Transcript: 'The Browser Company Is Building a Brand That Drives Viral Growth'

The transcript of AI & I with Nashilu Mouen-Makoua is below.

Timestamps

Introduction: 00:00:47
Nash’s philosophy around storytelling: 00:04:03
The Browser Company’s strategy to come up with creative ideas: 00:09:07
Why Nash thinks building brands people can relate to is important: 00:15:00
How to avoid the tired narrative around AI products: 00:18:47
The ways Nash has integrated ChatGPT into her workflow: 00:22:21
Why understanding social context is important to position your product: 00:33:35
How Nash uses ChatGPT to get a gut check on her writing: 00:41:10
What Nash thinks is the gestalt of the current age: 00:49:50
Nash and Dan use ChatGPT to simulate and interview a typical Arc user: 00:52:01

Transcript

Dan Shipper (00:00:48)

Nash, welcome to the show.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:00:49)

Hey Dan, good to be here.

Dan Shipper (00:00:52)

So good to have you. We have been friends for a long time. I've been an admirer of your work for a long time. And so it's really, really amazing to get to have you on the show. For people who don't know, you're the head of storytelling at The Browser Company, which is the maker of Arc—the Arc browser—which I use all the time. I'm actually using it right now to record this episode. I'm also a tiny, tiny, tiny investor, so I'm invested in your success. Everyone should know that, but, yeah, it's great to have you.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:01:18)

It's good to be here. Yes, I feel like we've known each other through many lives at this point.

Dan Shipper (00:01:24)

We have. Yeah. We first met when you were working at First Round Capital and I was doing a little bit of an angel fund with them, and we've stayed connected ever since.

So, the thing I wanted to start with today— We're going to get into some AI use cases, but the thing I wanted to start with today is I am a gigantic admirer of the work that you've done at The Browser Company. I think everything from your website to your YouTube videos to the way you write job posts, it all has this really interesting aesthetic and it's different and new and it's refreshing. I've never really seen a technology company do storytelling like this and I wanted to talk about that. I want to talk about how you think about it, how you put that together, how you make sure that everything's on the vibe, how you even articulate or think about the vibe. So let's start there.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:02:14)

Perfect. I think the first thing that I would say is even the examples that you've given it's all the feel of the team. And I think that one of— I remember when Josh first approached me and we hadn't even landed on the name “storytelling” yet. It was like, there's this role. I think that it feels like it has your name on it. And then we landed on storytelling and I was like, I feel like The Browser Company is pretty good at storytelling already, you know? And so even thebrowser.company website that was before there was ever a product, Josh and Nate had put that together. And so I think that there's something about the DNA of this company, which is people who love the product that we're building, love the potential of technology, but also love something outside of technology. And so when I think of our storytelling, I think of Carla, who leads brand, who's an artist who lives up in Harlem with her family, and brings a lot of external feel to the work that she does. I think of Josh Lee, who was a filmmaker, documentary creator before joining The Browser Company. I think of myself, I love writing outside of Browser Co. And so I think that was always my biggest hope was that we would challenge what a tech company felt like and how it would show up in the world. And I think that that comes a lot from just having people who care about things outside of this industry.

Dan Shipper (00:03:36)

That makes total sense. And I love that you're bringing in the team, but I also want to gas you up a little bit. You're doing amazing stuff. Tell us about what you are doing. What you are bringing to The Browser Company in what storytelling actually means to you, and what part do you have to play and what you guys put out?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:03:57)

Yeah. So, I think there's two things that I believe fundamentally in terms of storytelling. The first is that it always starts with people and it always has to do with people—whether it's the people that you're talking to or the people that are creating your product. And so I remember in 2022 we were doing this presentation for the team—it was six months into creating the storytelling team—and we were thinking about what is The Browser Company brand? And one of the decisions was that we didn't really have a brand. It was people building a product. And so if you think about storytelling over the last three years, I'd say there's been three iterations of it, where year one, 2022, was really, can we bring our team to the forefront? Can we be people building a product in a way that you're sharing behind-the-scenes in a way that's never been done by folks before. And so we really started with these videos that were people sharing how we're thinking about performance or how we're thinking about Swift on Windows or why we stopped shipping for a month. And it was always the team sharing the story. And so 2022 is really about blurring the lines between company and our members, as we call them, in a way that hadn't been done before.

And then 2023 was really about thinking about inversion. And it's another thing that I like to think about: How do you invert the narrative? How do you take what everyone else is saying and do it differently or tell it in fresh and new ways? And it was really inverting how we did releases and so, if you think about our Arc Max release, which was in October—wave one of AI—when everything was so big and world-changing, and it was a year after ChatGPT had been released initially. And we wanted to think about how you could flip how AI felt to people and make it as accessible as selling kitchen knives in a QVC TV show.

And so it really is a lot of the time: Can you keep people guessing? Can you keep it fresh? Can you make it really personal? And can you invert what people's expectations are? And even this year has been a lot around, how do we think about the next stage for our company and how do we tell that story and again? How do you do a keynote that isn't in a black background room? What if it was in a diner in Josh's home city with a couple of our members? Again, you're inverting people's expectations and really centering people. So I'd say those are probably two of my biggest things: people and inversion. And I love we keep ourselves guessing at The Browser Company too and so not falling into what has worked—we'll keep working for you.

Dan Shipper (00:06:30)

That's so amazing. You said so many things I want to follow up on.

The first one that comes to mind is thinking about companies as collections of people and telling stories from that perspective, instead of sort of this formless mass. I think a good example would be at Hertz—everyone wears the Hertz uniform, they're not individuals, they're the physical embodiment of Hertz. And it sounds like you're kind of flipping that on its head a little bit. Where did that come from? How is that coming out of your head or the team’s collective brains? How are you coming to like, oh, I have this cool new way to talk about companies and storytell about companies and its individuals. Tell me about that.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:07:14)

So, I think two things. I think at the high level and then really tactically, one of the things that we do at Browser Co., which I love.

So the people-first is also a question of— It’s strategic too, because what can our competitors not do? Our competitors are the Chromes of the world, the Safaris, which are part of Apple, and they're too big to center people. And it's too scary to center people because that comes with its risk of— People have their own opinions, and they show up in their own ways, and you lose a sense of polish in some ways when you let it be spiky. And I remember one time I was speaking to a dear friend who led marketing for another company and we were talking about our first big article that was going to be in a publication. And she was like, oh yeah, what is the thread across the people who will be interviewed? What are they wearing? Are they wearing similar clothes? Is it a similar story? And I remember talking about it with Josh and we were like, oh no, so and so is going to wear a knitted jumper because she loves knitting and that's who she is. And so and so is going to wear a Hawaiian shirt if he wants to, because that's who he is. And that's The Browser Company. It is organized chaos in some ways. And it is an inversion of what you would expect at Hertz. So I think at the highest level— I'm trying to think where it came from— It just felt more authentic because I think that people are tired of things being overly curated.

And I think that I wouldn't still be in technology if it went for The Browser Company. And I know there are many people for which this company built a product that they want to see. I would be out somewhere writing a book, which we've talked about many times before. So if I was going to do this role and stay in technology, it was to do something different and to really push the boundaries. And part of that meant it's just about— I fundamentally believe it's about people. From a more tactical perspective, we have this meeting that I love called Writer's Room and it's the storytelling crew. It's myself, Josh Lee, Cyrus, who works with us on video, Carla, who leads brand, Jess, who's a brand designer here as well, Devin on the growth team. And what we do is we have two types of meetings. It's a no-agenda meeting, it is a feedback meeting. And so you can either bring projects you're working on just to get people's thoughts or we have go-wide meetings, which is where somebody has a project that they're kicking off and they just want to go as wide as we can and throw out the biggest ideas and pull from everywhere other than technology. And I would much rather we start here and bring it back to what's possible than start from what's possible than what we know and work our way out of there. And so our biggest moments, whether it is Arc Max or it is our Act II video this year, or it is Boost. So all of those have come from a writer's room where you really give people the chance to go wide, pull from outside, and then bring it into, okay, what are we going to do with that?

Dan Shipper (00:10:10)

That's fascinating. How does that work? So, when you're going to a go-wide meeting, does everybody pull a bunch of references together or is the person who's presenting, are they responsible for just coming to the meeting with all the references and doing all the stuff and then everyone just reacts? Or how does it work?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:10:26)

No, it will be something like, hey, I'm kicking off this project. For example, one of the thoughts that we had, which we'd never done, was we were thinking about how we would want to tell the story of Arc and what's possible. And so it was a go-wide meeting. Hey, I want to talk about this topic, here's a write-up. I think it was Josh D and I had collaborated on bringing this to the team. Here are the goals and I just want to talk about this for however long we have. And then everyone will either read that the night before, or come with some thoughts the morning of, or do a voiceover coming into the meeting. And then it's just riffing. It's riffing for an hour. And the person is taking notes. We were like, man, we should rent a storefront on Broadway and do a museum of technology. And it's Chrome on the walls and at the end, there's a couple of— We never did that, but we would never have gotten to that idea, if it hadn't been for just throwing stuff at the wall. And then the person who's leading will take that and kind of be like, okay, cool. I'm hearing a couple of threads. I'm going to go and sit with what's most interesting. And I might come back in three different directions. I'd love pushback on these three and I'm going to commit to one of them.

Dan Shipper (00:11:36)

I love that. And are there any other specific rules about how you do this in the meeting? How do you keep things free-flowing? How do you get people generating as much interesting stuff as possible?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:11:51)

I think you have to have a couple of key questions that you're bringing to the group. And a couple of key reference points. I think that folks always have a reference point or two that they're bringing in. And you have to be prepared to lead the meeting in a way that you are poking, being maybe controversial. You can't just kind of leave it wide open. If you leave it wide open, we'll still get good stuff. But I think that it is the— We talk about look-out-fors. What are your look-out-fors? Or if there's anything you want to push back on, bring that to the crew as well.

Dan Shipper (00:12:28)

Another thing that you said when you were first sort of introducing how you think about storytelling is when you're doing— I think it was the Arc Max launch. You were talking about AI is currently this hyped thing that everyone's talking about and you're like, we want to flip the narrative and we want to make it as accessible as buying QVC kitchen knives. And that little thing—QVC kitchen knives—it's so evocative. Talk about that.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:13:00)

Yeah, I think a lot of the product team's intention had been around: What are the small moments that we can make better in somebody's day? And the thread that that pulled was like, oh, what if it's giving people less— I'll tell you even how we got there. It was like, okay, small moments of people's day—not big things. Can we just improve the small interactions? And so that was the product intention already. And then there was a question of well— And I think we'd had an offsite in LA that summer where we were talking about it. I was like, we’re giving people the opportunity to have less internet in a world that wants to give people more, etc. It was less internet and what if we were selling people less internet and what if we were selling them more time.

And what if we were selling them literally software on a QVC TV show? And so that's kind of how and you land with— Yeah, actually we're going to sell it on a QVC show. And I think it's always been part and parcel of The Browser Company to want to ground technology in something that feels really human. And I used to live near the QVC center in London. I used to pass it on the train. And so it's always been a back-of-the-mind thing. But even as Josh Lee and I were talking about it— Josh Lee and I really thought about it with Josh, a couple of other folks, Carla did the design for it as well. What are the reference points of ‘80s TV show meets Browser Company. And what are the human elements that many people will actually be able to see and feel? And that's one that there's something— Sometimes you just know when something's captured that also to the question around Writer's Room when something's capturing the imagination of the people around the table and pull it.

Dan Shipper (00:14:53)

Totally. I guess what I'm getting at or what I'm asking about is, there's a way that people might say we want to make AI accessible, right? That's a pretty common thing that you might hear from a branding person or anyone involved in storytelling or marketing or anything like that. And you're saying we want to make it like selling knives on QVC. That comes with so much flavor and evoke so much emotion and so many associations. And I want to talk about for you as a storyteller, why that's important or getting to those sort of really concrete evocative details.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:15:34)

Yeah. I think because I don't come from the tech world in that way. And I grew up in London, and was an English major. So I've always cared about the stories of people. My friends in London are photographers or documentary filmmakers. And so. I don't care to speak the language of what exists already. And what exists already is like the language of this industry. And so personally, for me, I would say if I'm telling a story that the people around me will not be interested in or not get, and that's not exciting or interesting or motivating, and I think Carla— Carla and I've had this conversation a lot around yeah, you want your brand to to make people feel something, but not just people around us only. And so I think that my sisters love Arc. I have three little sisters. They're 15, 19, and 20. And they're in New York at the moment right now, which is crazy. And they love Arc. And I want the people in my life to be able to understand and love this thing, because this is part of the reasons I joined The Browser Company. It is such an audacious bet to build a new browser. And that touches so many people. And so can you build a product? Can you build a brand that speaks to so many people? And that means making it really tangible and tactical, make it feel like something you can actually put your arms around.

The last thing I'll say is we'd done this presentation a while ago when I just joined, which was called Operation New York City, and it was thinking about our membership—our members of Browser Co. And New York City is the type of city where there's something for everyone. And there will always be the leading industries of whether that is finance or consulting or fashion. But there is something for everyone in the city. And could Arc and our membership feel like the city that we're born, where there is something for everyone and it can speak— You always have the leading demographics using your product, but it should feel like it speaks to, there's something here for anyone. And I think that that's part of the fabric of this company and our story.

Dan Shipper (00:18:00)

I love it. I want to get into AI stuff.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:18:05)

Okay, let's do it.

Dan Shipper (00:18:06)

So, I know you're using AI for some work stuff and some personal stuff. I also know that you've had a little bit of an interesting journey with it, where you've found it's useful for some things and not useful for others. So tee us up. Tell us a little bit about where you're using it and then we'll jump into some use cases.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:18:22)

Cool. Awesome. I'm trying to think there's something about just where AI is currently in terms of the stories that are being told about AI. And I think for us at Browser Company, we've been exploring it since October of last year. And we've always been focused on the smaller parts of people's days. And I think that as we look at this next phase for AI and what's possible, I'm really excited for part of our story to be also, how do you tell a new story about AI? Because I think that, if you really think about it, all of the releases are always about companies, right? It's like, new GPT-40 is about OpenAI. Gemini is about Google. And Llama is about Facebook. And there isn't room to really talk about what these products are trying to do for people in the most intimate ways, but intimate is in the smallest ways. And I think that there is this fatigue around, it says it's going to do this, but does it actually help me to do this? And what can actually help me to do it? And I think my own journey was like that too. And I'm like, man. I'm missing this. I'm clearly not using this in the right way. But I'm really excited for what it means to invert the story of AI. It's not going anywhere. It's really powerful. I was in Kenya and my aunt was talking about using ChatGPT for something, right? I love that. And so what does it mean for us even as a company to think about how to invert the current story? Because it's so big. Can you make it, can you make it with kitchen knives, right? But on a broader scale.

Dan Shipper (00:20:19)

Totally.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:20:20)

That's all I got. Just because now I'm like, okay, I can't talk to you because I don't I don't want this to be like, oh, Browser Company’s only building AI. But like between you and I, Dan, I think that it's something where we've really been thinking about how much do you put in— If you are building AI into your product and you know Hursh, so we're really exploring what that can mean. How do you own the fact that you are building maybe an AI-first product or whatever that may be, but without falling into the existing narrative, because it's tired and it's fatigued and there is that weight around it.

Dan Shipper (00:20:59)

I think that's one of the interesting things is— Most companies when they think about participating in AI are framing it around keeping up. And that seems very different. You're attacking with a very different perspective. Talk about that.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:21:18)

Yes. Well, I think that it's because it's coming from a place of keeping up and it's coming from a place of measuring yourself against your competitors and what they have shipped—not what you can deliver to people that is meaningful to them. And so that's a really good way of putting it. And so the audience is actually not the person who knows and loves your product. The audience is everyone beyond them. And it's keeping up with the Joneses in some way. And I think the way that we've thought about it is it's a new Play-Doh for the same mission that you've always had, you know? But yeah, I hadn't thought about it in the way of, it’s keeping up. And keeping up is for secondary reasons. It's not because it delivers what you want to for the people that you're hoping to build for.

Dan Shipper (00:22:15)

And so personally, how has the new Play-Doh played out in your work life?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:22:20)

Yeah. I was fighting with ChatGPT. I was like, drop this for me, please. And it would come back with like— Because, at one point I was doing a lot of writing at Browser Code. You know, it was our member updates. It was our internal docs. And at one point, most of the words that you would see were coming from me. And so I was like, man, a ChatGPT can take this off my plate. Type in: Hey, can you draft x, y, and z? And it would come back with this crazy tone. And I'd be like, this is really cheesy, or this is just not working for me.

And so I'd say there's three ways that I've learned to— I'm probably a daily user at this point, Monday to Friday. I'm not really using it outside of work. But the three ways that I found that it helps me—especially because I care so much about words, and so it was really hard to delegate words. And I think that that's something with AI is like, what can you do for me that is helping me, but isn't trying to replace what I do that is good. And so the three things that I've started using it for: One, is just as I'm in free-flow if I’m following an idea and I'm doing research and I want to bring some— I was researching the context behind Tracy Chapman's “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” because of this presentation that I'm giving next week and what was happening in 1988 and how does that relate to this other thread of the positioning of this other product in 1988, right? And so that's the free-flowing conversation that I'll have with ChatGPT: how should we size this market, etc.?

The second is a kind of external prompt for writing that I'm actively doing or variations. And it was actually— One of my teammates, Dina, we were riffing on one-liners and she was like, I've been thinking with ChatGPT. How do you think with ChatGPT? And she sent me her chat and I was like, oh yeah, this is an iterative experience. And then the third, which I'll say is the only time when I let ChatGPT change my words is this prompt that Josh came up with and it is tightening your language with a very specific prompt you gave it to get to a place where I felt that I was getting value and that I wasn't trying to replace myself. Basically I was trying to improve the work that I was already doing.

Dan Shipper (00:24:53)

That's cool. Let's start with the first one. I want to see how you're using it for that free-flowing research.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:24:59)

Okay. So this is one example where we’re developing a better understanding of who Arc is for at its earliest stages. And so this is a conversation just around the different subsets that— We call ourselves laptop people in many ways. A laptop person is a specific type of person who is maybe going to the office, but primarily on their laptop. And so this is just an ongoing conversation that I was having to just dig a couple of levels deeper.

Dan Shipper (00:25:38)

So, let's start at the top. So you've sort of come up with this laptop person idea. You have the tag, you have the word already. And you're like, I want to sort of flesh this out and understand more about who those people are. Why? Why do you want to flesh it out more?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:25:55)

Because browsers are for everybody. Who are they for initially? We think about it as for people whose livelihoods are on the computer, right? And what is it? This was me trying to understand what does it mean to have your livelihood on the computer? And there is a livelihood on the computer in that I am going into the office every day. There is that I'm hybrid or I'm remote. And so just trying to get an understanding of who are the people who should be in this audience that maybe we're not thinking of as being in this audience right now.

Dan Shipper (00:26:32)

And so you start with how many people work remotely around the world? So, I'm curious— You could Google that. Why didn't you Google it?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:26:40)

Because now i'm in Statista and I'm in this other place and actually I would much rather have a couple of websites summarized and because I knew that I wanted to do a deeper dive then go through seven different pages that are giving me information in an unnuanced way. And so I knew that I wanted to go a couple of levels deeper here.

Dan Shipper (00:26:59)

Okay. What's Statista?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:27:01)

Oh, Statista is if you look up how many people use Mac or Windows, i'll give you a website with a graph and that's the end of the information.

Dan Shipper (00:27:11)

That makes sense. Okay. So, you asked how many people work remotely around the world and it's saying, as of 2024, it's estimated that 35 percent of workers are working globally. So it's giving you a little bit of an answer and then you think, can you give me an estimate of what you mean when you say hundreds of millions of people worldwide are now working remotely? So, you're basically asking it to go deeper in a particular part of the answer it gave you. Is that right?

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:27:35)

Yeah. Yeah. Because if I'm trying to understand an initial target market, I need to be much more specific than hundreds of millions.

Dan Shipper (00:27:46)

Okay, cool. And let's keep going down the chat. So it says, “When I say hundreds of millions of people worldwide are now working remotely, I'm referring to an estimated range of 500 million to 1 billion people.” So it's giving you a more specific number to work from. And then and now you're kind of your next follow up is like, which industries lend themselves to remote work more than others? So you started with like this initial sizing and then now you're like, I want to cut up the kind of remote work industry into industries that maybe are leaning more towards that kind of work than others.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:28:25)

Yes, because what I want to develop is a hypothesis around, at the most granular level, who is this person that we're thinking of? And so part of that is what do they do? And there's only so far that I can think of what they may do. And so, yeah, the whole goal of this is to go from a macro statement to actually being able to envision this person as we're doing research and meeting loads of different people who are Arc members and are not Arc members, trying to feel out the edges of the world here.

Dan Shipper (00:29:04)

Okay. That makes sense. So you're saying, which industries lend themselves to remote work and it says technology, what else? Finance and accounting—that makes sense.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:29:13)

And part of this is that you want to speak to people in a way that feels like you're speaking directly to them. And so this is just developing it. Okay. What are they doing day-to-day?

Dan Shipper (00:29:24)

Who are they? What are they doing? All that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it gave you a whole big list. And then you follow up with that list with, “Can you list some of these industries in one sentence with commas so I can copy them into a document?” I love it.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:29:37)

I was like, this is great. I don't want the— Thanks.

Dan Shipper (00:29:43)

I think that ChatGPT's reformatting capabilities are actually really underrated as a time-saver—something like that. A task like that might have taken you five minutes to do, but sometimes you have lists that are gigantic and it just would take you an hour or two and it just does it in an instant. It's so nice.

Nashilu Mouen-Makoua (00:30:01)

It's great. One of the things that we've been using it for, as well, is we've been experimenting with a podcast called Imagining Arc that is just weekly diary updates from Josh. And here's the transcript. Make it into a two-sentence description that sounds like a description for X other podcasts—just those types of tasks.