AI Will Transform
Your Product Forever

Paul Adams

Chief Product Officer, Intercom

FEB 2024

The Stakes

This Is a Meteor

"This is a meteor coming towards you. This is going to radically transform society. And I think if people don't explore AI properly, it will leave them behind."

AI is bigger than mobile as a technology shift, maybe as big as the internet itself
This is not hype like crypto or Web3; it's a fundamental reshaping of how products work
If you don't engage with it, you will be left behind by the market
ChatGPT changed everything on November 29, 2023, nothing feels the same after

Framework

Start with Your Problem, Then Ask: Can AI Do It?

Step 1: "What's the core premise? Why do people use your product? What problem does it solve?"
Step 2: Ask, "Can AI do that?"
Step 3: Match your product to AI's actual capability

Paul's core framework

Replacement: AI just does it. Your old workflow is gone.

Or augmentation:

Augmentation: AI helps humans do it better, faster, with more confidence.

Timeline is key

Some use cases aren't ready yet. That doesn't mean ignore them, but know where you are on the curve.

Lessons from Failure

What the Froze-on-Stage Story Taught Me

Cannes keynote disaster: Froze mid-talk in front of thousands, cursed on mic, walked off-stage
Google+ failure: Built from competitive fear, not customer need. Privacy disaster.
Google Buzz failure: Same root cause, fear-driven, not user-driven
The pattern: Every failure traced back to motivations. Fear-driven building = failure. User-driven = success

The recovery

You can freeze on the world's biggest stage, panic, walk off, and still survive. Then you keep going. That perspective shift is everything.

Ship to Learn

Intercom's philosophy: Ship fast, ship early, ship often. Failure is built into the model. You learn faster if you fail faster.

Playbook

How to Go All-In on AI

Read constantly. Twitter, newsletters (Matt Rickard), OpenAI blog, papers. No excuse.
Play with the tools. ChatGPT, Bard, GPT Vision, Rewind. Don't just read, do.
Don't bolt it on. Don't create a separate "AI team." Integrate AI thinking into every product team.
Stay generalist. Specialists matter for ML, but generalists who learn AI faster win.

The time investmentBook half an hour daily to read, play, experiment. No crazy hours needed. Just discipline and prioritization. If you don't, it will pass you by.

Contrarian

AI Product Myths That Will Kill You

✗"It's just hype like crypto"INSTEAD →✓ AI will reshape your product category. Reporting tools, project management, support software, all vulnerable to AI-native redesigns.

✗"We'll add an AI team to handle this"INSTEAD →✓ Every product team must understand AI. Siloing it kills you. This is like mobile in 2010, everyone needs to own it.

✗"We don't have time to explore AI"INSTEAD →✓ You don't have time NOT to. 30 minutes daily. Read, play, experiment. Or you're already behind.

✗"We're not sure if this path is right"INSTEAD →✓ No one knows. This is product taste + experience + educated guessing. Move anyway. Adapt or die.

Based on Paul Adams' episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @Padday on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

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

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