Lenny's Podcast · Mar 19Competing with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product | Josh Miller (CEO)
Arc tracks one metric, D5/D7 (active five days a week), which grew over 10% weekly for about eight months, with retention in the low 30s to low 40s. It has no growth team and grows through word of mouth and screenshots. Josh wants it to be to the browser what the iPhone was to the cell phone.
Tips
- Track one metric that captures retention, engagement and growth together▶ 6:10Arc grew over 10 percent every week for about eight months on this metric.
- Judge retention by cohort-over-cohort improvement, not by absolute numbers▶ 7:58D5/D7 retention sits between the low 30s and low 40s depending on cohort, and has been inching up over 12 months.
- Name the feeling you want users to have before building a feature▶ 11:41Peek was designed so you can pop a link up and down from Hacker News without context switching to a new tab.
- Pick a feeling that tracks the business metric you care about▶ 15:35Arc has no growth team and no growth projects, yet grows through word of mouth.
- Pick a commoditized consumer category and win on emotional connection▶ 1:11:50Josh notes most browsers are near carbon copies of Chromium with small tweaks.
- Build trust with a tech product by showing the humans behind it▶ 41:20Their best-performing YouTube video, a reaction to an MKBHD review, broke out beyond existing followers.
- Underestimate nothing: plan for the shift of computing to the internet▶ 1:17:00Josh says he underestimated mobile at his first company and wants not to repeat that.
