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What AI means for your product strategy | Paul Adams (CPO of Intercom)

Paul Adams is the longtime chief product officer at Intercom, where he leads the product management, product design, data science, and research teams. Before Intercom, Paul was the global head of brand design at Facebook, a senior user researcher at Google, and a product designer at Dyson. He’s also a best-selling author, a podcast host, and a public speaker. In today’s episode, we discuss: • Practical advice on integrating AI into your organization • Tips and tools for learning AI as a PM • Hilarious stories from Google and Facebook • How to build conviction with skeptical coworkers • Lessons learned from pricing at Intercom • How Intercom implemented JTBD — Brought to you by Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/ | Hex—Helping teams ask and answer data questions by working together: https://www.hex.tech/lenny | HelpBar by Chameleon—The free in-app universal search solution built for SaaS: https://helpbar.ai/lenny/?utm_source=lennys-podcast&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=helpbar-launch-lennys-podcast Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-ai-means-for-your-product-strategy-paul-adams-cpo-of-intercom/ Where to find Paul Adams: • X: https://twitter.com/Padday • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauladams/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Paul’s background (04:09) Freezing onstage in front of 8,000 people (07:28) Insights from Google+ days (12:31) Learning from failure (13:56) Intercom’s “ship fast, ship early, ship often” principle (15:17) Integrating AI into product strategy (17:31) Making time for AI learning (19:37) AI in new-product development (21:16) Questions to ask about your product (23:33) How Intercom pivoted after the release of ChatGPT (25:13) Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin  (26:45) The early impact of AI adoption at Intercom (28:53) Capabilities of AI (34:27) How to structure teams around AI products (37:57) Why all teams should be involved in AI (39:04) Staying up to date on emerging technology (42:44) Hurdles implementing AI at Intercom (45:52) Building conviction around AI (49:52) Why you shouldn’t fear AI (50:56) Paul’s “before-after” framework (51:54) Pricing lessons from Intercom (54:54) Paul’s “differentiation vs. table stakes” framework (59:22) What “swinging the pendulum” means and examples from Intercom (1:05:21) Paul’s “product market story fit” framework (1:08:23) His take on JTBD (1:11:01) How Intercom uses the “four forces” framework (1:12:54) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Paul AdamsguestLenny Rachitskyhost
Oct 25, 20231h 23mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

CPO Paul Adams on AI’s Meteoric Impact on Product Strategy, Teams

  1. Intercom CPO Paul Adams reflects on major career failures at Google and Facebook, how they shaped his views on leadership, risk, and company-building, and why embracing failure is essential to doing meaningful work.
  2. He argues that modern AI is a “meteor” headed straight for many products and industries, and explains how Intercom effectively “ripped up” its strategy post-ChatGPT to go all-in on AI, especially in customer support.
  3. Adams outlines practical ways to evaluate how AI affects your product, when it replaces vs. augments workflows, and how to reorganize teams and roadmaps without treating AI as a bolt-on feature.
  4. He also shares several product frameworks—differentiation vs. table stakes, swinging the pendulum, product/market/story fit, and pragmatic Jobs to Be Done—that guide how Intercom builds and positions products over time.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat AI as a fundamental strategic shift, not a bolt-on feature.

Adams likens AI to a meteor that will reshape entire categories; Intercom effectively restarted its strategy after ChatGPT, concluding that customer support is directly in AI’s path and required a ‘bet-the-farm’ response.

Start AI strategy from first principles: what problem does your product truly solve?

Strip your product back to its core job, then map that against what AI can currently and soon do (writing, summarizing, reasoning, acting, interpreting images/voice) to see where AI can fully replace, partially automate, or simply augment your value.

Invest in both machine learning specialists and broadly AI-literate product teams.

You need deep ML experts to adapt foundational models to your domain, but you also want generalist PMs, designers, and engineers on every team learning to use AI, rather than isolating AI capability on a single ‘AI team’.

Use differentiation vs. table stakes to balance your roadmap.

Winning products must both do something meaningfully better/different and meet basic expectations; Intercom learned the hard way that over-indexing on innovation without building ‘boring’ essentials (permissions, reports) blocks adoption.

Recognize and manage ‘pendulum swings’ in strategy and org decisions.

Teams often over-correct from one undesirable state to another (e.g., from all generalists to too many ‘done-it-before’ specialists who import the wrong culture); expect these swings, and focus on finding a sustainable middle ground.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

This is a meteor coming towards you… bigger than mobile, maybe bigger than the internet.

— Paul Adams

We literally ripped up our strategy almost entirely and started again from first principles.

— Paul Adams

Start with what your product does, then ask, ‘Can AI do that?’

— Paul Adams

We were different and better in ways people didn’t care about.

— Paul Adams

Only work on what matters most… and stop worrying about things you can’t control.

— Paul Adams

Personal failure, resilience, and learning (Google social products, Cannes keynote)Why AI is a once-in-a-generation technology shift and how to respondIntercom’s strategic pivot to AI and the creation of Fin, its AI chatbotEvaluating where AI will replace vs. augment existing product valueTeam and org design for AI-era product development (ML specialists vs. generalists)Core product frameworks: differentiation vs. table stakes, pendulum swings, product/market/story fitPragmatic use of Jobs to Be Done and the importance of simple, customer-focused stories

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