The Way of Product with Caden Damiano #152 How AI has redefined Intercom's product strategy, team dynamics & pricing w/ Brian Donohue, VP of Product at Intercom
Dec 1, 2025
Brian Donohue, VP of Product at Intercom, shares his journey of integrating AI into product development, focusing on the creation of their AI agent, Finn. He discusses the evolution from early machine learning to leveraging large language models, reflecting on the significant challenges and innovations encountered. Brian emphasizes the importance of outcome-based pricing, aligning customer incentives with product success. He also explores the need for product teams to enhance their technical fluency to navigate AI complexities effectively.
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Incremental Wins Led To Big AI Swing
- Small incremental AI features (summarize, reword) quickly became viable and seeded bigger product shifts.
- Continuous three-month reassessments of scope added up to a major strategic swing toward Finn.
Inherited Button UX Hurt Finn's Performance
- Finn launched with a button-based UX inherited from older systems that hurt conversation flow.
- Changing the UX later raised resolution by encouraging more back-and-forth with the agent.
ML Isn’t Dead — It’s Composed With LLMs
- Intercom absorbed its ML team into a larger AI group while still using ML where it made sense.
- They layered LLMs on top of core ML systems for naming, summarization, and higher-level UX tasks.