Dive Brief:

• Moving full-speed towards an IPO, software startup Intercom named Dan Griggs its first CFO in a public blog post Tuesday. The startup, valued at $1.2 billion, is backed by Facebook and Twitter founders Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.

• In July, the San Francisco- and Dublin-based unicorn promoted its then-COO Karen Peacock to CEO, following former CEO Eoghan McCabe's move to Chairman of the Board.

• Peacock told TechCrunch Griggs was a strong candidate due to his experience helping take advertising technology Rocket Fuel public, and for helping execute a "whole business transformation" at Sitecore, where he served as CFO just before coming to Intercom.

Dive Insight:

Griggs’ primary experience is in growing robust mid-market and enterprise technology businesses, like Sitecore and Rocket Fuel, the latter of which is now part of Amazon’s Sizmek.

During his time as CFO, Griggs helped transform Sitecore from a perpetual license business to a subscription-based cloud software business, Intercom’s blog post said. Under Griggs’ leadership, Sitecore successfully completed the transition while doubling revenue at scale. 

Prior to Sitecore, Dan spent two and a half years at Rocket Fuel, including six months as VP of financial planning and analysis. During this time, he built the young company’s FP&A organization from the ground up, helping scale the organization from $45 million to over $400 million in revenue, over $2 billion in market cap, and through a successful IPO and secondary offering.

As Intercom’s CFO, the company said Griggs will aid in scaling the business, investing in the product to deliver value to larger businesses and "bringing conversational support to market." 

"I’m thrilled to join Intercom because its industry-leading platform is solving real problems for customers and is changing the game when it comes to customer communication," the post quotes Griggs as saying. "The opportunity to build out a great team and help scale a company that’s transforming how businesses engage with customers is incredibly exciting."

Intercom, founded in 2011, sells customer-chat software that works with support and marketing teams to its 30,000 customers. Per its LinkedIn page, it brought in $125 million in its recent Series D funding.

Griggs told TechCrunch the company is "near profitability" and is growing in the "strong" double digits. He added that Intercom doesn’t need to raise new capital, and has enough liquidity today to invest. Peacock agreed, saying Intercom is in no hurry to go public; it wants to "build out some internal infrastructure before executing the transition," and an IPO is at least two years away.