Intercom — Intercom's First Pitch Deck

Deck context

About this deck

Intercom's first pitch deck, published by co-founder and CEO Eoghan McCabe on his own SlideShare account. Eight slides covering team, problem, solution, market, competitive landscape, progress and the ask. The deck seeks a $600k convertible note for 18 months of runway; no round size is stated as raised, so no amount is recorded here. Slide 1 carries a visible "DRAFT" marking, which is the publisher's own marking on the version he released. The publisher makes no statement that slides were edited or omitted before release. This unknown round presentation from 2011 contains 8 slides and records $0 in funding. Its sequence moves through cover, team, problem, solution, and later supporting sections. The outline below pairs every slide with its extracted text so researchers can study how the argument develops, not only how the pages look.

Key facts

Presentation structure

Slide-by-slide outline

1. 01

   Intercom cover slide (marked DRAFT)Cover

   Intercom. DRAFT.

2. 02

   The team: four founders from ContrastTeam

   The team. Eoghan McCabe (CEO, product, visual design), Des Traynor (COO, customer development, user experience design), Ciaran Lee (CTO, software engineering), David Barrett (front-end engineering). Prolific speakers / bloggers about software design / development and SaaS business. Ran Contrast for four years, a popular web software design consultancy. Launched Qwitter and Exceptional (both acquired).

3. 03

   The problem: SaaS providers cannot build customer relationshipsProblem

   The problem. Building meaningful relationships with customers is hard / impossible for SaaS providers (meaningful relationships -> loyal customers -> profitable customers and organic growth). Building meaningful relationships requires: 1. customer discovery, 2. customer research, 3. customer communication, 4. relationship management. The current tools available are complex, ineffective, not built for SaaS... there's no one tool to do customer relationship management and messaging for SaaS providers. (Even e-mail fails: generating targeted e-mail lists takes a lot of work, e-mail campaigns have terrible engagement because e-mail is out of context).

4. 04

   The solution: Intercom is simpleSolution

   The solution. Intercom is... simple. Install like Google Analytics. Customer base browsing (e.g. signed-up today, on premium plan). Individual customer research (e.g. see Twitter followers, company). Advanced in-app messaging (user sees message on next login or at specific event and can reply to messages). Customer relationship management (Intercom calculates relationship metric over time and allows app owner find people who need attention).

5. 05

   The market: SaaS today, mobile and desktop apps laterMarket

   The market. Now: SaaS providers ($21 billion market, $93 billion in 2016 - Forrester). Later: mobile and desktop app providers.

6. 06

   Landscape and competitors by categoryCompetition

   Landscape / competitors. Social media research / management: Radian 6, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Crowdbooster. Customer feedback / support: Uservoice, Tender, Get Satisfaction, Assistly, Zendesk, KISSinsights. Email campaigns: Campaign Monitor, Mail Chimp. In-app messages: Hello Bar. User analytics: KISSmetrics, Mix Panel.

7. 07

   Progress: in private beta, ready for public betaTraction

   Progress. Product in development and testing since Jan, ready for public beta. intercomapp.com. Demo. Private beta testers love the product, many are psyched to try it.

8. 08

   The ask: $600k convertible note for 18 months of runwayAsk

   What we're looking for. $600k convertible note. 18 months of runway to work on: product-market fit, customer dev, early marketing efforts, profitability. Plan to raise further round in 12-18 months to turn up heat on marketing.

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