The Exchanges

Q Um, okay. So to start, um, you know, you know, Can we break down browser base for some people? The audience is like pretty diverse. So there might be beginners. There might be more technical people. There might be more finance people. What is browser base to the normal person?

A Yeah, absolutely. So when I think about browser base, first to start with, what is all of the work that we do in our day-to-day lives? A lot of that is in a web browser. You know, we're interacting with software. We're interacting with web apps. You might go to crunch base pretty often and. There's this idea that we want AI to do work on our behalf. AI is going to take some tasks that we have and take care of them for us. And if we want AI to do the same work that we're doing, we need AI to use a web browser to, to work the same way we do. And BrowserBase is providing that web browser as an infrastructure product to developers who are building these AI features that are going to know you use in your day-to-day life. So you think of us as a developer tool. We're an infrastructure platform, and our product is browsers at scale. So if you want your AI to control the web, you need to give it a browser. We provide that browser. It's kind of like a database company in some ways, right? You know, every application has these primitives, you know, maybe storing data, maybe it's like manipulating images, and also now it's controlling a browser. And not only do we provide the browser infrastructure, browsers at scale in the cloud, but we also have this framework called stagehand, and it's the code interface for the browser, which gives developers and LLMs an easy way to programmatically c…

AI assessment note: “BrowserBase is providing that web browser as an infrastructure product to developers”

Q What's the typical profile for your customers? Does it span a range? Like if it's self-serve, is it a lot of consumers? How does it work?

A Yeah, they're all, all businesses, all startups. So we're very much B to B, um, mostly developers. And I think the, the customer profile browser base has really changed over time in the early days when, you know, people were just kind of building on the edge of AI in early, Um, it was a lot of startups, you know, it was a lot of people and we were a startup ourselves, so we didn't really earn the right to go get a larger customer until we grew more and really proved out our infrastructure. These days we see customers from like all different types of business sizes from, you know, still the early stage startup that's innovating to maybe the scale up that has a thousand employees and really wants to double down on some internal automation they're building or the publicly traded company that already used some sort of a, you know, headless browser technology in their cloud and wants to Look to what's new and what's innovative. So it really has spanned a lot more different types of companies as we've grown. Um, but I think that's very traditional for infrastructure companies. You prove yourself out to these early startups, and then over time as your platform becomes better, um, you win the right to work with larger companies that can trust you with their cloud infrastructure.

AI assessment note: “they're all, all businesses, all startups. So we're very much B to B”

Q Is Twitter your biggest distribution channel? How do you think about the different media channels?

A Yeah, it is a Twitter. I definitely use Twitter the most for getting stuff out there. I think it's just because I've built the audience there and like, I try and direct people there. I'm trying to get better at LinkedIn. Um, Marty Kraus, shout out Marty, just dominates LinkedIn from pylon. He's so good at it. And I, um, I think that like. I'm, I kind of, I've always tried and been like one channel and actually the journey of Browsebase in 2024, we started. My goal was that when you thought about headless browser infrastructure, um, you thought about Browsebase and specifically those people in San Francisco in the AI space thought about Browsebase. So I really tried to go where they were, which was on X and it was, you know, at events and really trying to get into that market. Now that we're going more broad and we're trying to target more types of companies, we are trying to shift across more channels. We're doing more YouTube, more LinkedIn. Um, and still trying to like find the breakout success there that we found on X, but we're definitely seeing good results, and I, I think we just have to get better at multi-channel, and as we bring more people onto our team, they bring their own expertise in certain channels, and, um, I'm excited about some of the success we've had there.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it is a Twitter. I definitely use Twitter the most for getting stuff”

Q Do you think people think that you are?

A I think, I think BrowserBase is a category creator which is still trying to define and share with the world what we're doing. So no, if you're watching this, we are not, we're not even really an AI company. We're an infrastructure company. We, we help companies use model, but people bring their own models on BrowserBase. Their models control our browsers, right? So we're more of a primitive, we're a building block, and When you think about the LLM OS, the LLM is the brain. The browser is just one of the tools it needs. Same with file systems, same with like video and voice inputs, same with embedding and vector databases. These are all the primitives that help power these like agentic applications. And we seek to build the default browser for AI.

AI assessment note: “So no, if you're watching this, we are not, we're not even really an AI company.”

Q So what is your team composition? I've heard you have a great culture, a really great team. You guys are based in San Francisco, but what's the current composition?

A Yeah, we're about, you know, I think two thirds engineering, one third go to market. So, you know, we're an infrastructure company. So majority engineers, uh, within those engineering teams, we have like five sub teams. And then on the go to market side, we have just one big blob of go to market people. Uh, and they all like have very clear responsibilities. Like, you know, we have a sales function, we have a growth function. We have a customer support function, a marketing function within growth. Um, but we've tried to keep things very flat. And I think that really, we've tried to invest a lot in this in-person culture in San Francisco. We have an office in San Francisco, the The team is in person five days a week. Uh, but it's like, we balance that intensity where it's like, Hey, we people kind of show up between like nine or 10 AM. They leave around like six or seven PM. And you know, if you step out to go to the dentist, it's like no big deal. It's not like we're building a like prison or something, right? Like it's, we're just trying to go back to what we had before COVID, which was like high trust, high integrity default is coming into the office. And we built this culture that I call, we call this as an emotionally vulnerable company. So we really anchor on, Hey, how can we talk about the hard things? How can we talk about the feelings we have about the work we're doing?…

AI assessment note: “we're about, you know, I think two thirds engineering, one third go to market.”

Q a solo founder. That's a lot of stress. Startups are a lot of stress. Um, we're really fortunate to be sponsored by Brex and Brex really is like the best partner for startups. And I'm not just saying that, but they also really stress on performance. And so like, how do you keep your mindset clear while you're building, while you're running and doing these really hard sprints and loops?

A Yeah. Well, I'm not a solo founder by choice necessarily. I tried to get like three people to be my co-founder. They also know. So like, I, I think in the end that worked out for the better. And I do really love being a solo founder, um, specifically because as a solo founder, you remove this alignment step within co-founders where you have, we have several co-founders. Often the co-founders have to get aligned and then you get aligned to the rest of the company. So when you're a solo founder, It's just you and the company in constant harmony, and if I feel like the company's not moving in alignment to me, I could have an all-hands meeting, and we could kind of realign, and our all-hands meetings kind of feel like mega church vibes these days, you know. It's a lot of, like, talking about the values and talking about the customer stories, and I think that really helps us stay in tune as a culture. In terms of taking care of myself, the, the most important thing is, like, finding a great partner, and I'm very lucky, I just got married this year, so I'm still In the honeymoon phase.

AI assessment note: “In terms of taking care of myself, the, the most important thing is, like, finding a great partner”