Inside the $550M AI Browser That's Taking on Google Chrome | Josh Miller (Browser Company)

we hire people that have this innate motivation this kind of burning desire almost artistic desire to express themselves and express their craft and almost like leave their mark on something that they make not in a selfish way but in a way of the pride that you feel just like the best crafts people uh feel pride of or something I think art feels some people say Soulful or well-crafted or like there's youy and attention to detail is honestly because not because of some product management strategy it's really just we hire people who care really deeply about their work and the impact it has on people's lives and that shows up in Hover States and Transitions and attention to detail but it comes from a value of hire people that just have this NE heartfelt intensity they bring to the office every day my guest today is Josh Miller co-founder and CEO of the browser company Josh and team built Arc an amazing AI native browser that's Reinventing the way that we use the internet Josh and I spoke about how the browser company crafts quality products and highest top talent how the team built Arc search a mobile browser that uses AI to browse for you and why Josh thinks most consumer AI startups will struggle and how he plans to be different Josh is an incredibly authentic and genuine founder who's betting it all to transform how we use the internet if you enjoy our conversation please like And subscribe to support the podcast all right Josh welcome super glad to have you here thank you for having me yeah so why

don't we start with this why are you trying to reinvent the browser let's sve that yeah that is and it's not the most sexy category of software of them all but we ultimately got excited about working on a web browser or what we hope is successor to the web browser because you spent a lot of time in spend this rectangle that is your web browser some people spend more waking hours in their web browser than anywhere in the physical world For Better or For Worse and so got really excited about the fact when you tell someone you're working on a desktop web browser you ask them what browser they could not care less they think it like the most boring thing to talk about and they're even aware of a browser they use and the fact that you spend that many hours every single day in this rectangle yet you don't care and then you think about the kind of love you have for the your favorite products or your favorite physical spaces in the real world where you spend a lot of time or the things you use a lot the Delta between those two facts got was really excited combine with a lot of kind of macro Trends happening in the technology industry at the time that got us excited and met what the browser would look like but I think at its core it was we spend a lot of time these rectangle they don't Inspire us they don't feel great that feels it's like you know I use Comcast on my internet but I don't feel any loyalty towards that company I remember the first little like phone I got when I was in Middle School just to call my mom that I was ready for pickup after I played Snake on like I liked my calculator too didn't and then you know you think about how I feel about the iPhone today and what it mean that's the Delta we want to breach with the browser we want to be to the browser what the iPhone was to the cell phone so we're not there yet but that that's the idea got it so I've been playing with The Arc browser and the reason I'm really excited to talk to you is like it's very clear that it's been crafted with a lot of care and like the people who made this clearly like gave a about the product so can you talk about some of the core values at ARC and like how that guided you and your team to build products sure so we have five value I won't bore you with all of them but one of them which you reference is show up with heartfelt intensity so what essentially that means is we hire people that have this innate motivation this kind of burning desire almost artistic desire to express themselves and express their craft and almost like leave their mark on something that they make not in a selfish way but in a way of the pride that you feel just like the bestcraft people feel Pride over something I think so reason thank you for the compliment I think art feels some people say Soulful or well crafted or like there's Beauty and attention to detail is honestly because not because of some product management strategy or some company you know h on the market it's really just we hire people who care really deeply about their work and the impact it has on people's lives and that shows up in hoverer States and Transitions and attention to detail but it comes from the value of higher people that just have this in the her felt intensity they bring to the office every day something motivates them Beyond just what we say here and I think show it shines BL uh in the product and I think you mentioned that's like one of your superpowers

right just like hiring great people and you know you've hired both like I think you hire the exd designer of safari but also I think you hire someone uh called Nate who has never been a design like officially been a designer before so like how do you find these people and how do you like bring them on board you know yeah so I mean as you're referencing we've hired people that have resumés that will intimidate you uh and make me wonder if I can lead them because they've done such a remarkable thing that I feel like I should be reporting to someone that reports to them and we people that you know were couple years out of school that have made a tremendous impact here and I wish I had a clean answer other than to say you know an original and you see I don't know there's just you look at the work that they've done the things that they've done in their life the they you just kind of know and so for example Charlie who is the Safari designer you reference that again has that resume that is intimidating I overlapped with him at a previous employer he was always working on these really interesting side projects but weren going to make any money they're almost more like artistic projects He had this app that showed you the current state of the move that's all it did you open app you saw the mov or representation and it was gorgeous like the lighting was gorgeous it's like the sort of person that just does that for fun does it with that attention artistic detail and then you think you know you also mention Nate um Nate was had never held the title of designer before we hired him to the designers a couple years out of college but here is this kid that was making web browser for fun after hour and doing it in a really kind of quirky creative way a personal website that was like a plot machine gamified kind of making fun of the social media envir it's just his personality and the Soul at both Charlie and needs work even though the resumes are very different you can't not feel that kind unique spirit in them and though I know that probably you're listening to this and you're wondering how you get a job to come browser company it may not feel as actionable or tactical as you would like from a podcast but I wanted to be honest that just we I gravitate and we gravitate toward people that have an authenticity and have a character that they're really they're they show up with that's just unmistakably that and unmistakenly original I think it's actually pretty actionable I mean you can kind of tell if someone is doing something to get promoted or like to get more money or someone's just building something because they want to make something really Goods both examples say yeah I get emails look this is where mileage may vary and I know this is not true at all companies I get emails and DMS and Tech all the time from people you know that want a job here and feel really grateful that we built a company that is true that wasn't always true and it's really interesting I wish I could tell them I don't care where you I don't care the name of the noun that's in your email and then you know versus that one the woman sent me this prototype the other day of something she did for and prototyp there wasn't coded it was just it was war Factor was almost like this like slide deck but it was just the thought was original the effort was original you know and so for us less about where you practice or how good your resume is and more what are you showing up with in terms of that originality either in thought or in craft or kind it personality you know and then letting that shine through yeah I love that cuz that elims all The Gatekeepers right then you just you have your own destiny under your control yeah

so you also have like a super passionate community of users who who love Arc right and do you kind of work with these users when you're building new features or like how do you work with them yeah so my first company was sold to Facebook and Hersh I my now second time co- vender worked Facebook for a number of years and the thing that impressed me the most about Facebook at the time which at the time you know was known for having some top talent and top crafts people were the user research they were amazing you know they were they had doctor doctors and psychology and sociology from the top universities and it's wild that there are these researchers that were there to just help us understand these people we were building for and the ways in which they would help us understand the way people were hacking the product using the product F what we intended and defi for and it was striking at Facebook they were totally under appreciated time it was like they were used by PMS to validate what they wanted to do and look the researcher said this and I just remember thinking at the time these people should be deciding we like these people and because these people are the ones that are channeling the people we actually serve the people that use Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp every day so when we started the browser company one of the things we did intentionally was we wanted to flip that hierarchy so we created a team called the membership team which rolled up anything that touches the people we serve who we call memb whether that's customer support and success at other companies to user research and everything in between if you're someone that uses our product the membership team is responsible for your endtoend relationship and we put them right up there with engineering and design all the other disciplines as the SE at the product building table and so yeah since day one The Hop the company you use the browser for hours every day the only product that your mom and your little niece and you all share in common other than like texting and maybe video calls so we cannot build a better product unless at its core are the people we're building for and that's part of our product development process so now that doesn't mean we like do a poll and build what say but to the extent we've had any success so far it's been because it's been a collaborative process with the people we're building for thanks in large part to our membership team and how do they talk to the customers they have a different channels they use or like you know how fre do this yes we're arguably too open-minded in how we talk any I mean I message thread a certain number you know just keep in minde you know this product starting you know I we hand onboarded the first probably 5,000 people over Zoom one by one you know a handful of us I recorded welcome videos on my iPhone for the f I texted them to the first you know couple dozen people maybe hundreds and so you know for some early members is we're friends now we're texting the ending we have we often do kind of more kind of mask surveys and polls we do very kind of like structure user research STS over resume and third party tools we do it all and and our approach has been like let's actually lower the barer you let us know how however good for you and our job to kind of abstract away that complexity for us and figur it out but we've actually tried to be approachable on probably too many channels this probably yeah I mean like I think too many companies are like really opinion for some reason about like hey only these people can talk to customers or you have to use this official Channel and like you know like customers are doing you a favor Man by talking to you so why not just like do whatever is easy for them right so yeah like I think a theme I feel that stage my career is there's no one right way to run a company every company's different goals and values Founders but yeah for us and how we do things I we would not be successful at what we do if we did not build in conjunction with the people that are using her product every day got it so

let's talk about like a specific product that you built so you know mo mobile browsing like the browser on a web is mediocre but on mobile is like really terrible man like there's incredible amount of ads popups pay walls and all this SEO optimized stuff and you recently a few months ago you launched the arc search so maybe walk me through like kind of ideation to launch like the high level 100 came to be yeah so the idea for Arc f is actually up and it was a side project and would you is hard to imagine now because it has become so successful and now a core part of our strategy and our portfolio products but at the time it was that well it's been a long year we've wanted to build the default mobile browser but haven't had a good strategic reason to do it and we're just have companywide offsite in November let's give ourselves until January to just prototype a default mobile browser for fun but if we're going to do that since it's not strategically beneficial to us let's be really ambitious and so our ambition was to pick one value prop position so not to build a better mobile browser but to pick a value prop within a mobile browser and then do it to 100 just go wild because it was kind of a freebie project and so what we decided was look on our phones as you say mobile browsers you use all the time it's probably in your top five apps in terms of opens but they're kind of atrocious and at the very least they're all the same and what we realize is like look when we use our mobile browser we're almost always looking something we're on the go we're with a friend and we just got to look something up really quick and so we said let's turn it up to 100 what is the absolute fastest way to look something up on your top and don't worry about are you a browser are you a search engine are you I don't know think about it from a human perspect I want to get this random fact super quick and that's how we got to our kind of tple feature which was which is called browse for me which is look we you know we did Small Things later let's have the keyboard up so you can just watch the typing let's get rid of block ads and trackers and cookie popup so there no bs in the way so we did kind of small things around the edge then when we realized know it's really timec consuming opening a tab in the search results page waiting for it to load scrolling down the page realizing it doesn't have what you want or you need more information going back to the Google result opening a new P what if we just had the product do all that for you so you add and tell it what you're looking for it goes that opens six different web pages reads them all and then create the perfect web page for you for what you're looking for without you doing anything and that has now called browser me become the defining feature of arer you could do these kind of complex browsing sessions to find an answer to something or find information without doing the work yourself but it stem from the place of what is the fastest way to look something up on your phone not how we build a mo better mobile browser and of course now we did we do think we've built the best mobile browser but it stems from the place of fastest way to look got it so it sounds like really focus on the primary value prop of finding something finding information fast right and like how do you guys just like a little more detail how do you guys land on this you brainstorm a bunch of different things and you kind of yeah I got I'll be really honest with you

really I'll be really honest with you this is we were really we've been bad at that with our core product Arc so Arc for desktop we sort of did the opposite we made a sa B that the browser layer was what he wanted was the most interesting pie of software and part of the software stack to bet on for the next decade but we didn't have our problems and we didn't in the valley peep we're just like it's already important today but it sucks and it's going to be even more important tomorrow and suck even more if someone doesn't change it let's go figure out how to make it better and art today though I'm really proud of it on desktop and I think it's the best browser you can feel that in the product and that we've made a bunch of things a little bit better to hopefully create a better cohesive hole but it's not focused it's not singular in its purpose and so going again to the origins of Arc search it was a freey project it was an end of the year almost moral so what we did is we said not only like take it to 100 and have fun with it let's also try to push ourselves in product development trying a different way building products and so the reason we decided to pick a singular value proposition was because we actually didn't do that with our desktop product Arc and we wanted to again we one of our other values is assume you don't know which is literally what the value set like no matter how smart you are no matter waiting your career no matter how sure you think you are you must proceed with the assumption that you have no idea excuse my language and this was sort of that test of let's try a product development strategy that we've never tried before and just see what happens and so the way that we picked the fastest way to get what you need was it was more kind of from an intuitive sense of what do we the five of us want the most or what do we use the you know browser and search on our phone for the most but really was more about testing that approach to product development not making sure we got that valum prop correct because it was a freebie project and I think there's a good lesson in there that it resonated has resonated in a way you know I had arc on desktop I know great about our success with arc on desktop and then Arc search has come out and the first you know three months I've been like man the bar like it is been it's and I think it is a good lesson for me and us that when we were just have fun with it and being really focused uncomfortably focused around not what our company strategy was but around what is a person need that it resonates at even deeper level than this other product we have but has also been successful and is Success so extrapolate too much but that it's it was been it was a surprise I love that saying turn up to 100 because like you can make like three features 50 but only just make one thing 100 and maybe like it's blows people so out of their minds that like they start word of mouth and like all those positive things this a good lesson too is like you know I didn't take my own or that advice before this project you know why cuz turning up to 100 feels risky you know and it feels how are you going to better pick right because if you turn up to 100 it's going to take a lot of extra work and it's gonna be really risky it might working but and it adds all this like intensity and anxiety to it and then we you know when you think it's a freebie project have fun with it what do you want to build this isn't our core strategy yeah let's go for it you know when you have that like state of abundant that abundant mindset yeah it's like wow people want hundreds and you can do it you know and I don't even by the way I don't even think it's a hundred I think that would be attitude but we have a lot more work to do to really make it 100 that intentionality of like we don't want to make a better mobile browser we want to redefine how you do something with this device it's a different attitude and I me very excited to take that attitude back to the core Arc product yeah I mean this is probably why you also attract really great talent because you want to redefine things yeah I me that's the pitch at its core is I cannot promise you will make more money that you will have a better title you actually will probably have a worse title I cannot promise you anything other than we are all trying to do the work that will Define our careers and it may fail but we're going for it and if we succeed it will Define your and it will Define all of our careers so that's kind of the Vibe and people that come here is he can make more men more money value return somewhere else you can lead a bigger team having a bigger title have more chance of success on paper but no one's going to have the you know very few places will have the same level of ambition and intentionality that we do Here For Better or For Worse we're going to find out yeah you know

speaking of which I think back in April you prob this tweet saying that you only have like 12 to 24 months to win and can you get some more context about this or like why you tweet this stuff out you know yeah of course I still feel that energy I mean there are two part of that question right one is what did I mean and second is why did I share it publicly is there one that you're more curious about or I think kind of these one these another so talk about both yeah sure I wonder how to say this that does it so I was a pretty big skeptic of the lln Transformer stuff maybe eight months ago I'm just general aware until I play with something myself to me I don't really buy it and I've played with all these Technologies in these prototypes and forms it felt slow and expensive at reli just like it felt like another cryp dip and after prototyping one the technology more hour I'm going to get to the punch line CU everyone knows where this is going I truly think that the Transformer Innovation and everything that come out of it will is going to upend everything we do on computer whether they're in our pockets or on our desks or on our wrists and I think there's a very tiny window in time with any one of these big changes platform changes whatever you want to call it where there's a window where the tables are flipped and someone can grab a seat and I think the Dynamics of AI specifically mean that there's an even tighter window because I think the incumbent large companies are better positioned for AI than they were for kind of mobile application development for example and I think specifically where the browser layer sits and who we're competing with and for what it means that even after those tin Windows it gets even tinier and so I us is having 12 month to earn a seat at the table if not the as it relates to how we use our computers of all sizes in this next era and I think if 12 month 12 24 months I think it'll be to late and so that is the attitude I have and we have at this company which is like it's an hour whenever we built four years of foundation we got so lucky and fortunate that we were riding a wave that is about to become that large but we're gonna it's G to crash at some point and we got to go and the reason we said that publicly was or I said that public was we that's what we do our approach to building things has always been be honest be transparent be open about who we are and what we're doing for a range of reason and so I think one of the things I promised uh publicly when we first started putting out YouTube videos and tweeting and being open was I will be honest and open with all of you when things are going really well I will proudly tweet our prototypes and brag about our hires and feel proud of our grasps when they're going the right way and I will also be honest with you when we get bad news and when the crash for user rate is not what it should be and we have to apologize and so I thought this was part of that like yeah I got to be honest with you I really hope this works it seems to be working hope our best are ahead of us but it's now or never and we're going for it I don't know what's going to happen and just you should know but maybe we'll look back in a few years and be like why did we think that was the good thing to do but it's felt authentic to us so we were Contin yeah I love that I remember watching your act two Arc announcement and then in the first few minutes you were like the Steve Jobs character right were you're all black I was like who is this guy be Steve Jobs and then it became like very down toe authentic industry of New York and I thought that was great and I think that feels like consider saying all your messaging right yeah as what you what V anyone hasn't seen it is we kind of unveiled our belief about what we want to do over the four we hit our foure Market the company and so there's is a video about Act Two for the company and we kick off the video and it makes you think that it's a Steve Jobs like keyo presentation and then it turned that was sort of a bait and switch and we were making fun of it and I think when that gets it is how we generally like to do things at the browser is we're very interested conceptually that inverted surprising people with surprise and awe and wonder and the expected is a lever that's really helpful and really worthwhile whether it's in building product experiences or marketing or communication and so just in general we're really interested conceptually in inverting what is expected because we've gotten into this like Habit in our industry of copy and pace and reductive experiences reductive practic and obviously you don't want to always reinvent the wheel but when it come to talking about who we are what we believe in how we do it it's been really fun to try to invert things yeah no I think it gives the brand a ton of personality so it's great here's kind of

the Crux of things right like you know you talk about you have 12 24 months but at the same time you really care about craft and building really good products and we we've seen some of these other companies I won't mention names but like you know they take all this time crafting really great and they launch it after like a couple years and then it just kind of Falls flat so how do you balance this kind of like desire for high quality with the assume you don't know I mean this goes back to what we spoke about before this is why we have a membership team build a alongs the people that we serve so this why we have to assume you don't know mentality so you know very tactically Arc search I think if you go download Arc search today you may not like it but you will believe it's one of the best crafted iOS apps you've ever and I say that with humility you may hate it may not be that a good product but boy they're transition they're juicy and it just we really sweed the detail and that showed up in the way that after we released it was sort of like an immediate h there was a test flight to people not at our company a week after we started that product and secretly behind closed doors there were dozens and dozens of people that don't work at our company and are not investors or advisors or anything like they were actively testing the product and we were actively changing how it worked and what it looked like based on that feedback and so it's thought perfect I can't comment on what other companies do but our belief that like we have this bar for ulence in our craft and we are manal about about passing that bar that mean that no one can see it or that we can't test our assumptions or build in public and air quotes until it actually release those two things aren't in conflict with of and are it doesn't mean we don't miss the Mark we miss the mark all the time Shi things before there we should have Shi them and they were never any good and we hold on too late and we polish something that actually was just lipstick on a pig so we don't get it right but I actually think the reason I don't actually think they need to be in conflict and if they are it's because whoever's building an villain deep down really ashy cares about getting one of the two I think it's more likely that you find you're someone that kind of believes in more ban startup methodology if it's great then it can be ugly and imperfect and the market will pull it out of you or they believe that like you know it's Steve Jobs are bust and we can go away for five years and that's fine and I think really you need both and that's really hard and I'm not sure we get it right but I don't think they're in con so basically you had people building this Arc search product with you from very early days till when you launched it right yeah got it okay yeah I mean AR Arc for Windows Just Launch last week we had hundreds of thousands of people created an account in the launch week people were using it for months before it may have been the launch day and now anyone can make it but we how do you think you know we can't we don't know how to build it except with other people so and all but again this is why I used to be so down on the concept company value and how I so understood and internalized were they're important because it all comes back to us me don't right if you believe you need to have an unwaver in craft bar and love and attention to detail but you assume you don't know when you're going to get there or how the only way to combine those things is to do it with other people on in public and how do you think about like the vision and the strategy versus kind of like iterating with these users and tinkering and make it a bit better how do you think how do you think about this yeah one that I'm not sure can speak to cuz I don't know if we're going to be successful on the long run right so I can tell you what we're doing and we if we'll find out together works I'm really interested in the far end of the spectrum or I think what we practice the far ends of the spectrum and so I spent two years at Venture Capital firm which I don't think I'll ever work at again but I actually had a wonderful experience when I was and what I was so interesting about working there is you really think in terms of decade in terms of the bets that you make when you invest in companies especially at the early company firm TS invest in earlier stage companies and the browser company was a B on macro Trends secure shifts big hypothesis about how society would change the way or continue on certain trend line over the course of many years of not decade and so our strategic bet on the company was you want to go that way you want to hang around that hoop and for these structural reasons that are unlikely to change in fact they're only likely to accelerate and then if we're betting on that to hang around that hoop over there then the question is just like survive like just get oh not even survive just get over there however you can and so that is focusing on the okay what do we have to do today next week month one foot in front of the other as long as be directionally going towards that hoop or hanging around that hoot get the hoop metaphor that you get what I'm saying like at the 10,000 make sure you're making the right and otherwise just focusing on building things that people love and if you focus on thing building things that people love in the direction of those that big bet that it will be okay which I don't know if it'll work for every product and every company and every type of software and every Market def probably definitely doesn't I'm not sure it work for ours but that was our bet was that if we can build what replaces the default browser or we can be effectively technically someone's default browser that is just so valuable on so many fronts and strategically sound that great now we got to go build the best rectangle use for five hours a day to render web pages and nothing else matters and we'll figure out the rest later got it I mean in some ways you are already the best pro the best default browser for thousands or tens of thousands I don't know how many people love the browser but people love it right use it yeah we're blip in the grand yeah okay so let me ask you kind of like two hard questions right so like the first one is

around uh monetization right so you know like for example like a perplexity trying to do something similar around search but they're actually charging a subscription so I'm curious why you haven't monetized yet or is that on the horizon yeah so I think it's worth separating out Arc search which again was this sign project that's become to a bigger de it's a very different answer than our core product which is Arc so Arc is a browser I can wax poetic about an operating system for the internet or what we're going to do that's different let's just take it as it is a web browser a desktop web brow and what's unique to add a web browser is it's effectively consumer Pro every demographic everyone that uses internet needs a browser every shape and size every country every soci like everyone need a browser and you spend hours a day in your browser across all these demographics and across all parts of their life work personal they buy things they look up information and when you look at products that have those characteristics they are unbelievably valuable because of the distribution potential to other right so if you think about even like a brasser itself how does Chrome how does Safari make money Safari makes $20 billion a year because it is decided that it's going to distribute that attention to Google and get the check that's why browsers monetizing search engin the most but really the Enterprise value of a browser doesn't come from the search engine relationship that's just one Wasing distributed comes from the fact have this rectangle that everyone in the world spends hours and everyone but a large majority of people spend hours and hours is in across all parts of their life and that means think about the percentage of Commerce that is passing brows think about the SAS economy that's passing the browser about the search passing browser and the ads that passing the browser and so those businesses tend to be incredibly easy to monetize not lucrative to monetize in a bunch of different ways the risk is can you get to scale you scale typically the hardest and so our approach has been our Enterprise Value comes from the time spent the Tam from the number people that addresses and then the distribution potential if you can get those two things and so we need to get to scale as quickly as possible to then monetize that attention and distribution in some other way which beg the question okay how great thank you for that long spiel har you can do it and I guess my point is twofold one there's so many ways that the wrong question to be asking the right how the heck are you going to get hundreds of millions if not billions of people using your product every day when you don't have structural EV because it be Ken we're going to make a lot of money the second answer the question was if I had to guess I think there's something really interesting around Commerce and payments and shopping if you think about how much money literally exchanges hands in the context of a web browser and all of the parts of the experience can make better or more efficient or more reliable in that experience at scale or and or the web is a development platform it is an app platform and really the browser in the world web apps has become a an app platform and I think there's a lot of interesting proven ways that you can monetize application platforms IND distri isms as well so again not to mention search and advertising the way that other browsers monetized but I really like to think about if the short version would be the real question like right now what is the most existential risk in the browser company it is not CH make money from a web browser people spend hours and every day across work and personal life and buy things and look things up That's essential risk is and you get to scale as fact product and you don't have any structural Advantage got it yeah okay so I guess it's a different strategy right because if you look at like for example you just look at superhuman versus Gmail right like their strategy is like well like everyone uses Gmail but like the people who actually get like a ton of emails or like really want a great experience pay us $30 a month or something but it sounds like your strategy is just to get your scale just to actually yeah I think that I think that's a great example like I'm a super human customer I've been a superh human customer for years like one of the only Tech products my wife wants so I a number one superhuman fan we are taking a radically different approach to our cator the our equivalent would be to say you know what's really valuable Gmail has billions of people and they're in like a large percentage of their lives are passing through your inbox like the router for people's lives in many ways that is very like can you be Gmail getting to a billion people not can you monetize $30 a month off of tens of thousands or hundreds of them both can be successful both have different risk reward profiles we have not gone a superhuman route we've gone the Gmail or bust route except we're going even higher and that we're doing the operating system that Gmail sits on top of so you know there are many different approaches to a category of software and there many you know there's company called Island browser that is building an Enterprise browser for banks and health insurance companies with hippoc compliant there are many different and it's been very successful and will be very successful there different types of ways you can approach Market whether email and browser and ARS has been go for the largest Tam even though it's most likely to fail and that is you know can you get to scale again what's that you know how's what that going to monetize it still a question that people are asking today but incredibly valuable asset for meta you know ditto with Instagram makes sense okay so then one

more tough question so like I think you know when you launched a brows for me on Arc search there was a bunch of Publishers advertisers journalists who like you know what about the Publishers what about the advertisers how they you're like this intermediating them right so I guess what's your response for folks I mean like to do it that is a you know that is a question that is a tricky question that I don't have you but not I haven't thought about a way but more in a like yeah we got to figure that out like collectively what that is economic model for how people get paid to publish on there so from an arc search perspective we tried to go above and beyond and did even more after we got this criticism to really aggressively link back and make it clear where this information is coming from and try to encourage you to say hey if you find this interesting go deeper and read where it came from so for example pretty quickly after the product launch well actually when the product launched we wouldn't let you see the results until we told you the six web pages it came from and then link to those web pages multiple places on the page after and actually since people said hey this is a really tricky problem we changed the experience again to actually putut the web pages themselves at the very top is the first thing on the page to encourage you to click through so I think the first thing is we're trying to be as good citizens of the web as we can be with the lens of we're a browser we're we represent the user agent we're their user agent and so yeah uh how do we provide value to them while also being good stewards to the other players in the web ecosystem however it does break the economic model and it's an economic model that was already strained and was going to be even more strained and so what is the economic model that replaces digital ads to for publishing content yeah I don't I mean I got you I'm a creative I like to think I'm a creative generative product person but and I got ideas but I'm I think it's a broader ecosystem question that we have to Grapple with I think for better or wor it's inevitable because this technology like it is objectively a more valuable experi everyone that uses the internet to have a computer read dozens of articles for them to get the answer that they want across a bunch of sources that is not going to go away yeah and so I think solving this economic question is a big one and important one but even more important and big because it's inevitable so we're just trying to be good stewards along the way and do our part but it's intimidating honestly because it really does feel like a social shift in any I would also note that what is new here is the scale and that is both clarifying and scary in that the web has always been about summarizing and Ling out to like I remember when I was coming up in the industry there is all that outrage drun blogging a blogger and blogs would kind of quote articles and Link at things and was that taking away from the original source and so I think the story of the web that we can kind of forget some time even Tech M which has been partially an inspiration for me like I read stuff on Tech M all the time and never click through and then sometimes they click through like this is the public web and the open internet is putting content out there and remixing and linking and quoting now I think the thing that is new and what is unfair about that characterization is before someone manually had to do that by hand so yeah did a pull quote or they wrote a summary and linked back to it but it was done with maybe more intentionality or in a different context now the difference is you can have infinite Tech memes for anything whenever you want always with greater precision and Fidelity that is pretty wild and that has in second order consequences but I also think of the life of these War like are a little bit tightened right now because actually this economic model has already been strained and this is just accelerating unfortunately so I don't know the answer and we got to figure it out but yeah like everyone else has to follow the users right the users will just do whatever's most convenient for them but on the other hand you have like probably the most successful economic model ever right like Google search is like so it's kind of a definitely an interesting space to building for sure yeah I think I really just come back to I've been on the bo of patreon for over five years and having you know seen up close at least with a certain type of Creator the abas is not working can go to a mobile web page and see all the pop-up banners and The Trackers and the it's just not it not like we're trying to protect something that's working it's been fading for a bit so that isn't justifi whatever you want and that's what him then but I do think I actually find it very exciting that I think a lot of really interesting experiments in as ear it's to Media even like yourself in some ways will come out of this and I don't know what those are and we want to be good citizens but got it so let's wrap with this you know my audience is a bunch of tech professionals right many of the mor big companies trying to improve some Metric by 3% or something so what's your advice for these people who are maybe are like you know they want to like build something really good really important like they want to build something they feel proud of do you have any closing words of advice for folks who say this the tricky thing about this is I remember the things that I deeply believe now just sound like fortune cookies or something like if I had heard someone say one of these things that I might say when I you know the other end i' like God that sounds so cliche but I will revert back to authenticity the truth will set you free I think just

focusing on being really proud and fulfilled of what you do at work every day and using that as your Guiding Light is the most important thing and most if people don't even have the privilege of doing that think if you're listening to this podcast the better chance that you do but you know like just doing something that you if not maybe love is a strong word just like find pride and again think about the value that we care about show but heartfelt intensity doing it whatever it is in a way that makes you very proud and fulfilled almost taking that very personal lens to it but that comes from a place of privilege and it doesn't work for everybody and it's not the value system of everybody but I don't know I think my career is has taken the most turns when I at the end of the day just said like trust in my own gutted Instinct for what makes me really happy and what makes me energ ized inside even if it's not the same for other people and I think the browser company is a great example that I'm sure people are listening to his and a couple things I've probably said like wow hasn't be all like structured an answer as I would have expected or doesn't really sound like they thought that one and I promise you we thought about whatever that was a lot what we may have done is optimized for what has felt great to us for what we want to do in the world and that may not be optimizing the same things that everyone's optimizing for so think as long as like your heart singing and as cliche as that sounds I think that's all that matters but that's my value system May being placed on other people so mileage no I don't you have to copy it I think that's a very Noble thing to aim for like you know you're taking big swings and who knows what will happen but like you're true to yourself right you're doing what you want to do so yeah but okay I'm actually glad you said that and this is probably my real answer that you're right that I don't need to caveat but I think that the reason I'm caveat is like that's my answer is that I remember a decade ago trying to figure out the answer to these things how should I do and I wish I just kind of shut out the noise like what do I want what am I trying to my life to be so in some ways my caveat is not oh I'm not proud of my answer for myself it's more just like I don't know you I don't know your listener they don't know me they shouldn't listen to me they should listen to themselves so again listen to yourself but I don't know if I you know I'll have to figure out of equip your more actual for fortune cookie waves thing that but just that like trust that inner motivation that own heart felt iny more than what I think or anyone else thinks got it all right man that's amazing yeah I think that's a great time to CL close on