The Browser Company?
A deep dive into The Browser Company’s unconventional growth playbook
👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
A few days ago, I was doing one of the last interviews for Minuttia’s podcast.
As I was listening to my guest’s answer, the name of a certain company popped up.
“The Browser Company?” I asked.
“Yes,” my guest replied.
“I don’t know them, but I’ll check them out,” I concluded.
And check them out I did.
Apparently, this SaaS company is making waves in the way it…
Instills virality into its product
Approaches its growth
Builds a sense of community among its users and general audience
I was intrigued.
So, naturally, after the episode, I searched and tried to understand what’s special about the company.
Here’s what I found.
Key takeaways
Given the four lessons we discussed, it seems that The Browser Company doesn't just redefine the browser market.
It offers a new take on the traditional approach to growth.
And here's what we can learn from it…
Always make extra effort when researching your target market. Persevere to fully understand the target users' needs and whether the available products address them fully. Figuring that out laid the foundation of The Browser Company's approach to growth.
Involve your target users as much as possible. Building a community from the start not only helped develop Arc but also instilled virality.
Engage your community in building product awareness. The Browser Company's followers produce so much UGC featuring different product use cases that there is no need to invest in a multifaceted content marketing strategy for Arc.
Consistency is the key to virality. The Browser Company repeated the same course of action to build awareness and recognition for Arc (retweets from followers and interviews with media outlets right before and after every launch).
Your employees' involvement is important. Committing to this helped The Browser Company remain transparent.
In other words, remaining close to and open with its users formed The Browser Company's honest, direct, and reliable brand identity that's so important for its product.
What is The Browser Company?
The Browser Company is the creator and developer of the Arc browser.
The idea behind the Arc browser was conceived back in July 2019, when Josh Miller, current CEO of The Browser Company and a former product manager at Facebook, pitched the idea to Hursh Agrawal, who also worked at Facebook in the past as a software engineer.
As the company raised its seed round in July 2020, it hired designers and developers who brought experience and expertise from other well-known companies, such as Slack, Stripe, Instagram, Apple, and even Google Chrome.
All these people united around the idea of a new browser that would change how people use the internet, namely:
How they search for and view information online
The organization of information within a browser
How to make work with the browser more efficient
The ways of customizing every browser experience
Below are just a few Arc features created to meet these objectives.
So, the general intent was to introduce a browser that is like an OS for your computer or an internet computer with many features in one place.
And the goal?
To transform a user’s online experience.
Here’s what Josh Miller shared about it in his X (formerly Twitter) thread:
“Truth is, modern browsers are great. Our careers were made within them. And for most, they’ll continue to be just fine.
But our favorite chefs don’t use the same stove and knives as the rest of us.
Those of us who put the same care into the internet deserve a better browser.”
Sounds promising, right?
But the question still remains:
Given the high competition in the market, is there a demand for a new browser?
Let’s dive deeper to find an answer.
Quick overview of the browser market
Even before digging into the data, it was already obvious that some browsers would have way higher usage rates than others.
As you might have guessed, Chrome dominates the worldwide market (63.56% of the market share), followed by Safari (19.84%) and Edge (5.43%).
Here’s a more detailed representation of the state of the browser market as of August 2023 (data from Statista).
Moreover, as further data shows, things haven't changed in this market since 2015—no other browser has beaten Chrome to the top so far.
The graph below shows the browser market state in the U.S. over the years.
So yes, the market overview sends a clear message.
The browser market is very competitive and quite mature.
But does it mean that there is no space for new players?
To answer this question, let’s review the features that the top five browsers (from the first graph) offer and where they have gaps that Arc can fill.
What do we see here?
It’s obvious why people choose Google Chrome—most core browser features are present in it, plus it operates on the most popular search engine.
Even though three out of five browsers have tab management, it’s pretty basic and can actually hurt the browser’s performance if too many tabs are open at once.
Four out of five browsers don’t offer integrated messaging. Opera is the only one that integrates with Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and some other messengers.
Collaborative features are scarce or absent.
None of the browsers allows you to customize your user interface.
So, we can say that Google Chrome dominates the market because it offers the most complete browser experience so far.
Yet, this experience is far from ideal and could benefit from more interactivity and customization.
That’s where there’s a gap in this market, and The Browser Company uses it as Arc’s unique value proposition.
Given all this, we can conclude that The Browser Company is trying to redefine the browser experience as we know it, as is evident from the features that it has already developed for Arc.
But what do they do to stand out in such a saturated market?
Keep reading to learn more.
Four growth lessons
Over three years, The Browser Company has built a steadfast online presence.
The company’s X activity alone deserves praise for its diversity and high engagement.
Analyzing The Browser Company’s presence across this and other platforms, I learned four things.
Lesson #1: Building a community
User involvement and community building became a trend very early in the company’s journey.
All the tactics The Browser Company used in this respect are summarized in the following table.
As you can see, a lot of activity was happening on X.
As I went through The Browser Company’s X feed, I noticed that they surveyed their followers and users at least once a week or so.
Such surveys continued throughout 2022 and have become a bi-weekly routine with Arc-haeology questionnaires.
Another community-building feature that happens quite frequently on Arc’s and The Browser Company’s X feeds is brand-follower interactions.
In fact, you can often see company management asking and answering questions, launching polls for Arc’s features, etc.
Yet, interactions through X were only an overture to the bigger product-led marketing play.
The real game-changer that set the company’s approach to community building in stone was Arc Boosts.
What is this feature?
Arc Boosts allows browser users to create shareable templates that change the appearance of chosen web pages.
As The Brower Company management puts it, this feature exists to celebrate each user’s unique personality.
Here’s what Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, said on the matter in his Better is Possible essay:
“[With Boosts], you’re manipulating the fabric of the internet itself. Its color, texture, typography, and even what parts appear and disappear completely. To change what the internet looks changes your relationship to everything in it and reveals the truth or mystery behind every site you visit. And if you change the internet to reflect you, your personality, preferences, and aesthetic, something more magical happens – our traditional relationship with the web as viewers is inverted for many of us. For the first time, we become the creator. ”
Indeed, if you look at the Boosts page, you will see many templates for formatting different sites.
Most of them are created by Arc users.
So, how do you create a Boost?
While using the Arc browser, you should visit a site you want to change, click the paintbrush icon inside the URL bar, and start creating.
You can change:
The website’s color scheme
Fonts
Location of the navigation buttons
If you don’t want to create your own Boost, the gallery shown in the above visualization offers many ready-made designs.
So, Boosts are the Arc user’s outlet for creativity, confirming each user's role and importance by highlighting their unique ways of using the product.
There’s also another beneficial nuance to Arc Boosts.
I’m talking about boosting product awareness.
As I discovered in the course of my research, The Browser Company uses Boosts and other features to showcase many use cases for its product.
Let’s discuss them in greater detail.
Lesson #2: Building product awareness
Try to put yourself in the first-time Arc-visitor’s shoes.
You land on the Arc Boosts page, browse through the gallery, and see all the designs and templates.
What benefit would you see there for yourself?
Most likely that this browser is unlike any other browser in that it allows you to customize websites to your liking.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the Arc browser is its trump card.
So, The Browser Company uses it as a leitmotif to build product awareness by showcasing diverse use cases.
However, they don’t just make a series of posts on a company page.
The community-building factor is also at play here.
For instance, in this repost, the company shares how a user applied a Boost to remove YouTube Shorts from the feed.
Another user marvels at the feature that allows listening to music in the browser without opening another tab.
The following example shows a really innovative side of the Arc browser.
Grant, one of Arc’s users, applied the Shared Spaces feature to create an entire course (organized into a set of tabs).
And this user created a list of books he aims to read in a shared tab:
Finally, this user shared an entire thread about how she uses the Arc browser:
Separate spaces for each course in law school
Easels for quick access to cases in digital textbooks
Tana integration to make notes and watch videos in one place
Dashboards to create class panels with references
Shared folders to organize daily routines
I could go on with these examples—The Browser Company has so many of them in its X feed.
But no matter what example I share, they all serve one purpose.
To show the many uses of the Arc browser.
So, whenever a new visitor comes to The Browser Company’s or Arc’s X feeds, they become aware of how beneficial this product can be for them.
Speaking about that, The Browser Company also uses similar retweets with other strategies to instill virality.
Let’s talk about it more.
Lesson #3: Instilling virality
As I browsed The Browser Company’s X page, I pinpointed several milestones that helped Arc raise product awareness.
All these events are just pieces of a puzzle showing The Browser Company’s product-growth strategy.
We can break it down into these three steps:
Retweeting posts from followers after the launch of new features
Interviews for top-tier publications, including tech ones
Getting coverage from tech influencers
Two out of these three steps have been repeated consistently.
First and foremost, The Browser Company did massive retweets of followers’ posts celebrating and reviewing new product launches.
Here, you can see some reactions to Arc’s launch.
The company applied the same tactic after launching every new feature—Arc Boosts, Arc Max, Easel, etc.
Next, company executives and employees gave a series of interviews.
Now, whether they did so before or after launches remains to be seen.
However, most of these interviews went right after big launches, which drew even more attention to the product.
The same course of action was repeated for every significant product announcement, and this gave great results.
The first independent user reviews appeared early on.
Tech publications started spreading the news about Arc.
Influencers were prompted to review Arc, seeing a growing buzz about it online. Marques Brownlee, who reviewed the browser, has over 17 million subscribers.
Continued online conversations about Arc placed it among the top innovations of 2023.
You might have noticed that The Browser Company abides by one strategy here—consistency.
And, in its turn, consistency is the key to virality.
Maybe not in terms of the classic understanding of the word, but in terms of gaining popularity within a specific industry—tech.
Another thing that The Browser Company does consistently and that might have contributed to great product awareness is employee contributions.
Let’s see how the company approached this tactic.
Lesson #4: Employee contributions
Right from the start, The Browser Company was very active in involving its employees and upper management in building product awareness.
As I traced the company’s X/Twitter activity back to 2020, I noticed the following types of posts from its team.
Moreover, the Arc team is involved in communicating with followers, answering questions, and reacting to feedback.
So, The Browser Company includes its employees in every aspect of its online presence.
Has it been effective?
The short answer is yes.
Actively engaging Arc’s team in online conversations about the browser helped create transparency and generate excitement and anticipation of new features.
In fact, The Browser Company’s founders went as far as publicizing details from the board meetings.
How important is this approach?
I’d say it’s of utmost importance.
Since Arc is a browser, all potential users will have questions about reliability in terms of personal data and operations that happen behind the scenes.
So, keeping things transparent by sharing every bit of information a potential user might otherwise question is critical to the product’s success.
And the fact The Browser Company shares this information firsthand, using the voices of its employees, adds to its credibility immensely.
Final thoughts
The B2B industry desperately needs a fresh approach to growth.
And I mean desperately.
For a long time, we’ve been reliant on the growth playbook of the past.
In some cases, the same playbook may still work today.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Simply put, what got us here won’t get us there.
We need a new playbook, and that playbook is being written right now.
Things are changing, and they’re changing fast.
The Browser Company is a great example of that change. (Even though, obviously, the company isn’t purely B2B.)
We can learn from and be inspired by them.
See you next week!