Eoghan McCabe – founder, chief executive and chairman of Fin, the software company formerly known as Intercom – clearly wears many hats.
In an online blog, the now 42-year-old Dubliner once described himself as having been a “pretty shy kid” with varying interests, having at different points harboured aspirations to be an artist or a scientist.
He had his first job at the age of 16 in a local hotel bar clearing tables, but he only lasted a few weeks.
“I absolutely hated it,” he said. “Couldn’t stand being told what to do. I resigned and explained to the bar manager at length everything he was doing wrong. I then got a job at a local software company.”
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After that, McCabe pivoted to building websites for small Irish businesses as he worked his way through college, studying computer science at Trinity College Dublin.
Over 2007 and 2008, McCabe set up software design agency Contrast, as well as a company called Exceptional, which built developer tools and was later acquired by Rackspace.
[ Salesforce to buy Irish-founded tech firm Fin for $3.6bnOpens in new window ]
He founded software company Intercom in 2011 with friends Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett and quickly established himself as the company leader.
McCabe would spend a decade living in San Francisco after buying a one-way ticket to the city by the bay with a €2,200 loan from AIB. Intercom would reach a valuation of $1 billion in less than a decade, making it a so-called unicorn.
In his blog, which was last updated in 2024, McCabe describes himself as “very much a [political] centrist”, describing “tribalism and polarised thinking” as “dangerous” characteristics. McCabe has himself, however, often cut a polarising figure.
He has donated about $200,000 to campaigns supporting US president Donald Trump and the Republican Party, official filings published last year show.
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That same year, he posted a picture on social media with Trump at a fundraising event held by high-profile American entrepreneur and tech investor David Sacks in San Francisco. The event raised $12 million for Trump, according to Sacks.
In a picture posted to his X account, a smiling McCabe stood side-by-side with Trump in front of an American flag, with matching thumbs-up gestures. The posts raised eyebrows as McCabe previously railed against the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban.
“This is a very fundamental, human issue, something far bigger,” he wrote in a blog post in January 2017. “We abhor this and any policy of hate and discrimination, and that’s why we’re getting involved.”
Then, in 2023, McCabe was moved to call a companywide meeting in which he pledged to be “more thoughtful” about his social media activity.
He addressed a number of issues that had been raised following reports in The Irish Times about Intercom’s pullback in public support for the gay festival, Pride, that year. He promised the company would learn from it and “do better” on communications.
Intercom attributed the change in policy on Pride to a desire to focus solely on building the business. In a previous staff meeting, McCabe said Pride had “got wrapped up, unfortunately, within some circles, in kind of more divisive and political issues”.
Questions of McCabe had also been raised, including by staff members, over contentious tweets he had liked.
These included retweeting a post by ultraconservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson declaring “America’s principles are at stake” as he tried to establish a new presence on air, and another celebrating a US supreme court decision to overturn affirmative action in higher education.
McCabe also posed alongside Robert F Kennedy jnr, writing: “Met a very special man tonight”, and “God speed.” The now-US health secretary is an anti-vaccine activist and has previously said 5G causes cancer, DNA dysfunction, and “is making our children stupider and sicker”.
In May 2019, The Information, a digital business publisher focusing on Silicon Valley, published an article with the headline: “Harassment allegations against Intercom CEO sparked departures”.
[ Why has Irish tech firm Intercom been so dogged by ‘unnecessary chaos’?Opens in new window ]
The alleged incidents were said to have occurred between 2014 and 2015. It was a story based on anonymous sources who described alleged inappropriate behaviour on nights out. Intercom looked into the allegations and McCabe was cleared of wrongdoing.
When the matter again came to light as Intercom grew, McCabe issued a public apology. “In the early years of the company I demonstrated some poor judgment,” he said. “I apologised at the time and have matured as a person and a CEO since then.”
McCabe stepped back from being chief executive of Intercom in June 2020 after a health scare to become its chair. He returned in 2022 and said his decision to step back had been due to his need for a break.
He is back living in Dublin and is an investor in dozens of companies. He loves nature, interior design, and has attended the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada every year since 2014.
