Competing with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product

Josh Miller, CEO and co-founder of The Browser Company (maker of the Arc browser), discusses how his team builds product by optimizing for how users feel rather than only for metrics. The conversation also covers the company's values, hiring philosophy, public building and trust, rethinking the PM role, and his long-term vision of the internet as a computer.

01Key learnings

• Optimize for the feeling you want users to have (joy, speed, surprise, focus) and use metrics as an honesty check rather than the sole goal.
• Track one tight engagement metric that captures retention, engagement, and growth together, such as how many users return five of seven days, and watch week-over-week growth and cohort improvement.
• Hire people who show up with heartfelt intensity and something to prove, then give them an ambitious prompt and get out of their way.
• Write company values by interviewing the whole team and mirroring back what they already say, rather than drafting corporate statements from the top down.
• Treat the team as the product: pitch candidates against joining, and celebrate every hire and shipped feature publicly, naming the people who did the work.
• Build public trust through radical trust-building rather than full transparency, since users increasingly distrust tech companies and need to know the people behind the product.
• Rename new features, roles, or teams with made-up names to strip preconceived notions and force first-principles thinking about what they should do.
• In commoditized consumer categories like browsers, experience and emotional attachment are the main differentiators, so invest heavily in craft and make the product significantly better than alternatives.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.