There's No Room for Ego In Software

Hey y’all — play out a quick scenario with me:

Your startup has secured a $50 million Series B at a $550 million valuation to start the year.

Over the next six months things go well, by all accounts — you don’t run into any major crises and you 4x your users, including a devoted community of superfans.

But you decide to abandon the product entirely and hard pivot into something new.

That really happened this week.

You might think that sounds crazy and, at first, it does. But it’s one of the most interesting strategic moves I’ve seen a startup make this year, and it’s brave with the potential to be brilliant too.

Let me explain…

On the Pod: Andrew Yeung

Andrew left behind his dream job and a $300k salary at Google to go all-in as a founder, and it’s paid off — he’s become known as the Gatsby of NYC’s startup scene with his frequent, varied IRL events for founders and investors.

He’s become a good friend too, and I had him on the pod this week.

We talked about his…

• Transition from cushy big tech job to being responsible for people’s paychecks

• Journey to getting a permanent visa as a first-generation immigrant

• Tactics for getting the press on your side and building trust with people quickly

Check it out below on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

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There’s No Room for Ego In Software

What’s Going On?

The startup in question is The Browser Company and they build, you guessed it, a web browser called Arc.

It’s my daily web browser, and I’ve recommended it to everyone from my wife to my chief of staff. It’s a great product for anyone who has a lot of tabs (and just to be clear, they aren’t paying me anything for this and I haven’t invested in them — I just love the product).

They set out to build the best browser and, arguably, achieved it. The problem is that they began this mission in 2020.

When you’re trying to disrupt a product category with such highly entrenched incumbents, there’s an extremely high bar. You need to hit parity, and then considerably exceed it with something unique and new. Maybe by more than 10x.

Browsers are one of those categories. Other good, relatively recent examples are Notion, Airtable, and Figma. These are tools that had to spend years in development before being ready to scale.

Arc has spent the last 4 years doing this for the browser. So, why is that a problem?

Timing.

Since 2020, LLMs have made it clear that the way humans interact with computers and the internet will be drastically different by the end of the decade.

For example, just this week Anthropic released the ability for Claude to actually control your computer so you don’t need to (a little dystopian, a little cool).

Browsers are our most common way of interacting with the internet, and it’s undeniable that change is coming.

All of a sudden that $550 million valuation looks daunting to grow into.

What’d They Do?

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