Tommy Courtney 👨💻 retweetledi
Tommy Courtney 👨💻
4.1K posts
Tommy Courtney 👨💻
@TommyC15
Dad 👶 👦 Founder PRELO (Acq) - Ex Intercom - Creator @knookstories ✨Reimagining children's stories - one child at a time.
Clare, Ireland Katılım Ocak 2010
1.1K Takip Edilen581 Takipçiler
A pep talk to myself:
There's so much going on with AI right now it's hard to keep up. If I see one more tweet that says "This startup kills all apps" i'll lose my sh*t. 🙄
If I'm totally honest, there's a constant low hum of anxiety that lives rent free in the pit of my stomach. The fear that there aren't enough hours in the day to stay across it all. That I'm missing something that matters for the business.
With that said, I keep pulling myself back to the same basic mental model (and please challenge me if you disagree): the fundamentals of building good software - and, by extension, a good business - haven't changed at all since AI has come along - the below are still true:
❇️ Focus on the key jobs to be done for your customer.
❇️ Find where the friction actually is for your users.
❇️ Watch what they do in the product - not what they say in a survey.
❇️ Actually talk to customers. Get feedback fast.
❇️ Iterate unbelievably quickly on that feedback.
❇️ Find a price-point where you are giving more than you take
❇️ Doing the right thing (for your customer AND employees) is always the right thing.
And if you think you've missed the boat on AI: across the pond, apparently only about 3% of US households pay for any AI tool today, according to Bank of America.
So you're still early - there's never been a better time to build great products and services for your customers - give it a rip and get building! 🚀
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Had a really cool call with another brilliant business today that we are hoping to partner with - I quote;
”We get ALL of that….for this price!”
I need to look at my pricing again 😅
@knookstories
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@claudeai This is slick - would also be great if it analysed how you were doing x job and recommended optimisations or even completely new and novel ways to think about solving the job
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New in Claude Cowork: teach Claude a skill.
Record your screen while you do a task, talk through it as you go, and Claude turns it into a skill it can run again. Find it under Record a skill in the + menu of the Claude desktop app.
Available on Pro, Max, and Team plans.
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If you grew up gaming between 1990 and 2010..
what's the one game you still think about?
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Hello people of Cork 😃📚
Knook@knookstories
A tiny superhero has been spotted on the rooftops of Cork... ❤️ Gliding over the swans at The Lough, past the spires of St Fin Barre's and the gates of UCC, leaving glowing storybooks on windowsills and doorsteps across the city 📷 Who sent them? We can finally reveal it.....
Cork, Ireland 🇮🇪 English
Tommy Courtney 👨💻 retweetledi
A tiny superhero has been spotted on the rooftops of Cork... ❤️
Gliding over the swans at The Lough, past the spires of St Fin Barre's and the gates of UCC, leaving glowing storybooks on windowsills and doorsteps across the city 📷
Who sent them? We can finally reveal it.....
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@davidfromkansas I would extend this to the model optionality - it’s UX friction (and a little bit lazy) asking a user to select what model they want. The ideal experience should be the right model gets triggered under the hood per job to be done - is there a reason this isn’t the default UX? 🤔
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i think Claude Desktop app should just combine all 3 toggle modes (chat, cowork, code) into one.
it's genuinely confusing when to use which mode and i shouldn't have to spend mental energy deciding.
Chat feels like a dumber version of cowork while cowork is a less capable version of code.
what's the point from user POV?
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"Certainly we have been taxed and burdened in a way we never expected, But we can't throw in the towel. We can't use being a parent as an excuse. On the contrary, because our kids are watching us, we have to keep pushing ourselves. We have to transcend the bitter math. We have to keep growing. We can't give up on ourselves or our interests."
(extract from @RyanHoliday The Daily Dad - 29th June)
As a dad, I've felt this 'bitter math' so many times since I launched @knookstories
The 5am starts before the house wakes up. The 9pm–midnight sessions when the house is quiet after the kids are asleep. Wondering where the frig I am going to muster the energy from to go at it again tonight.
Starting a company while raising young kids often feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day.
But my hope is that my kids see a dad who stays curious, keeps learning, and who is working on something that hopefully has a positive impact on the world.
To all the mums and dads who are staying curious, even when absolutely shattered I salute you - keep it going! 🙇♂️
PS. If you are working on any projects or learning something new when the kids are asleep I would love to know more. Feel free to share in comments 🙂
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What a cool video by our friends over at Kilrush Credit Union - an incredible effort by them supporting kids in their community with their very own personalised Knook books - huge congrats and well done to Fiona Walsh, Claire Neylon and the team 👏 👏
Knook@knookstories
Books. 📚 Books. 📚 Books.📚 Look at what our partners at @kilrushcu pulled together this week. What an incredible Book Drop by them: 🏫 17 schools. 📚 Hundreds of books. 👦 👧 Hundreds of smiling kids right across West Clare. Every one of them holding their own story👇
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@doganuraldesign Very high quality - we use it to allow parents to edit image details on their kids personalised stories - it’s great
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A huge congrats to everyone at @intercom (aka Fin) on the $3.6bn acquisition by Salesforce. 🚀
It's been really cool seeing all the stories and reflections from current and former Intercomrades over the last few days. I spotted a post from @MarkHuqhes that inspired me to share my own little Intercom story. 😊
Back in 2017, I started my first startup, PRELO. To say I was green would be the mother of all understatements. I REALLY hadn't a clue what I was doing.
So I blindly sent @destraynor a DM asking if he'd entertain me for a chat. To my shock, he replied and invited me into the office. I've never actually told him this before, but that conversation had a much bigger impact on me than he probably realised. 🙇♂️
Fast forward a few years, and luckily I had the chance to go and work at Intercom. The main reason I joined was because I felt I had some kind of debt to pay for that first meeting, but selfishly I also wanted to see first-hand what a great product company looked like.
In many ways, I found that period challenging. I felt a little lost about who I was and what I wanted to do after my first startup. But even with that said, I learned so so much:
What stuck with me most:
• What good product building actually looks like. The place was FULL to the brim of incredible Irish talent.
• Being obsessed with the job the customer is trying to accomplish
• The importance of actually talking to customers - over and over again (I know, what a shock 😅)
• Sweating the small details - every interaction with the product matters
• Asking for help is not something negative - its to be encouraged
I've carried all of those lessons with me into @knookstories
I'm so happy for everyone involved. There has been so much blood, sweat, tears and risk with the repositioning to Fin, poured into building Intercom.
I also think we'll look back on this as a significant moment for the Irish startup ecosystem.
Not just because of the companies started by Intercom employees now and in the future, but because of the next generation of young founders all over the country who get to see what's possible when a homegrown Irish company builds something really world-class. Well done to everyone involved! 🚀
PS. A special shoutout to all my friends in the Messenger group - I miss ya's. Hope you enjoy the celebrations 🍻
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@TommyC15 @ballsdotie It’s great but La Marseillaise is tops; Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau “Land of my Fathers” is very stirring too
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@destraynor Big congrats Des - unreal news and delighted for all the Intercom crew 👏
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Today is very exciting day for us.
I'm so happy and proud for what this means for every single one of our team who worked so hard, and I'm so incredibly thankful for everyone who supported us in any and every way along this journey, and also thankful to all our customers who always believed in us, both big & small.
This is a huge day, but of course our story continues, our regular product launch cadence will shortly :)
Eoghan McCabe@eoghan
We’re excited to share that we just signed an agreement for @salesforce to acquire @fin_ai for ~$3.6B. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027. Fin started as Intercom 15 years ago. We changed our name to cap our transformation just weeks ago. We were a darling of the SaaS era and invented so many of the patterns you see in software today. Nearly four years ago, in need of a reboot, we jumped on weeks-old modern LLMs to create and define the category we know as Customer Agents today. Salesforce invented modern software and SaaS. And @benioff is like the final boss of tech founder CEOs. In seat for 27 years, he’s one of the last of his era. Still pushing, pivoting, placing big bets. It’s a privilege for @destraynor and I to get to partner with him and join forces with Salesforce upon close at this most fascinating time. And will be very fun to get their help bringing Fin to magnitudes more consumers. To our customers: Over the past few years we’ve been shipping intensely. Including recently our groundbreaking model, Apex, and our paradigm-defining internal agent, Operator. With the resources of Salesforce this will only accelerate. And yet little will practically change. I’ll still be CEO, Des will still be running R&D, we’ll both still be committed to continuing to lead this category. Thank you very sincerely and deeply for your belief in us. To all of our friends, our families, and our employees, past and present: While this is not the end, it is a major, pivotal, special, and emotional moment for us. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. For everything. To my cofounders, my exec team: Look what we built. Four young lads with a dream and nothing to lose. And a home grown exec team who pulled off the greatest and arguably only late stage software company pivot to AI, and invented one of the most important categories in AI. Thank you for sticking through all of this with me. And now, time to get back to work. See you at our next product launch in a couple weeks. (:
Dublin City, Ireland 🇮🇪 English
One thing I've become increasingly interested by recently is what happens when great kids characters become personal.
For decades, children's media has been largely one-size-fits-all.
- Every child watches the same episode.
- Reads the same story.
- Meets the same characters.
But what happens when the character stays the same and the story changes for every child?
Imagine a child going on an adventure with Bluey - Not reading about Bluey's day - Their day.
Imagine Peppa Pig helping Jimmy solve a problem with a friend. Exploring space together. Going on a treasure hunt through Jimmy's local town.
Learning new things through an adventure that feels like it was created specifically for him.
What's exciting to me isn't just the technology behind it. It's the possibility it creates for the amazing storytellers, illustrators, and character creators.
For the first time, it feels possible for a single character to appear in millions of unique stories while still feeling personal and inclusive to every child experiencing them.
The character stays the same. The adventure becomes personal.
I think we're going to see some incredibly creative people build things in this space over the next few years.
Curious - is anyone experimenting with this today? @OfficialBlueyTV @peppapig @Disney
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