Competing with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product | Josh Miller (CEO)

1. 0:00 – 4:37

   Josh’s background

   1. JMJosh Miller0:00

      Silicon Valley, at least the most modern version of Silicon Valley, has this obsession with graphs, and has this obsession with numbers and metrics. I mean, you saw me in the previous answer. I'm talking about D5B7. What's a D5B7?

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:13

      (laughs)

   3. JMJosh Miller0:13

      And it is an incredibly effective way to achieve certain outcomes to focus on numbers, 'cause it's, it's very quantitative, it's objective. You can see the graph go up or go down, or stay flat, depending on what you want. But what we found is that optimizing for metrics leaves a lot on the table and it misses a lot. And so, what we do at The Browser Company is we talk about optimizing for feelings. How does the software, how do we want to make someone feel on the other end of our software? Do we wanna make 'em feel joy? Do we wanna make 'em feel fast? Do we wanna make 'em feel organized? Do we wanna make them feel focused? What is the feeling we are trying to evoke in whatever we're doing on a specific project or a specific feature or a specific piece of storytelling content? And I, I, I can imagine what's going through the heads of, of your listeners right now, which is-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (laughs)

   5. JMJosh Miller1:07

      ... probably a number of things, but among others, "That sounds really damn romantic." (laughs) Like, okay-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JMJosh Miller1:12

      ... optimizing for feelings.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14

      (instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Josh Miller. Josh is the CEO and co-founder of a company called The Browser Company, which makes a product called Arc, which has quickly become my default web browser. I fell in love with this product as soon as I started using it, and wanted to get a glimpse into how Josh and his team approach the craft of product. There's this kind of cohort of companies, like The Browser Company, Linear, Cron, few others, that are just laser-focused on building the best possible user experience almost above all else, and I wanted to spend some time exploring this trend with Josh. We cover how he thinks about prioritization, team-building, storytelling, company values, metrics, shipping, building in public, so much more. Josh is such an earnest, genuine and humble human, and it was such a pleasure getting to learn from him. And just to be clear, I'm not an investor in The Browser Company, and I barely knew anything about the company before I chatted with Josh. So, I'm just a fan, and as a special surprise, Arc is normally invite only, but if you're listening to this now, check the show notes for a special link that'll get you right in to use the browser, if you want to play with it yourself. With that, I bring you Josh Miller, after a short word from our select sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Writer. How much hype have you been hearing about generative AI? So much. But how do you take it from a shiny toy to an actual business tool that helps you do your actual job? Writer is an enterprise-grade generative AI platform built specifically for the needs of businesses and already widely deployed at world-class brands like Uber, Spotify, HubSpot, and UiPath. With Writer, you can break through content bottlenecks across your organization, from marketing web pages to sales emails, in-product messages, to creating high-quality on-brand content at scale. And unlike other AI applications, Writer's training happens securely on your data and your style and brand guidelines that you provide specific to your organization. The result is that you get consistent content in your brand voice at scale. Get AI that your people will love. For a limited time, listeners to Lenny's Podcast can get 20% off if they go to writer.com/lenny. That's writer.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Dovetail, the customer insights platform for teams that gets you from data to insights fast, no matter the method. There's so much customer data to get through, from user interviews to NPS, sales calls, usability tests, support tickets, app reviews. It's a lot, and you know that if you're building something, hidden in that data are the insights that will lead you to building better products. And that's where Dovetail can help. Dovetail allows you to quickly analyze customer data from any source and transform it into evidence-based insights that your whole team can access. If you're a product manager who needs insights to motivate your team, a designer validating your next big feature, or a researcher who needs to analyze fast, Dovetail is a collaborative insights platform your whole team can use. Go to dovetailapp.com/lenny to get started today for free. That's dovetailapp.com/lenny.

2. 4:37 – 5:23

   Arc and the metrics they use to track growth

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:38

      Josh, welcome to the podcast.

   2. JMJosh Miller4:40

      Thank you so much for having me, Lenny.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:41

      It's absolutely my pleasure. You are the CEO and co-founder of The Browser Company, which builds a product called Arc. Can you just talk about, what is The Browser Company? What is Arc? And then whatever you can share about just, like, the scale of Arc at this point, that'd be really interesting to hear.

   4. JMJosh Miller4:56

      Sure. Uh, I hope you don't mind me doing this. I'm curious. I hear that you may, may or may not use Arc. How would you describe Arc to somebody?

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:06

      Like, the simple explanation is it's just, uh, the best web browser that I've used. So to me, it's a browser. I know th- that you have a bigger vision than that, but that's, like, the, the way I see it as a, a layperson who hasn't seen the full, the full vision.

   6. JMJosh Miller5:19

      Awesome. I think we can go home now. That's great.

   7. NANarrator5:21

      (laughs)

   8. JMJosh Miller5:21

      I'll take that.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky5:22

      There we

3. 5:23 – 9:03

   Arc’s retention numbers

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky5:23

      go.

   2. JMJosh Miller5:23

      No, I... Well, to be totally honest with you and your listeners, we have a really hard time describing Arc, which is something I'm not proud of. But it is, objectively, a replacement for your default web browser. And people who try it seem to really love it, and most people seem to have a hard time using the internet in the old way. So, that may sound like I'm being coy, but we have workshopped many a one-liners, and we, we... The words have escaped us so far. So, to be honest, it is on our to-do list to get sharper about that. And then in terms of our scale, I'll give a... Since th- we have a lot of product managers listening, I'll give you, uh, the PM answer to that question, which is, we really...... focus on one key metric as it relates to tracking our growth or how we are doing. We call it D5D7, a lot of other companies call it L5L7. But the human explanation for that is, how many people turn to Arc at least five days a week? That is all we obsess over from a metrics perspective, because for us it captures retention, engagement, and growth in a single metric. You can't game it, right? So from a retention perspective, it's not just opening it accidentally once a week. You need to open a tab on a day in order to count as an active per day. So it tracks retention. It tracks engagement because five days a week is no joke. There are very few apps or pieces of software you actively use five days a week. And then obviously it- it tracks growth because if we track the count. So that is what we track. And then we also don't obsess over absolute numbers, because if we're successful, if you zoom out and out and out, any point in time will be inconsequential and small. So what we really look is growth rate week over week. So, you know, relative to last week, what is our growth rate? And for the past eight months or so, we've been growing over 10% every single week. So very, very thrilled with that. Do not think that will continue. If anyone is listening, I- I would be shocked if we continue like that for another eight months, but yeah. We obsess over how many humans use Arc five out of seven days a week, and we really want that number to grow as fast as possible every single week.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky7:35

      I love that we're already talking about metrics and retention. This is off to a good start.

   4. JMJosh Miller7:38

      You got to know your audience, Lenny. (laughs)

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky7:40

      We're going to talk about just like how public you are about everything, but would you be up for sharing your retention actual numbers like the D5 and D7 you just mentioned?

   6. JMJosh Miller7:48

      Yes, with the asterisk that I didn't prepare for that, so Rebecca, correct me on Twitter after this if this is wrong.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky7:55

      (laughs)

   8. JMJosh Miller7:55

      So once again, we don't look at DAU retention, we don't look at weekly active user retention. We really just look at D5D7 retention. Depending on the cohort, that's somewhere between low to mid 30s and low 40s. So really, really fantastic. Again, not going to continue.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky8:11

      (laughs)

   10. JMJosh Miller8:11

       If there is anyone on this call that is going to check this in a year, it will be lower, I'm sure, but so far, we're really thrilled with it. And most importantly, in the same way we don't look at absolute gross- growth number, we don't look at retention in this moment. We look at, is it improving cohort by cohort? And so what I- I think I'm most proud of is that if you go back a year, by all means, our retention curve, we were really proud of it, and I think one of the best in our category of software. But what I'm really proud of is 12 months later, we've been inching it up and up and up, despite getting further away from the earliest and most passionate adopters. So our retention curve is going up and up a little bit, which is really nice.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky8:52

       All right. Uh, if you happen to share that, that'd be cool to share on Twitter some day. I'm a retained user.

   12. JMJosh Miller8:55

       Well, you know what? I'm going to wait and you can share this clip. We'll share this clip. (laughs)

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky8:58

       Okay. Okay. I love it. We're just ready. We got the marketing strategy coming together.

4. 9:03 – 19:38

   Josh’s product-building philosophy and why he believes in optimizing for feelings

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky9:03

   2. JMJosh Miller9:03

      Yeah.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky9:03

      So I told you this ahead of the chat, but the reason I wanted to have you on this podcast, even though, as folks may know, and as I've told you, I try to actually avoid founders and CEOs in this podcast to give other folks a platform who aren't often invited on podcasts. But the reason I wanted to have you on is, I just feel like Arc is a remarkable product. It blew me away the first time I used it. I don't know if you saw, I tweeted like as soon as I signed up, like I had to share like how awesome it was. (laughs) It was-

   4. JMJosh Miller9:27

      Of course, Lenny. It made my day.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky9:29

      Okay. Okay, great. And also, as an outside observer, it just feels like you're building a remarkable culture and team that's really unique. And so I just want to selfishly learn from how you think about product and team building and all the things that go into it. So yeah.

   6. JMJosh Miller9:43

      I'll keep you saying that, Lenny. (laughs) What a cool way to kick off an interview.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky9:47

      Absolutely. First question I have along those lines is, you mentioned at some point that your product building philosophy is kind of a reaction to the traditional Silicon Valley way of building product. I'm curious to hear what led you down that road, like why did you feel like you had to react to it, and then how would you des- describe your product building philosophy at The Browser Company?

   8. JMJosh Miller10:08

      I'll share this caveat once and never again in this interview, but I want anyone listening to know, I'm someone who doesn't believe there is a single right way to do things. So what I'm sharing today is truly just what we have found works for us in this moment for what we are doing. But I remember when I was earlier in my career, I'd listen to podcasts like this and take it as dogma, because there were these people that had done it and I respected what they had built. So I- if any of this sounds like better than now, it's not intended to. This is just what we found works for us and what we care about ????? . Okay. So early in my career, started a company also with Hersh, my current co-founder and CTO, and we were fortunate enough to have that company acquired or Acqui-hired by Facebook, and spent a number of years working at Facebook. And remarkable organization. One of probably the best executing I've ever seen at that period of time. And by the way, I'd never been a PM before, so I'm not complimenting myself. I was just learning for the first time. But what struck me at Facebook, and call it 2014, and I've seen through to this day, is Silicon Valley, at least the most modern version of Silicon Valley, has this obsession with graphs, and has this obsession with numbers and metrics. I mean, you saw me in the previous answer. I'm talking about D5D7. What's a D5D7?

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky11:22

      (laughs)

   10. JMJosh Miller11:23

       And it is an incredibly effective way to achieve certain outcomes to focus on numbers, because it's- it's very quantitative. It's objective. You can see the graph go up or go down or stay flat depending on what you want. But what we found is that optimizing for metrics leaves a lot on the table and it misses a lot. And so what we do at The Browser Company is we talk about optimizing for feelings. How does the software, how do we want to make someone feel on the other end of our software? Do we want to make them feel joy? Do we want to make them feel fast? Do we want to make them feel organized? Do we want to make them feel focused? What is the feeling we are trying to evoke in whatever we're doing on a specific project or a specific feature or a specific piece of storytelling content?And I, I, I can imagine what's going through the heads of, of your listeners right now, which is-

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky12:16

       Mm-hmm. (laughs)

   12. JMJosh Miller12:17

       ... probably a number of things, but among others, "That sounds really damn romantic." (laughs) Like, okay-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky12:22

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JMJosh Miller12:22

       ... you're optimizing for feelings. But I just... If you, if you allow me, I would posit that, actually, this modern way of optimizing for numbers and graphs, especially for what we all do every day, which is make things and put them in the world, is what's fairly odd. Because if you, if you, just to yourself, daydream about, what are your favorite products or product companies and brands, while it may sound cliché, for me, Nike. Nike was one of the first companies that, at a very deep level, resonated with me as a child. Disney. Disney, same thing. Apple. Before I was a professional in an industry, these were the brands and the products that they made that really made me love something that was ostensibly a commercial product I could buy. What do you think Walt Disney was optimizing for when he was crafting Disneyland? What do you think Phil Knight was thinking about when he made that first version of the Nike running shoe? What do you think Steve Jobs was imagining and daydreaming about when thinking about the iPhone or the Macintosh? By all means, numbers are a fantastic way to be honest with yourself about whether or not you are achieving what you aim to do, but at the, at the moment of creation, at this stage as product people wondering, "What should we do and why and how?" we think it's much more important for us to think about the human, the person at the other end, and how we really want to make them feel. I think one, one example of that, one tangible example of that is, when I was at Facebook, I joined in the midst of Snapchat's ascendancy.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky13:58

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JMJosh Miller13:59

       And there was a lot of feelings about, how are we doing? Should we be worried? And the way that we would have that conversation would be, how many times per week do people share on Facebook? Do they post something? We even had an acronym, OBPS. It's like seared into my memory. O- What is OBPS and how is it trending over time? What I think we should have been asking, and what we at least would ask at the browser company in our way of product development, is, do we think people feel closer to their friends and family, or something of that nature? And I think that's what Snapchat got so right. They weren't obsessing about something like, how many people put an image into the composer and hit the plus button and the number of times per week means success? They were, they were thinking about something much more human and essential. And so that is what we carry through the browser companies. Don't optimize for metrics, don't optimize for graphs. Use that as a way to keep you honest and use it as a tool in your toolkit, but fundamentally, none of us are here for that. We're there to make people feel something.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky15:00

       As you pointed out, I think a lot of the people who are listening are like, "I love that. I wish I could do that. I want to optimize for feelings, but then I gotta drive the business forward. I got goals to hit. I want to keep people accountable." I'm curious how you operationalize this approach. Just like, how do you actually implement this idea? Like, do you... I imagine you still have goals and metrics, and you guys, you know, you talked about retention and things like that.

   18. JMJosh Miller15:23

       Yeah. Obviously, it's difficult to do that in the abstract for another company, and it may not work for every company and every product, but, you know, for example, one of the reasons we've found this to be so effective so far is, if you pick the right feeling, it typically tracks pretty closely with the metric you care about.

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky15:41

       Hmm.

   20. JMJosh Miller15:41

       So for example, we don't have a growth team, and we have no semblance of growth projects. However, in many of the new features that we put out into the world, we want people to feel surprise or joy or, or an emotion like that. Guess what? When people feel that way, they go, "Oh my God, what was that?" And they start telling their friends and family about it, and they start dropping a screenshot in Slack, et cetera. So, there's one example on the consumer side. I've never built kind of traditional enterprise software selling to CIOs, et cetera, but I can imagine maybe a, someone in the IT department of a large enterprise, uh, wants to feel smart or wants to feel ahead of the curve or wants to feel secure and ease at what they're doing. I think sometimes we just forget that whoever your buyer is or whatever your kind of business objective is, at the end of the day, we're a bunch of people in a bunch of rooms at the other side of these screens, and just thinking about that person, it could be a buyer, it could be a customer. But I think the truth is, the answer to the question, Lenny, is, when I was earlier in my career, I was searching for the answers or the way to do things, the right, the wrong, the binary. I think anyone that's been doing this or anything for a while learns that it's all nuanced. It's a spectrum. It depends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think the true answer, Lenny, is, just like optimizing for metrics so purely is deeply flawed in my opinion, optimizing for feelings so purely is flawed as well. And it depends on what you are doing, what the project is, and a lot of other things. But I think the reason we come out so strongly is, I do think Silicon Valley has tended so far towards optimizing for graphs and metrics that if we can reel it back in a little bit, at least as just one company, I think that will be good. But the truth is, it's both. We need to, you know, we need to use all the tools we can get, but I think that hopefully that's one way that people can operationalize.

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky17:46

       I'm curious just, like, to poke at a little bit, uh, how you actually implement that. So maybe as an example, you recently launched this, like, peak feature, where you'll... You mouse over, I think, a link and it opens up in a little browser that doesn't last. Do you put together a little spec of some sort of, like, "We're trying to create surprise, and maybe here's a metric we think about it"? Like, what's kind of the actual day-to-day?... operational approach to, like, a new feature, e- in terms of, you know, feelings versus metrics.

   22. JMJosh Miller18:13

       Yeah. The truth is, I don't think we've operationalized it as formally as we should one day, and we'll probably-

   23. LRLenny Rachitsky18:17

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JMJosh Miller18:17

       ... need to one day. The lucky thing is, we are a very tight, small group of individuals that have now worked together for a lo- for, for a long time. So it's not so for- formal as there's a PRD, and at the top of it we list out the emotions. It's much more, you know, with that project, get Ben in a room and whoever else is working on it and say, "All right, so here's what we're trying to do for people. Here's the problem we're trying to solve or the way we fit in their day." And in that moment, people want to f- want, it should feel very light and airy, you know? So for the Peek feature, while he's referencing the use cases, you're on Hacker News and you want to, probably in s- pretty quick succession, check out of five to seven URLs and you're not really sure which one you're going to spend time on, but you, you're gonna h- open a bunch of stuff really quickly. And Peek allows you to effortlessly just like, peek into it without leaving Hacker News and context switching to this whole new tab and going back and forth. So in that scenario, the conversation was, "How do we make it feel really airy and effortless to just, whoop, pop it up, pop it back down?" Lightness, airiness, speed, agility. So again, it's not that we have a, "What is the number one feeling and the number one, number two feeling?" It is much more-

   25. LRLenny Rachitsky19:28

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JMJosh Miller19:28

       ... conversational at this stage, but I can im- I am actually really excited. Hopefully we get the privi- privilege one day to have such a large team that (laughs) -

   27. LRLenny Rachitsky19:34

       For sure.

   28. JMJosh Miller19:34

       ... we have to figure out a way to do it. So that's an example of how we think about it.

5. 19:38 – 23:27

   How The Browser Company’s values create a culture that allows them to ship so quickly

   1. JMJosh Miller19:38

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky19:38

      That's a good segue to a g- a question I wanted to touch on. So I asked, uh, Scott Belsky what I should ask you. He's a big fan of yours. I don't know if he's an investor, but he's just like, "I love Josh." And I asked him, "What should I ask Josh?" And one of his questions was about, you guys ship very quickly, like you're shipping meaningful features every Friday and you also close the loop really well with customers when they come ask for something and you're like, "Hey, we did it." What is it that you do and what can people learn from the way you all operate that allows you to ship quickly?

   3. JMJosh Miller20:07

      Well, first of all, thank you Scott, if you're listening. Uh, it's, it's somewhat of an awkward question admittedly because of course as the t- it's sort of like someone complimenting you about your product. It's almost impossible to really take and accept the compliment, 'cause you see all the blemishes.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky20:20

      Yeah.

   5. JMJosh Miller20:20

      Of course, we see all these ways in which (laughs) we don't ship fast enough and could be doing a better job listening and building with members. But at risk of sounding a bit cliche, I really think we ship our values. So we thought a lot about our values as a company. You can read about them online. And I think if you, if you examine those values and then you look at your compliment or Scott's compliment, you can see 'em in one-to-one.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky20:46

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JMJosh Miller20:46

      So the first, and I really think the most important is, we hire people that show up with heartfelt intensity. And a lot of companies, I think, obsess over craft details. You know, there'll be a value, like we obsess over the details. What we say is, we want people that show up to our company with some, some fire in their belly, something that they are out to do. And for each person it's a little bit different. For some people it may be UI craft details. For other people it may be achieving double the performance with a quarter of the engineering headcount. Everyone has something, but they show up with this heartfelt intensity. And I think even relative to everything else, I'm gonna say, that's it. If you have a team that has heartfelt intensity and is there for a purpose and something to prove, (laughs) you get a- you give 'em a very exciting, ambitious prompt and get out of their way, and they will do remarkable work. So showing up with heartfelt intensity. The... Our second value is, assume you don't know. Assume you don't know. And the value assume you don't know is, even if you know, even if you're a subject matter expert, we have someone at our company that literally built the first version of Chrome and ran it for 16 years, but he more than anyone embodies this beginner's mind of, "I have no idea how this should work or what will happen." And the follow-up to that value is, so we gotta get going. It's like dropping in a new city. You just gotta walk out the door of your Airbnb, turn left, and maybe you'll turn right and then you'll hop on the subway, but you just gotta get going and see what you find. And so we have this attitude of, you're showing up with this heartfelt intensity, but you start by saying, "I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea what's gonna happen, so we just gotta get going." And that, that biases in a default to action. Uh, we have another value of, start by asking what could be, which is pushing ourselves to be as aspirationally ambitious as possible. So the Peek feature that you mentioned, we just didn't want to solve the problem of context switching. We wanted to almost blur the line between native and web software and make it feel like a sheet of paper, y- you know, and, and, and really pushing ourselves to be as ambitious as we can be, which is the consequence of blowing back around and more deeply motivating the people working on it. So I mean, I could keep going. We have a value, you're on the hook for the team about a collective, uh, about cl- you know, you're do- you're doing it for the crew when you gotta swarm, when you gotta swarm. And we have a value of make them feel something. But I think what it all adds up to is a team that has a lot of heart, has a lot of intrinsic motivation and a, "It's the first day of my career, I wonder what's gonna happen" attitude.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky23:20

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JMJosh Miller23:21

      And I think all of those things add up to a culture, which is, let's get something out there. Let's see what happens.

6. 23:27 – 28:29

   The “Notes on Roadtrips” doc about values

   1. JMJosh Miller23:27

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky23:27

      How did you come up with these values? Like, what was the process to come up with company values? 'Cause I know a lot of companies are like, "Hmm, we should, we should come up with these." How do you do that?

   3. JMJosh Miller23:35

      The secret is, I hate corporate values. I've never resonated with them, and I'm fortunate, we're fortunate enough to have a lot of really spectacular experienced leaders in our corner. And I got hammered for the first year or two years, "Josh," (laughs) "where are your values? How can your team operate without values?" And I just, I always experience them on the other end as almost like corporate propaganda, these like cliche fortune cookie Panda Express like... "You should care about the deta-" I just, it didn't, I didn't, didn't resonate with me. And the thing that clicked was, maybe a year and a half, two years into working, I just kept hearing the same things from the team.And you know, I would do things like a year into someone joining, "How is it going? What's going well? What's not?" And I realized that there are some traits that define our team, extremely organically and naturally. No one told people what our values were. Again, because I was this naive, ignorant, you know, (laughs) 31-year-old being like, "Values are a corporate cat late-stage capitalism creation," you know? And, and just very, very hard-headed. And it was really special two years in, hearing from the team why they love The Browser Company, why they think we're doing so... Just the passion there. And then we challenged ourselves to what became a value. Well, if something about the five one-liners on the corporate web page feels off, start by asking what could be and dream a little bit. And what I realized was, all of the statements people would say about what they loved about The Browser Company, what they thought defined the way we work, they reminded me of how I like to take road trips. I'm a big traveler. I'm a big fan of dropping in somewhere new and just exploring. And so we just had this a-ha moment of let's, instead of having a corporate landing page with five value titles and subtitles, let's tell, let's write a manual for how to take a road trip.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky25:35

      Hmm.

   5. JMJosh Miller25:35

      So we wrote an essay called Notes on Road Trips that used this, uses this semi-biographical but mostly fictional story about, uh, a person and their father taking a road trip when they're a teenager, to tell the story of how we do things at The Browser Company and share these values, but in a way that hopefully won't feel so propaganda-y and feel a little more, you're reading an essay. So I say that, again, not to say there's anything wrong with traditional values. I'm actually sure I'm gonna get an earful from a lot of people that coach me (laughs) and give me advice that (laughs) I sounded too indignant on this, uh, podcast. But I'm, I'm, I'm pretty proud of that story, because uh, it was a great example of assuming you don't know. We were sure that corporate values were not for us, and then very organically without trying, it turned out, wait, they're pretty... They run through this company in a pretty profound way. W- we should put some words around it, 'cause it's happening, whether or not we like it or say it is or not.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky26:30

      That's awesome. I have the page here, and it's quite beautiful. And, uh, we'll link to it in the show notes. Just, like, very briefly and tactically, did you just sit down and start writing this thing, and then people kind of gave you feedback? Like, how long did this process take? Just for folks that maybe want to go down this road.

   7. JMJosh Miller26:44

      Yeah. Warning, downside of this process is that it takes a lot longer than we thought it would, uh, because-

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky26:49

      Hmm. Yeah.

   9. JMJosh Miller26:50

      ... we, we put so much heart into it.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky26:51

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JMJosh Miller26:52

       So what it started with was, again, in my kind of natural one-year check-in type conversation, starting to notice these patterns. And then we actually very, uh, comprehensively were like, "Okay, let's sit down and interview everyone at The Browser Company." One, one, but no survey, one by one talking to people, asking them questions, and then we pulled out those words. And so actually what's really cool about these values, if my memory serves me, I believe every single one, with the exception of maybe a word or two, was something that someone on our team said. So we interviewed-

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky27:26

       Hmm.

   13. JMJosh Miller27:26

       ... the entire team, and then these were meant to be a mirror. The putting it in road trip essay form, that took a long time. That, that was-

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky27:38

       (laughs)

   15. JMJosh Miller27:38

       ... a lot of... But yeah, I don't, I don't recommend the way that we did that, but, um-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky27:42

       How long, how long is long for you?

   17. JMJosh Miller27:44

       Probably three months.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky27:46

       Oh. That does not sound that long. Okay.

   19. JMJosh Miller27:48

       Yeah.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky27:49

       Not that big of a-

   21. JMJosh Miller27:49

       Maybe this goes back to Scott's comment, that maybe, maybe our, our, our bar (laughs) to how quickly we should ship stuff, including values, is, is higher.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky27:56

       No, it's not what I meant.

   23. JMJosh Miller27:56

       I don't know. But yeah, it felt like a long time. And, and I, I... This was not just me. Just for anyone listening, this was not CEO in a corner writing a missive. This was a team effort. There's a woman, Abby, on our team that did, did so much work on this project. The words themselves came from our team. So it has my name-

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky28:14

       Awesome.

   25. JMJosh Miller28:14

       ... I think somewhere on that web page, but by no means was this me writing this essay in a corner with the fireplace on or anything like that. (laughs)

   26. LRLenny Rachitsky28:21

       Okay, awesome. That was really, that was really helpful. As you also saw, I asked on Twitter what to ask you, and I got a ton of, ton of questions.

7. 28:29 – 38:10

   How Josh is able to hire such amazing talent

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky28:29

      People have a lot of questions for how y'all do stuff. The most common question, turned out, was from Shahid Khan, who, uh, had the most likes of all the questions that people asked you. And it was around hiring, that basically you've been able to convince some of the most amazing people in the world to join The Browser Company. Like you just mentioned, you hired, like, the guy that built Chrome basically (laughs) to work on Arc now. What is it that you do that convinces amazing people to join? 'Cause everyone wants to learn from you and copy you (laughs) and do that themselves.

   2. JMJosh Miller28:56

      Thank you for that question and for all the likes. I will admit, this is also a fairly awkward one to ask. I actually just came from an interview, uh, with a candidate, and they asked me a, a fairly similar question. And I said, "You know what? You should go ask the people that work here, not me." (laughs) "I don't know why they ultimately joined." But what I will tell you is the intentionality, which is another secret, sharing a lot of secrets. This one'll probably get me in trouble.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky29:21

      Great.

   4. JMJosh Miller29:22

      I don't care about web browsers. I've never cared about web browsers. I never wanted to build a web browser. If you had told me a decade ago that I'd be working on a desktop-first web browser at 32, I'd say, "What in my career went horribly wrong?" The origin story of this company was Hersh, who I met when I was 20, we started a company together. Lots of mistakes, a lot of successes, a lot of growing pains and figuring out who we are. And a decade later, we were still friends, we went to each other's weddings. We'd worked in all these different industries and different stage companies, and, and we just realized, you know what? There are a lot of ideas that get us really excited. There are a lot of shapes and sizes. But as we, you know, we're kind of nostalgic for looking back on the decade prior, it was groups of people and moments in time with those people that were our best memories. And so what Hersh and I decided, long before the company started, was we want to build a company, but we want to build a company where we feel like we can hire whoever we want.And I don't mean whoever we want in terms of who would dare say no, but we want to work on something where the greatest minds in our industry and adjacent would want to work on that prompt, in a hypothetical sense. And then build an organization, build a team where we can work in the way that after a decade of trying on a bunch of hats and ways of doing things, and metrics this and da-da-da-da-da, we could, we could do what was right for us. And so where we went to with a new web browser, let alone a web browser as a new form of computing, which is our true a- uh, aspiration, to build an internet computer. Can look up the internet computer YouTube video on our, on our browser company YouTube page. But we... Our ambition's even higher than a web browser. The intention of that is we just want to go hire our favorite people that we know and don't know, and build a team that will never get bored working with this crew because of how, uh, incredible they are and how humble they are. And so when you think about it like that, I as the CEO, as notionally the head of product, I view our product as our team. And I know a lot of companies say that. I actually think they probably all mean it. I don't think anyone's being disingenuous, but we really mean it. It is the genesis of this company. It is not a new web browser. It is let's build the dream team, our dream team, and let's build a way of working (laughs) that is really fun for us and really speaks to our values, and let's go find people that resonate with that. And that trickles down to everything we do, whether it's our policy about this or the way we do that. I'll give you one example. Our goal of interviews is to convince people not to join the browser company. We don't... If I have an interview with someone, I don't pitch them. I say, "What do you want to ask me? Anything you want, I'll be super honest. Most people shouldn't want to work here." Um, so I think it all starts with us viewing our product as the company, as the team, not Arc itself. And then I think, you know, being self-aware, that, that's how I think, that's how we think, but you know, again, playing back things that I've heard, we've, we have been fortunate. We've hired a lot of really remarkable people, especially on paper and especially off. I mean, all around, um, uh... You know, I'll just give a couple examples to-

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky32:37

      Yeah.

   6. JMJosh Miller32:37

      ... to share one thing that I've heard. Uh, a few recent hires, we hired someone named Darren, who, as I mentioned, he co-created the first prototype of Chrome and then ran it for 16 years. I think, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people reported to him. He joined the browser company as an IC. Uh, we just hired a woman named Tara. She was on the original, uh, Paper by 53 team, one of my most inspiring products at the beginning of my career. Most recently, she was actually, I believe, senior SVP of product at Vimeo, uh, and a senior director of engineering. She joined our engineering team as an IC. We just hired someone named Peter Vidani. When I was 20, building consumer social software, he was like the coolest, most impressive person. He was the first designer at Tumblr, ran the design team at Tumblr for seven years, uh, and then most recently was SVP of design at Slack, joined the team as an IC designer. And though that sounds like I'm bragging, the, the thing that was really interesting and perplexing to us was, these are people that have made a lot of money, that have had really fancy titles, that have worked on transformative projects. Why are they joining this team? And I think something that people show up to the browser company with is, in addition to heartfelt intensity, this aspiration that their work at the browser company will come to define their careers. And that's coming from people that have done really remarkable things by all accounts.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky34:03

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JMJosh Miller34:03

      And I think more than anything we've realized that in order for people like that to join and to show up ... That there, there are a number of things you have to promise and provide them that, that make folks like that gravitate with the intention of doing their work with their career, ranging from an incredible asp- ambitious aspiration, really empowerment to do what ... He- you know, kind of to, uh, act on the prompts that they're given on behalf of the team in the way that they see fit and truly trusting and empowering them. A very kind culture. I think if you've been doing this for a decade plus, your tolerance for bullshit (laughs) is very, very low. And so by-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky34:42

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JMJosh Miller34:42

       ... no means do I think we're perfect. I don't think everyone shows up at the browser company saying, "If I'm not on the equivalent of the early iPhone team, I'm gonna be bummed," but I think generally speaking, Hershey and I and everyone that was on the early team showed up with this aspiration of making the browser company the product, and I think that's carried forward to this tumbleweed of people saying, "Oi, that's where I'm gonna finally do the equivalent of building the iPhone." And we all know we probably won't, but there is that, "I want to give it one more shot. Uh, I want to give it one... I, I want to go for it," and that kind of, that trickle, that, that just tumbleweeds, I think, just at some point.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky35:18

       That tumbleweed is, I think a big part of it, is like once you get amazing people, more amazing people want to join, so I think that's very much, uh, helpful. Something else this resonates a lot with is just like the mission of a company is such a powerful tool for pulling people in, the, the best people. I've seen that a lot with founders. Like if they have a meaningful mission, it's so much easier to hire versus not, and clearly you're really good at sharing that vision and mission, and then you also have a really interesting (laughs) mission and vision. I think there's also like you're just a charismatic founder, and that helps a lot too and you're a great storyteller.

   12. JMJosh Miller35:49

       Well, the other thing I want to add, Lenny, is again, putting myself in the listener, I imagine a lot of what I just said probably sounded a little bit... Could come off, if you don't know me and you don't ... O- you know, as a little bombastic or a little like, again, romantic. Very tactically, I'll give you something that was not, was just sort of who we are, but I think has helped contribute to this tumbleweed. From the very first person we hired, we celebrated them publicly, the fact that they joined, and in a very like heartfelt way, telling you about them as a person, what they did, long before we had anyone that anyone would have heard of before working at the browser company, just because we were... It was earnest. We were really proud. It was, uh ... You know, again, if you, if you think of our original mandate as building the company as the product-When our first designer joins, we want to (laughs) tell everyone about it. That's a product launch. That is the product launch. And then whenever we ship something, we go out of our way to celebrate the people that worked on it publicly. You know, I think there's a h- a CEO hero worship sometimes in, in Silicon Valley. I do very little at the company. And I do ... oh sorry, I do very little as it relates to the thing people fall in love with Arc. I do a lot for The Browser Company, but I don't make Arc. I didn't make P. And again, that's just who we are, which is, "Alexandra, she killed it. Look at how cool this is," 'cause it's earnest and it's honest to who we are, and then I think it creates this reinforcing cycle of you're someone that's done something incredible, which is, "I'm going to be celebrated. I'm j- ... they truly want me here. I'm going to be recognized for the work that I do. It's not going to just accrue to this, like, CEO figurehead who everyone thinks is some genius visionary." And so again, by no means are we perfect. By no means do I think we get it right all the time. But because it's such an authentic expression of who we are and what we are trying to do, I think we do little micro i- implementations like that that ladder up to that principle I got so excited about but are as simple as like, oh y- you know, someone tweets about some animation that I ... ooh, this was fun. Tag Sherry. Sherry made that. Sherry's incredible. And you don't see that that much in Silicon Valley. You see corporate blog posts and the CEOs more than anyone else. That's probably why you don't have CEOs on the podcast, (laughs) 'cause you don't want-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky37:59

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JMJosh Miller37:59

       You know this, Lenny. That is why that's your policy. You don't want to hear from the CEOs. They're not the ones building the product. You want to hear from the people actually doing it. That's why I love this podcast so much.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky38:07

       That's right. (laughs) That's right. Thank you.

8. 38:10 – 45:57

   The good and bad of building in public

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky38:10

      I'd say, just hearing everything you're saying, uh, The Browser Company sounds like an incredible place to work. I could see why people would (laughs) want to go work there. Uh, it's pretty simple. You touched on being public and sharing everything that's going on, and that's, uh, that's another area I wanted to spend a little time on. You guys are, uh, very transparent about what's going on inside the company. You bring cameras into the board meetings. I watched like a half-hour meeting you had with your head of design talking about (laughs) a product that's behind schedule and you're trying to like figure out, "How do we get this out the door?" You just like share like actual things you all are doing within the company publicly, and, uh, I'm curious just, why did you start doing that? What have you seen as a good or bad that has come from that? Is there anything you've shared that maybe you regret, like, "Oh, maybe we shouldn't have put that out there?" What's been your experience with that?

   2. JMJosh Miller38:58

      Why don't I start with the regret? My ... it's not yet a regret, but the thing that I wonder, 'cause this is very much, you know, I may have s- hopefully spoken with a lot of earnest passion to some of the questions before.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky39:11

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JMJosh Miller39:11

      This is one that I would really characterize as a prototype. We really have a prototype driven culture, and this is one that I put high on the list of maybe we'll regret this later. And specifically what I hope is that I'm uncomfortable putting myself too central in our story, but naturally, when you're doing storytelling publicly, there's a gravitational pull for the CEO and the founders to be at the center of that. And so sometimes I ... even to this morning, we had our best performing YouTube video ever, the first one that really kind of broke out of people that already follow us.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky39:45

      What was that like?

   6. JMJosh Miller39:45

      And it's one where I'm reacting. It's like a reaction video in classic YouTube form to MKBHD-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky39:52

      Oh, yeah.

   8. JMJosh Miller39:52

      ... uh, talking about our product for the first time, and I honestly watched it right before this again, and I was like, "The fuck am I do- ... what are we doing? Why ... like, am I trying to become a YouTube?" So, to be totally honest, I don't regret anything yet, but I wonder if we could take this too far. So if anything, if anyone's listening, if you see us starting to take this too far, especially as it relates to me, we want to hear about it, 'cause that's keeping me up. But I do think the intentions are, are pure and earnest, which are, I and we ... another thing that defines people that have joined The Browser Company, in addition to wanting to do the cr- the work that defines their careers, is I would characterize it as a little bit of hopelessness, maybe feeling jaded, questioning this industry that they've worked on or products that they've worked on, and wanting to rediscover ... but at the end of the day, we are a group of idealists, of optimists, wanting to rediscover what we fell in love with when we were kids, whether it's the part of our craft or the potential of technology, the internet and software, and as part of that, I would view Arc and The Browser Company as an experiment in can ... we can do it. Better is possible. And as we were thinking about better is possible, you know, rediscovering what we love and believe in deep down and trying to express it in the world, one of it related to trust. I remember when I was a teenager using the internet for the first time and early on into college, just the hopefulness of what was possible, and the belief that these people building these tools, they were like heroes to me, not just the, the leaders, but the teams, the companies, the brands, and somewhere along the way, I'm not blaming a single company. I'm not even saying that anyone did anything wrong, but culturally, I was a sociology major, culturally, we have lost trust in tech companies and in tech brands. And so building in public, showing you our meetings, uncomfortably so, is an act in, if we were them, why should they trust us? Why should anyone trust us? We have your most sensitive personal data. We have your most sensitive professional data. Why should you trust us if we've had our trust broken again and again? And I think our hypothesis in this prototype and this experiment is, we can have the best privacy policy in the world, but at the end of the day, again, it's just people behind the screen, and so even if I think about, I haven't done interviews like this, because I worry that if you don't know me, I come off the wrong way.You know, a lot of people tend to. I've noticed a lot of friends in my life, that I know them behind the scenes, but the way the people perceive them publicly who don't know them, they interpret it the other way because there's not that trust. And so our bet is that if you get to know us, Nash, Dina, me, Hersh, and you really feel like you get to know us as person and all of our imperfections, we're average looking, we're average to all of that stuff, then when you see that we're asking for a permission, you might trust it is because we want to make you feel a certain way that's better. And if not, you know, I'll say someone tweeted something yesterday, um, who apparently we didn't earn the trust yet and they haven't gotten to know us. And their interpretation of what we were doing was the worst possible interpretation you could have. And at first, honestly, I felt a bit of anger. Like, "Who is this person on a Thursday just saying we're doing X and Y?" And then I realized, you know what? I'd have the same feeling because of the experiences I've had with technology in the past, you know, five to 10 years. And so, the intention with these buil- the building and public experiments are radical trust building. Not radical transparency. We can't share everything, but radical trust building. You get to know us as humans, and I worry that we'll regret that and that it could potentially turn into, "Oh, they're trying to be internet celebrities that, you know, have... They're so important they should share everything because, you know, thank you them for gracing us with their opinions." That's not the intention. And it feels, it feels worth taking that risk, um, but that's the intentionality behind it.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky44:05

      That is a really interesting insight and makes a lot of sense for a browser to find that so important to build that trust.

   10. JMJosh Miller44:12

       I haven't done podcast interviews. I haven't, I haven't done this. I really like you. I really like the feeling of your conversations, the intentions behind them, the warmth. Even your intro music is a friendly jig.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky44:27

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JMJosh Miller44:27

       And so, I mean, it, it's, it's a great example where I think it's one of the most wonderful things about the podcasting medium, is I have, I've had you in my ear for a year and the people on your show, and you feel a sense of trust in you and your intentions here, uh, and your intentions both in this interview in terms of what you're trying to do for listeners, and to some extent your show and the warmth that you bring to it and the perception I have as you as a human being. We've never met. I don't even think we've... Maybe DM'd briefly, maybe five messages exchanged, but I feel like I know you-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky44:59

       Yeah.

   14. JMJosh Miller44:59

       ... and that makes me trust you. And so in many ways, this podcast at a meta level is an inspiration for it.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky45:04

       I feel the same way in reverse. You made this point about being worried about being, like, too front and center for your company. I have the same exact feeling, even though my newsletter's called Lenny's Newsletter. Like, I only named it that 'cause that was the default recommendation when I was signing up for Substack. Like, I didn't, I don't want to be this like, "I know it all, come to me. Welcome to my know-it-all place." Uh, like, I really dislike that, and that's why I created this community that kind of lives along the side where people can help each other 'cause I'm not gonna have all the answers. And so I've kind of had to lean into that, like, all right, people... They, they want, like, one... They want a person to, like, help them understand what's going on, like, learn about... And I... In your videos you do a great job highlighting other people. Like, I was watching your board meeting video, and it's like, "Here's all the team members coming along. Here they come with you. Hey, how you doing?" So anyway, uh, all that to say you're doing a great job finding the balance.

   16. JMJosh Miller45:55

       Oh, thank you. You as well.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky45:56

       I appreciate it.

9. 45:57 – 46:42

   Some of the odd teams at The Browser Company and why Josh calls it a prototype-driven culture

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky45:57

      You talked about storytelling, and you mentioned that you have, like, a whole bunch of odd teams (laughs) at The Browser Company. One of 'em is a storytelling team, and that actually explains I think how you're so good at making these really amazing videos, 'cause making great videos is hard. Can you just talk about some of these odd teams that you have that, uh, that probably other companies don't?

   2. JMJosh Miller46:15

      One of the other things that hopefully you're picking up in this interview so far is we are a very prototype driven culture. Uh, you know, it goes back to the assume you don't know ethos. We try a lot of experiments, and we try them related to product features, related to how we work together, related to the stories we tell. So this is in the category of, "I'm not sure it's gonna work, but we're trying it," and it seems to be working so far, at least for us. What Lenny's referencing is we have a handful of teams. I'll pick two just as an example is

10. 46:42 – 48:48

    The membership team

    1. JMJosh Miller46:42

       we have a membership team and we have a storytelling team, and though you probably recognize or obviously familiar with those terms, those aren't historically startup orgs or startup disciplines and teams, and let me tell you about the intention behind both. Membership. Membership was when I was at Facebook, the most impressive thing to me about h- how Facebook built product was their user research team. Shout out to Loey and Jane. I don't know why you'd be listening to this podcast, but you deeply inspired me when we were at Facebook together. They had the most incredible team of user researchers, and it always felt odd to me, and this isn't Loey and Jane's fault, actually. In fact, you know, they've suffered from this, that user research almost felt like a service organization relative to product engineering design. There'd be a PM. The PM would get assigned a researcher, and the PM got to decide how to use research and ask them what to do and ask them questions. But seeing the potential for when you really get to know the people that you are building for, that you're serving in a really deep way, it is extraordinary. How do you build product any other way? And so we took that to the extreme at The Browse Company, which we said, "Let's not think of it as customer support, customer service, customer success, user research." Those are just, those are just business terms. Those are just industry terms. At the end of the day, what we're saying is, if there is a human being, from the moment they touch our software or our products for the first time to if they have it last, we need to have a deep, genuine, ongoing relationship with them. And on day one, that may be, air quote, "customer success." How do I use this thing? On day 37, that might be, "I have a bug. Do you mind helping me fix it?" And on day 58, that may be, "Hey, we're shipping a mobile app soon. What do you want from mobile? What do you want on your phone?" Other companies view that as different orgs and disciplines. We view that as...There are a bunch of people at the other end of this that we are serving from the moment they touch our product for the first time. Let's own that relationship full stack and think about it holistically, and so that's the membership team.

11. 48:48 – 52:41

    The storytelling team

    1. JMJosh Miller48:48

       On the storytelling side, very similar, different type of person. Again, we're a humanistic company, so you, the theme here is the people on the company, the people at the other end. So if the membership team takes people from the moment they touch our product for the first time to the last, the storytelling team is about people we don't have the privilege of serving yet. They don't use Arc, they don't know what Arc is. That could be an investor, air quote, "Investor relations," that could be members of the press, air quote, "PR." That could be just people out in the world, air quote, "Marketing." You know, and one day sales, but at the end of the day, it's telling our story to people. It's telling our story to people and thinking about that holistically and full stack. So that's how we think about teams, is we don't r- ... We, we start with first principles asking what could be, what are we really trying to do here? And what is the most direct way to manifest that, even if it's not how other people do it? In practice, one of the benefits of that is I do think it leads to certain pieces of content, for example, that people go, "Oh, wow, how'd ..." You know, "I've never seen that before." Eh, but again, it's, it's not... I think anyone's capable of this. I think we have an extraordinarily talented storytelling team and membership team. But I really think it's as simple as the intentionality of what is the team? What are their incentives? What are the disciplines on the team? Uh, you know, even hiring a video editor, for example, is a small company, but the video editor not having just, like, make a TikTok account go viral, but think about it more holistically in terms of the people. So again, there's a lot that breaks down. There's a lot that's not going well about it. I have no idea how this scales to 500 people and, you know, so this is not me saying this experiment is ultimately gonna be a huge success or right for everyone, or even us at different times. But that was the intentionality of the membership team, the storytelling team and others. And even product management, we don't have PMs at the company. I'm, my, my, you know, my title at Facebook was product manager. I've, I love product management. But we view it not as a team, we view it as a leader, a role on a project, on an effort. And depending on the project, different types of people should be at PM. So if we have a performance-related project going on where, of course, an infrastructure engineer should be the, air quote, "PM." We have a, you know, a product project where actually I think someone from membership should be the PM, because ultimately, yes, we're building software product, but it is really about serving our members in a specific way, so we should have someone from membership be a PM. Again, as you can imagine, as this is going through the heads of everyone listening, that must break down in 18 ways. Oh, it definitely does. (laughs) And so, you know, I'm not promising one day it won't change, but again, continuous to the company is assume you don't know, start by asking what could be, and let's just try some things and see what happens.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky51:29

       Start with what could be. I love that value. (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Linear. Let's be honest, the issue tracker that you're using today isn't very helpful. Why is it that it always seems to be working against you instead of working for you? Why does it feel like such a chore to use? Well, Linear is different. It's incredibly fast, beautifully designed, and it comes with powerful workflows that streamline your entire product development process. From issue tracking all the way to managing product roadmaps. Linear is designed for the way modern software teams work. What users love about Linear are the powerful keyboard shortcuts, efficient GitHub integrations, cycles that actually create progress, and built-in project updates that keep everyone in sync. In short, it just works. Linear is the default tool of choice among startups and it powers a wide range of large established companies such as Vercel, Retool, and Cash App. See for yourself why product teams describe using Linear as magical. Visit linear.app/lenny to try Linear for free with your team and get 25% off when you upgrade. That's linear.app/lenny.

12. 52:41 – 54:48

    Why The Browser Company doesn’t have traditional PMs

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky52:41

       So I was gonna ask you actually, you talked about why you don't have PMs. Do you think you'll hire PMs in the future? You know, having a PM background, do you think you'll get there or do you think you'll try to stick to this people do the PM role depending on the project?

    2. JMJosh Miller52:53

       Yeah. We've, we're increasingly hiring people that at other companies may have a PM title.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky52:59

       Mm-hmm.

    4. JMJosh Miller52:59

       Um, I'd say we have two to three right now that could have a PM title at another company. I don't think we will have a PM org or a PM role, because again, we believe depending on the... If you look, if you unpack the verbs that a PM does, I think those are, those are verbs that anyone that we hire could do. And it really depends on what is the project and what are we trying to do. I think the thing that will become, that will be unwavering is, we like to hire mutts. And I haven't yet figured out a term that comes off as more endearing, 'cause it's meant to be very endearing.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky53:36

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JMJosh Miller53:36

       But for example, there's a woman at our company named Rebecca. Rebecca was a data scientist lead at Quora. She got her PhD at MIT in, I think, behavioral psychology or something. I'm probably gonna misquote that, but it's, got some crazy degree at MIT, uh, and then was a software engineer at Stripe. And I'm, you know, I'm s- ... I'm, I'm talking about Rebecca through her resume. She's a much more, you know... There's so much about Rebecca. She plays effectively a PM role right now. She is effectively PMing our multi- ... Effectively our multiplayer team. But what was so awesome about meeting Rebecca is her and other people at this company have the mindset of, "I make things, and I will do what I need to do to make what I want to make." Whatever that verb is and whatever that discipline is. And that requires people that are multidisciplinary in practice and multidisciplinary in a approach to their work. It's not that we don't hire PMs, but we wanna hire people who kind of have a multidisciplinary approach.... and view things as I like to make things, tell me how I contribute to making it. And sometimes they may play the verbs of a PM, and sometimes it may be something else.

13. 54:48 – 58:13

    A case for adding PMs

    1. JMJosh Miller54:48

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky54:48

       This is going to be a really interesting story to follow. I've seen this journey a few times at different companies. What I find is a lot of times, uh, like people that are good at other things, like engineering or design, for a while they're like, "Yep, uh, we don't need PMs. I'll do the PM job." And then eventually they're like, "This sucks. I don't, I hate doing this stuff. Why do... (laughs) I want to design. Leave me alone. I don't want to sit in the sun all day. I don't want to be in meetings." So eventually turns out they're like, "Okay, let's find someone to do this thing that loves it." And so that's one thing that happens. The other thing I find is like l- uh... You, you, I'm sure you've seen this, a lot of people are weary of PMs. They come in and they're like, "Here's what we're doing," and they're just process, process complexity. What I find is those are just bad PMs. Like if you have an awesome PM, everything just gets better. Everyone's happier, things move faster. So I think companies often get to that stage. And then also there's just like career development stuff, you know. Eventually as you scale, it's like whatever my career path. And I'm like, all right, well, we got to go one road or another. It's hard to stay this kind of hybrid role, but I super respect the first principal's approach of like let's just And for what it's worth, Lenny, I think you're almost definitely right. I think that will almost definitely happen with us. And again, this goes back to the assume you don't know. The assume you don't know is try a prototype and then assume it's not going to work. Mm-hmm.

    3. JMJosh Miller55:59

       So even in my own experience, I remember, uh, getting to know Evan from Snapchat just a little enough to know how he talked about PMs at Snap, and it was, "We're never going to hire PMs at Snap. Everyone's a designer." And, you know, I have no relationship with him anymore, but you can look. There are a lot of PMs at Snapchat. So I know from my own experience with people that I respect from a product perspective that were indignant, they would never hire PMs, their organizations now have PMs, and that's probably for a really good reason. I would so, say also in our team, if any of our designers are listening, they'll tell you, "These PM, whatever you want to call it, these verbs are taking up a lot of my time and I do not have as much time to think and dream and design and do user research." And so we're already feeling a breaking in our company. I think the intentionality, whatever comes next, whether it's if we hire a PA, you know, whatever it is, is leaders of the project should be picked for the project, not because they're in a certain org at our company. And if we ever hire people to do the PM role, we want them to think of themselves as people who make things and have lots of different disciplines and tools in their toolkit, not just the PM discipline. And of course, even that could be wrong, and maybe in a year, you know, we cave and, you know, I got it totally wrong, we got it totally wrong. So we'll see. But I, I would also-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky57:19

       Yeah.

    5. JMJosh Miller57:19

       ... bet that of all the things I shared on this podcast so far, this is probably the one I'll come crawling back to your podcast in a couple years being, "Lenny, you were right. It all blew up." (laughs)

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky57:28

       (laughs) So but it's a fun experiment, and Snap is a good example. Stripe's another where they waited a long time to hire their first PMs, and I think it's 'cause their designers or engineers were just like incredibly good at that element. And it was also like very design forward or very eng forward, so they didn't need as much PM skill initially.

    7. JMJosh Miller57:43

       But if I had to predict, I would, I would predict that the next... If we found that we were missing this discipline as a team, I think we would evolve Rebecca's team, which is technically the data team, and, and do something closer to a technical PM or data plus pro- Uh, TBD. Again, it's, it's all live, but the thought has even crossed our minds recently that we may be wrong, and what di- what, what org might we create if we need folks that have more of a background of delivery like this?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky58:10

       I'm excited for the video of this discussion that might happen.

14. 58:13 – 59:11

    The role of data, even in a company that optimizes for feelings

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky58:13

       It's also interesting, your PM that you mentioned, Rebecca, is very data oriented. And then with the initial discussion we had around, you know, focus on feelings and that sort of thing. So that's cool that you have this really interesting balance of people that are very data focused and then this like, "Okay, but let's not obsess with that. Like what, what are the feelings we're trying to create?"

    2. JMJosh Miller58:31

       Yeah. And, and because again, the point of optimizing for feelings is not hire people who make feelings. It's hire the w-

    3. NANarrator58:37

       (laughs)

    4. JMJosh Miller58:38

       D- Like, Rebecca's title is data lead. She runs our data team. But Rebecca's one of the most humanistic people I know. Now, you meet her and you feel the warmth that you feel when she talks to you, and you ask her what she does outside of work. And so it's not that data doesn't have a role. Actually, I'd say (laughs) for better or worse, data is part of our practice. It's more about like what's that top level intentionality? What are we trying to do here? But we... Yeah, we- we have a lot of people that, uh, you know, data is either a, a, a noun they've had in their resume or it's been a part of their practice a lot in the past.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky59:10

       Awesome.

15. 59:11 – 1:02:55

    Airbnb’s Snow White project

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky59:11

       One very tactical question with the storytelling team makes me think about Airbnb's video team. A lot of people were joking internally for years and years that the videos Airbnb put out in the early days was like... Accounts for like half their market cap 'cause they're so good. And you're just like, "Oh my god, I want to go into Airbnb." They just make you feel so much and they're soulmate. And so it... What is like the makeup of your storytelling team? 'Cause imagine some companies may be listening like, "Maybe we should do something like this on our team."

    2. JMJosh Miller59:38

       Yeah. We have a three person storytelling team. It's run by a woman named Nash. There is a gentleman named Ellis who has a background, started as a reporter at The Verge. Maybe there was a publication before that. But I met him when he was a reporter at The Verge covering social media. And then he ran marketing strategy for Snapchat for seven years. And then we have a person named Josh Lee who I actually met as an inter- He was an intern at Facebook as a designer, then an intern for me at the White House when I worked at the White House, and then decided that he was over product design and over design, and totally just jumped and be like, "I'm gonna be a filmmaker." And has been making really fascinating kind of indie films for, uh, a few years now. And he's our, he's our, uh, video editor on the team. And so the three of them... Uh, and it's so interesting, you know, Nash's background. She had a brief stint as NBC. But again, you get to know her and she writes poems after hours, and she or dream is to write a fictional book. And just is... I mean, anyone that knows Nash, especially those listening, is just a, a force, a force. And the three of them, what's so interesting about them, which also relates to our design team, we like...One of the things I also found at Facebook is there was a tendency toward homogeneity. As you know, there's sort of a stereotype of a Facebook PM, for example, or a Google PM, and the contrast between them and the way they work. And one of the things we also have purposely done on the storytelling team and otherwise, let's hire radically different archetypes. Ellis could not be more different than Nash. Nash could not be more different than Josh. There are some shared values, there are some shared beliefs, but they're very different. Ditto on the design team. Our design team is they are all over the place (laughs) in terms of who they are, what they've done, their sensibilities, their aspirations. And uh, whether it's the storytelling team or the design team, that can be hard sometimes, just to be honest. It's a lot easier to say, "Hey, we're the Acme Co. storytelling team or the Acme Co. design team, we hire designers like this and storytellers like that." We hire, we hire people all over the place. We have an extremely diverse team, but in all senses of the word. But again, like the no PM thing, it's not without flaws. I can see why a lot of large companies over time tend to like, it's the Facebook way or no way, you know, or you're not good for here.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:55

       Yeah. That's actually I think the exact makeup of the Airbnb video, video team. I forget what they were called. They didn't have a cool name like the storytelling team, I think, but it was a videographer, prod- editor, and then their, a producer basically.

    4. JMJosh Miller1:02:07

       Yeah, I mean, I remember going to Airbnb's offices early in my career and seeing the storyboards lining the walls.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:14

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    6. JMJosh Miller1:02:14

       And just being like, "I want to work here." Uh, so I, I actually am not familiar with the, I mean, I'm familiar with Airbnb's videos and brand marketing is fucking fantastic, excuse my language.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:25

       Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    8. JMJosh Miller1:02:26

       But yeah, I remember just walking around that office being like, "Oh my goodness, are they making a movie or something?" Like, "What is going on here?" (laughs)

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:34

       It's funny you say that. And for folks that want to find that, we'll link to it in the show notes, but if you Google Snow White Airbnb, you'll actually see these storyboards. They're, they basically hired a Pixar storyboard artist to draw out key frames of the journey of a host and a guest, and that became a central element of the strategy of like, let's make each of these moments as amazing as possible. And it was based on the movie Snow White. You can read

16. 1:02:55 – 1:03:49

    How impactful moments in Josh’s life influenced values at The Browser Company

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:55

       about it.

    2. JMJosh Miller1:02:55

       Yeah, for what it's worth, this is a great moment to share all of the beliefs that I've shared here on behalf of our team. These aren't things that we just originally came up with. They're moments like when I went to Airbnb's office early in my career and saw these Snow White storyboards lining the walls, like that lo- had an impact on me. Even the idea that you would think in terms of that moment, you can actually see the lineage to, well, how do you want that person to feel when they open that door for the first time? So I think it's just a great moment to shout out that this is a, we've accumulated a lot of just doses of inspiration like that day at Airbnb that trickled down to us talking about optimizing for feelings, but that didn't come in a vacuum. That is not, I mean, that's our expression of what we've seen in the industry, but this is building on the backs of so many people and companies that we've been fortunate to see.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:44

       And now the trickling is happening from your, your lessons and experience and your unique approach.

    4. JMJosh Miller1:03:48

       I

17. 1:03:49 – 1:05:13

    How the film General Magic has inspired Josh

    1. JMJosh Miller1:03:49

       hope. There's a documentary that I highly recommend, uh, called General Magic.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:53

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JMJosh Miller1:03:53

       And it's one of the best pieces of media I've seen related to technology industry, and it's really interesting. I think there are two types of people to just be very ... There are people that watch that and view it as, "Wow, what a missed opportunity," or almost like a sad story. And I view it as if only I and we could be so lucky to assemble that type of, that, a group of people like that. And the thing about that documentary for anyone that hasn't listened to it is essentially it was the iPhone before the iPhone, with the most legendary group of technologists working there, and it totally failed, completely failed by all traditional business, uh, definitions. But what stuck with me from the documentary is how proud and nostalgic and passionate those group of, those individuals were in, in reminiscing about their time there, and then what they all went on to create, and the fact that even today on this podcast I'm sitting here talking about General Magic. So I mean, to your point of hopefully Browser company will have ripple effects, I, that to me is the ultimate goal, for me personally, like a very emotional level, like if we could only be so lucky like that, that, that, that to me seems like success in many ways.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:05

       Yeah. What's cool is you're getting a lot of footage that will be very useful for a future documentary on the history of the browser company.

    5. JMJosh Miller1:05:10

       (laughs) So funny, I didn't think about it like that. For better or worse.

18. 1:05:13 – 1:07:31

    The value of novel names

    1. JMJosh Miller1:05:13

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:13

       One last thought I was gonna s- mention in terms of the storytelling, movie-making elements of Airbnb. Uh, fun fact, there was a period where product managers were actually called producers because one of the founders was like, "We just, we don't want to manage product, we want to produce beautiful experiences and..." like a movie producer. And so that was like a year and a half, maybe, of Airbnb's history where product managers were producers. The problem is we got a lot of job applicants from like Emmy-winning producers, and they're like-

    3. JMJosh Miller1:05:39

       (laughs)

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:39

       ... "Oh, I want to work at Airbnb."

    5. JMJosh Miller1:05:41

       Actually, one, I know this podcast is about very tactical advice, so one, one tactical piece of advice I'll give is-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:47

       Yeah.

    7. JMJosh Miller1:05:47

       ... whether or not you like the idea of the storytelling team or something else, a byproduct of some of these experiments that we found works really well is when you give something a new name, it sheds a lot of preconceived notions of what the thing should be. We found that even with product. So if you say you're building, uh, a browser history feature, then people... The, the benefit is everyone knows what you're talking about, and the downside is everyone knows what you're talking about, and you show up with these preconceived notions of what it has to be. And so if you go back again to our value ask what could be, in many ways, the point of calling the team the storytelling team or the membership team or not having PMs as an org, all of this stuff isn't meant to be novelty for novelty's sake. It's meant to almost be a rhetorical tactic to make people think truly first principles about, "What are we trying to do here?" And again, if at the end producers are called PMs, that's fine, but I assume when it was called a producer, a much more intentionality was given to communicating and talking about and discussing what does a producer do?... was their relationship with design because no one knew what the heck a producer was. And so ultimately, that may have been, uh, a failure in other ways. But that's one of the things we found tactically to be really helpful is whether it's a product feature or a team or whatever, give it a made-up name just to really get to the root of what you're trying to do there and not borrow too much from wherever you worked before or whatever you've seen in popular media or whatever.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:17

       I love that. (clears throat) And it's very un- undo- like you've got to undo it, you know? It was like, it's not-

    9. JMJosh Miller1:07:22

       Exactly.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:22

        ... a two-way, it's a two-way door. And, uh, I like the, the just the vis- the, uh, value you have of just prototyping things and whatever. If it didn't work, let's, let's go back

19. 1:07:31 – 1:13:28

    Why The Browser Company’s approach works for Arc

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:31

       to what everyone else is doing. (laughs) You mentioned great products and there was something I definitely wanted to chat a bit about, which is just there's kind of this, like, group of companies who are just building, like, focused on let's just build the most amazing product experience. Companies like, and I feel like The Browser Company is at the forefront of a lot of this, but it's like you guys, Linear, Raycast does this product, uh, Cron. There's probably a few more and I'd love to actually hear if there's others that I'm not thinking about that are just, like, obsessed with the user experience and less focused on drive metrics, drive revenue. And I'm curious just where do you think this goes? What's your take on this trend? Like, why isn't every company thinking this way? Or is this just, like, uh, we don't know if this is a good idea in the end? So what's your take on this just, like, group of com- this cohort of just, like, "We're just gonna build the best possible product and hope it all works out."

    2. JMJosh Miller1:08:22

       Yeah. Well, I'll say first, I love those products or many of those products you mentioned. There are some I haven't really used, but for example, our company runs on Linear and has run on Linear since day one, so I'm a big fan of that. So the way that we think about it is, so I actually spent two years at a venture capital firm as an investor called Thrive Capital, and they've invested in Slack and GitHub and a lot of, a lot of really transformative companies, but I was an investor there. I was a venture capitalist. It even feels weird to say that. And I learned a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot from that experience that has made me, I think, a better CEO and a better product leader. And one of the things I learned is different ideas, product ideas, business ideas, company ideas come with different attributes and things that will matter to their success. And so when thinking about starting The Browser Company and picking this category of software, Hersh and I were incredibly intentional about what that would mean for what would need to matter for our company. And so if you think about the web browser category traditionally, I'm not saying forward-facing, I'm not saying it is what we are doing, but if you were to look backwards and take The Browser Company out of it and look at the web browser category, you noticed a few things. The first is it's actually one of the most consumer pieces of software out there. People forget that. That's the opportunity to us. So you ask someone on the street, "What do you th- what's your web browser? What do you think?" They either won't know or they won't care. "What? I don't know. It's fine? I don't know." But what pieces of software do your parents, your little nieces and nephews, and you use? What's at the center of that Venn diagram? Your parents, hopefully, don't use TikTok and Instagram, or probably don't. Your nieces and nephews, I hope, don't have a reason for email at the tender age of 16 or, you know, a calendar. And a web browser is one of the few things in the middle, so it's an incredibly universal piece of software, consumer, unlike very few other things outside of a smartphone and messaging and maybe video calling in 2023 and a web browser. So it's very consumer, very universal. The second attribute is it's a commodity. I'm not saying that Arc is a commodity or we want to be, but objectively, web browsers are interchangeable. They all do the same thing. Increasingly, they're literally just carbon copies of the exact same code, Chromium, with little tweaks, little tweaks around the edges. So they're all the same. It's a commodity market, and they're unbelievably lucrative. Browsers print cash. There is a reason why they're owned primarily by Google, Apple, and Microsoft. They're incredibly high margin, they're incredibly lucrative. Low marginal cost, the cost of revenue is incredibly low, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a product that everyone in the world uses, where they're all identical essentially, interchangeable commodities, and if you can get people to use it, you're gonna print money. So the attributes of those busi- of that business and that product category mean you have to win on how much do people love your product and feel an emotional connection to it and choose your brand, your product over the other, almost not rationally but emotionally. And so if you tie that back to everything I've said before, bingo, that is what we want to work on. That's what we want to do. We want to create emotional connections with people where creating that emotional connection with as many people as possible and delighting them with surprises and animations is the way you win. It's not romantic; it is practical. It is, in many ways, it's, you know, it's capitalistic. This is how we win this market if you want to think about it that way. So the reason I hesitate to answer your question directly is I don't think that applies to every category of software, and to be totally honest, I don't know enough about the ticketing space or the calendaring space or the, whatever other space to know honestly off the cuff if, like, that approach is good for those industries. As a human being at the other end, I'm really grateful that they picked some reason to do it, whether or not it is part of their business strategy or not, it's a really wonderful trend as a human at the other end that cares about feelings. But I would say we actually think about it not as a we're focusing on the user experience over revenue or growth; we, in fact, picked a category of software where focusing on brand and user experience is how you get growth and revenue. (laughs) Uh, and because we knew that this is who we are and if we were building cybersecurity software that you sell to government agencies, they are not gonna give a shit about rounded edges or what color the button is or how surprised you feel with every member update.So we didn't build cybersecurity s- software to sell to the government. So I hope that more people build things at the craft bar of something like Linear, but that's how we think about it, is less of a this versus that, and more could we pick something to work on where that's how you win.

Episode duration: 1:28:37