value, the glue in between the human parts of our lives, I actually want AI and robotics. Before we start talking about how you actuall..."

"Super unfocused. As you said, we're trying to do all the things for all the people. And when you're trying to do all the things for all the people, your efforts to capture all that different types of ..."

"Also, >> let's save that because that's a really important topic that I think people need to hear. >> Let's talk about the the shift and how you made this actually happen. You make you make it sound l..."

"my own kind of anger and dissatisfaction with how the company was being run and the mistakes that I made myself. I made a lot of compromises as a lot of founders and founding CEOs do toate employees o..."

"was desperation saying we're doing the AI thing. The AI thing exciting and and and sex exciting and sexy. We need some new energy thing here. The new AI thing makes sense. And also just my intuition s..."

"customer far happier. And so we actually started to lean into a price that we thought would be, you know, was the nexus between us earning the most and it being the most palatable. We basically said t..."

">> Okay. So, going back to how you actually did this thing. So, you basically you just you described what many people think of now as founder mode. just top down as you said the truth and just here's ..."

"employee survey like I think 15 or 16 months after I started aggressively working through the or rebuilding the or rebuilding the culture and we had a 98 to 99% approval of management leadership and n..."

"it should work. And I, for one, don't know of a great company that doesn't work that way. You'll see from time to time, I did this a couple years ago, people will construct these indexes of the perfor..."

"companies like Google that do that. There are startups that hire the crazy, you know, young, wild, messy, early startup people and that's great for them and the company too. So it's really all about h..."

"and the, you know, high agency, you know, unilateral dayto-day movement where you're trying to make big wild bold decisions. The reality is that if you're successful, most your days will not be that. ..."

"broader mission that makes it worthwhile for now. And that's why you see so many of our best founders get to a point where they're like, "Okay, I've had enough corporate fun." So that's the most authe..."

"That's getdx.com/lenny. One of the interesting things about this space of agents, there's all stock agents are taking over. It's the future of software. SAS is going to be replaced with agents. CX is ..."

"as just a beautiful collaboration between humans and agents in every direction. >> I love the optimism. Uh someone described this once as a a society uh what is it agentic society >> where it's us and..."

"past, no doubt people who were gainfully employed in dangerous work in mines had to find new work and so uh I don't take that for granted but I think that this is part of the long arc of humanity flou..."

"I'm not polyianish here, like I said, and I'm suggesting that there won't be friction, but for the most part, we're doing good. And to get specific, there will be CX roles and a lot of basic repetitiv..."

"opinions and is a little imperfect, but they'll pay more for it. The abundance of AI is going to make automated things worth zero. Just like you the value of cheap content on YouTube. Why do people su..."

"strongest advice is roll your sleeves up, figure out what's going to disrupt you, have fun with it. You need to bring in actual talent. We and I would be nothing if we didn't have actual AI scientists..."

"what's interesting is you talk about 12 hours a day every day. It's like we're trying to get close to what agents are doing. Uh, which is half that's basically 50% agents. >> But that that's not just ..."

"I'm simply saying that if you want to compete and and enjoy success in this age, which means you need to be doing AI, that is the price. So you either decide to pay the price or get out. Don't halfass..."

"And then the third part is two years away where I ran away where I was sick. Revenue growth wasn't doing so hot. I unsuccessfully tried to defend myself from a bunch of fake in the in the newspapers. ..."

"really helped." >> Thank you for sharing all that. Um, >> yeah, >> I'm glad I went there. I want to show you something that I randomly have in my office, my wife just got me, that I think you're going..."

"next to like Palunteer and Stripe, Revolute. So the question this begs is what are you what are you guys doing that produces such great product leaders? There's kind of like the hiring piece and then ..."

"mini CEO to some degree. I think there's one other thing which is you know part to our approach was this deeply first principles uh thinking methodology almost to a fault although I don't think it's a..."

"wild. I did see some of that research by you, particularly the one where you show the the companies ranked by the number of founders that they have, and I'm like, what is happening? I was as surp I wa..."

"be feeling a genius >> or underelling it. This is just reflects back on exactly how I started our conversation. You've done something extraordinary in intercom and I'm really happy that we're hearing ..."

"was True Detective 1. It was just like incredible. But the last movie I watched was 28 Years Later and that's by Danny Bole. I'm I'm like I you know I was born in the 80s grew up as a kid in the 90s a..."

"Including with the Porsche 911. >> I think that's the third time someone recommended a car. Someone recommend I think Bos at Facebook recommended this fancy Mercedes and then someone once suggested a ..."

">> Fun fact, I built an app once called savorable that helped you savor the moment. It's called savorable, and it sent you a text every few hours, I don't know, maybe once a day uh with a little remin..."

"like 14K. >> Wow. >> Um on some >> on one of these I think there's a website called Flip It where you could sell websites. It really blew up. It was like a little experiment. >> Kind of a social exper..."