Des personally emailed prospects all day, every day, sending tailored screenshots of what Intercom could look like inside their product and asking for feedback, entirely by hand.

“So all day every day I'd email people to tell them about Intercom, show them what Intercom might look like for them, and hear their feedback.”

Doing it manually rather than with outreach tools preserved the nuance needed to address each prospect's specific objections, which he considered essential in the earliest days.

“All automation loses nuance and nuance is literally all you have in the early days, so embrace it.”

After Intercom opened to the public, Des ran a live weekly webinar walking small groups through the product and the philosophy behind using it, later adding early-morning and late-night sessions to reach Asia-Pacific customers.

“I did one live webinar on Wednesday nights to groups ranging from 9 to 90”

Even small, low-attendance sessions compounded into real reach over time, including a lasting customer base in New Zealand that traces back to those early webinars.

“You think these things don't matter but actually it all matters, especially when the numbers are small.”

The people Des emailed were not cold strangers; nearly all had some prior weak-tie connection to the founders through blog comments or a conference meeting.

“we had commented on each other's blog posts or I had met them at a conference or something like that”

That sliver of pre-existing trust was enough to get skeptical people to try an unproven product from a stranger.

“Good people are willing to try out good stuff when they half trust the person who it came from.”

Des personally wrote the large majority of Intercom's early blog output alongside running the newsletter and Twitter account, at a pace of two to three posts a week.

“I wrote 93 of the first 100 blog posts. We published two to three posts a week back then.”

Intercom treated content as a long-term education and trust-building channel meant to spread the word, not a direct-response promotional tactic.

“the best way to help spread the word of Intercom is by being as educational as possible”

Intercom's editorial team (non-founder) frames evergreen, timeless posts as compounding assets that keep generating traffic long after publication, unlike news-driven content that decays fast. This is the company's own stated rationale, not Des's personal account, so it is marked implied rather than founder-stated.

Des also ran Intercom's Twitter account in the early days, sharing company updates and outside links, alongside his writing and webinar work.

“I also ran the Twitter account where we'd share all the stuff.”