Intercom to double staff to 280 after raising $35m in funding

Technology firm Intercom is set to double in size over the next 12 months after it raised $35 million in funding.

As part of the plan, the company, which currently employs 140 people, will increase its research and development operation in Dublin by 70 people, with the remainder of the jobs at its San Francisco headquarters.

It was the third major funding announcement for Intercom, which raised $23 million in January last year.

The company provides a comunications platform for internet business to interact with their customers, with integrated products for each team from sales and marketing to product and support. Its suite of products allows companies to communicate directly with customers on their own websites, inside their respective web and mobile apps, and by email. Among its customers are Shopify, New Relic and ZenPayroll.

The Series C round was backed by Iconiq, with investment from the Social + Capital Partnership and Bessemer Venture Partners which participated in the Series A and B rounds respectively. Iconiq’s other investments include Docusign, Flipkart and Fastly.

“[Iconiq] came to us when they continued to hear our name from their respective connections and portfolio companies,” Intercom cofounder and chief executive Eoghan McCabe said.

The company now has more than 7,000 paying customers, connecting with over 250 million of their users.

It plans to use the funding to invest in new and existing products on the platform.

“There’s just phenomenal scale on this Intercom platform, to the degree that the platform strategy has worked out, and over the last year we’ve started to split the platform into separate products,” he said. “Now we have 93 per cent of our customers on more than one product. On average, people have three products, This whole platform thing is finally being validated.”

Although it is headquartered in San Francisco, the company’s engineering work is done in Dublin and will remain here, Mr McCabe said.

“We’re still getting started and you can work directly with our VP of product and engineering in Dublin, and have an incredible impact,” he said.

Intercom has ambitious growth plans. The company has increased its revenue by 100 times since it went for its Series A round in 2013, and by 5x in 2014.

It plans to forge ahead with

“We need to basically hire on average 12 people a month for the next 12 months.