Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Revolutionizing browsing: inside Strawberry's AI-Powered workflow with Charles Maddock
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes, the podcast
- 0:03where we explore the tools, trends and people shaping the
- 0:06future of business through artificial intelligence.
- 0:09Today we're heading to Sweden, where a small but mighty team is
- 0:12rethinking one of the most core fundamental tools we use every
- 0:15day, the web browser. My guest is Charles, the founder
- 0:19of Strawberry Browser, an AI powered browser that doesn't
- 0:22just help you surf the web, it works the web for you.
- 0:26Think research assistants, task automation and productivity
- 0:29workflows, all natively integrated with AI agents or
- 0:33companions inside your browsing experience.
- 0:36Launched in 2024, Strawberry quickly picked up momentum and
- 0:40was voted the number one product of the day and week on Product
- 0:44Hunt in April 2025. Just a couple of weeks ago.
- 0:47With the four person team, the usage based SAS model, and
- 0:50hundreds of early adopters, Charles is solving for one of
- 0:53the most pressing needs in the digital world, ease and speed.
- 0:57He started coding at age 11 and now he's building tools to
- 1:01rethink how we interact with the Internet itself.
- 1:04Let's get into it. But first, some business.
- 1:07This episode is brought to you by kitcaster.com, the podcast
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- 1:53belongs on a mic. Hey, Charles.
- 2:03Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Ryan.
- 2:07You betcha. I want to kick this off with the
- 2:10question I'm curious about particularly with builders and
- 2:12AI. It seems like the interface now
- 2:15for engaging AI is one of two things.
- 2:18Either it's a chat function or it's a glowing button that fixes
- 2:22everything. Which is your favorite?
- 2:26Glowing button that fixes everything.
- 2:30Oh my goodness, I I, I really cannot imagine.
- 2:35I, I, I feel like such a old person now.
- 2:40Well, what would that be referring to more specifically?
- 2:44You know, it's like, let's say Air table or HubSpot, all the
- 2:48big enterprise software companies in the upper right
- 2:50hand corner is it it has a little glowing button that says
- 2:54like, try our AI assistant and you click on it and no
- 2:57disrespect, but it's a little bit half baked and they're
- 2:59trying to figure out like what to do, You know what I mean?
- 3:02Like how do? We integrate.
- 3:04The tool into this big software. OK, yes, I, I, I completely hear
- 3:09you now. And The funny thing is usually
- 3:10you press that button and then the chat opens up, right?
- 3:13So it's really just the chat underneath there.
- 3:15Anyways, yeah, I think then the button is slightly better.
- 3:20I I would have to say. Yeah, and it, you know, it
- 3:23popularized by the vibe coding apps.
- 3:25You know, that's my favorite thing in Lovable where it gives
- 3:28you this big error and you're like, oh, OK.
- 3:32And then it says has a button that says try and fix it.
- 3:35I'm like, don't mind if I do hit the button and then it works
- 3:37through, you know, but it gives you kind of the rundown of what
- 3:40it's doing and like it's it shows the work, you know, So I
- 3:44just it, it's so satisfying to hit that and it works that I
- 3:48just see that being integrated into so many things because, you
- 3:52know, if it's preemptively finds the problems you have and it
- 3:56knows it's wrong, the try and fix it button feels like a great
- 3:59solution because you're not sitting there being like, this
- 4:02is wrong. No, it's, it's totally the 11
- 4:07next step in in the interfaces we have towards LLMS.
- 4:10I would say one thing we really ambition for Strawberry browser.
- 4:13What I'm currently working on is that your assistant will kind of
- 4:18give you tips whilst you're working.
- 4:20So say that you're inside of your Gmail and you know, you're
- 4:24moving a receipt from your Gmail to QuickBooks and you do that
- 4:28twice. Well, then hey, after, after you
- 4:31doing that twice, it should just be able to say, oh, hey, Ryan,
- 4:35can I just do this for you? I know how you I'll do this now.
- 4:38And you just press yes, you got the big glowing button right?
- 4:41And then it will start automating that directly inside
- 4:44the browser. Brilliant.
- 4:47And I love that you brought up Strawberry.
- 4:48This is your product. You were #1 product of the day
- 4:51on Product Hunt. Congratulations.
- 4:53I know it's a closed beta and you had said that you'll open it
- 4:56up for anyone in this community here with AI for founders, and
- 5:00we'll provide a link to do that. So what you're looking for is
- 5:05use cases for the tool. So that case sounds amazing.
- 5:09And I, I swear to God, a buddy of mine 2 days ago, he sent me a
- 5:15text. He's like, hey man, build me a
- 5:17tool that pulls all the receipts out of my inbox and puts them in
- 5:21a Ledger. I, I swear to God, I don't know,
- 5:25I don't need to swear to God. It seems a little bit like
- 5:29overkill, but but he did and, and I was like, yeah, man,
- 5:32actually I don't see how that would be a problem at all.
- 5:34It with kind of the thought of like, you know what, somebody's
- 5:37probably already built this and it sounds like that's exactly
- 5:39something they could do. And but not only expenses,
- 5:42right, 'cause I mean, honestly, there's a, a million tasks on
- 5:45our inbox right now, especially now where our inboxes are
- 5:49flooded that if you're inside Gmail, there's a lot of
- 5:52repetitive tasks that if it's learning and it's like, oh, I
- 5:55see your behavior, let me take over.
- 5:57Boom, big glowing button. It fixes it.
- 6:00Brilliant. I love.
- 6:01It now. What?
- 6:03What now? Strawberries a browser?
- 6:05And I think that's an important differentiation, right?
- 6:07So does this work on top of Chrome or exactly what's going
- 6:11on with the browser? Absolutely.
- 6:13So we are building this on top of Chromium the the the open
- 6:18source software underneath Chrome, but we are building a
- 6:21fully stand alone browser that has its own branding, its own
- 6:26style, its own way of working. And of course the big difference
- 6:29is that you install it and then it has a built in team of AI
- 6:35companions we call them. And the whole goal of these
- 6:38companions are to learn passively from you doing things.
- 6:42Or you can teach them by, for instance, recording your screen
- 6:45and showing a workflow to automate your grunt work.
- 6:49And and you should be able to automate these tasks with this
- 6:52team of AI companions without needing to write the line of
- 6:56code. It should be just like teaching
- 6:58an intern, right? That's the idea.
- 7:01Why name them companions and not agents?
- 7:05I think Agents kind of has this techie hard feeling to it and
- 7:15you know, a lot of our users are going to be non-technical and
- 7:18companion kind of sounds sweet and soft, right?
- 7:22You know, they're they're your friends.
- 7:24That's kind of the idea. Love it.
- 7:27I love it, OK. And the idea of AI powered
- 7:30browser is very interesting for a lot of reasons for companions,
- 7:34of course. But then it also starts to
- 7:36introduce the idea of data privacy.
- 7:38And the the big conversation going on right now with browsers
- 7:42is like who's who has the agency to control their data and
- 7:46monetize their data. So when you're thinking about
- 7:49just data and security, how what's the thought there from
- 7:52the browser perspective? Absolutely.
- 7:55I mean, the, the, the idea here is that right now, as with any
- 8:01AI application, right, if you want to send some question that
- 8:04contains some sensitive information, you will have to
- 8:07send that to Open AI. You will have to send that to
- 8:09Anthropic or whichever model provider you're using.
- 8:12You can choose of course and, and we, we don't log anything.
- 8:19And of course, these model providers, they, they also write
- 8:24in their terms. We don't, we don't save logs
- 8:27after 30 days. So they don't retain the data.
- 8:30They won't train the models on that data.
- 8:33But of course, in the future, we want to be able to take this one
- 8:37step further. Of course, with the rise of open
- 8:40source models and hardware getting better and better, soon
- 8:43you're going to be able to run like a DeepSeek distil Quen
- 8:47DeepSeek distil right on your laptop if you have one of the
- 8:50latest busy Max, right? And then of course, you should
- 8:54be able to use that model directly inside of Strawberry.
- 8:58So for those tasks that maybe require more sensitive data,
- 9:03it's never leaving your computer, right?
- 9:06Yes. And the the browser, is it
- 9:09connected to the cloud or is this is all running locally on
- 9:12the independently on each device?
- 9:15Yeah. So right now, because what the
- 9:18the models that are needed have like they need to be very
- 9:22intelligent. It's simply not feasible today
- 9:25to have that running completely locally.
- 9:28Yeah. So, so when you go into it, you
- 9:30kind of have the expectations right now that I'm going to need
- 9:33to trust Microsoft or open the eye or one of these big
- 9:37companies. Amazing.
- 9:40Back to the idea of companions and looking on your website, one
- 9:44thing I really like is you're giving them names and
- 9:46personalities. You know, I've talked a lot
- 9:49about on the show that the as the the interface is chat that's
- 9:53going to move more to natural language and we'll just be
- 9:56talking to it like Star Trek. So as you have competition,
- 10:00Camilla, you have data extraction, Denise, you have
- 10:04LinkedIn, Linus, I love those names.
- 10:06But you then you could actually differentiate with different
- 10:09accents, perhaps different languages that way.
- 10:13I think just the ease of use would be much better.
- 10:15You know, you could you give them all different
- 10:17personalities, you give them all things.
- 10:19So when you want, you're like, hey Camilla, grab Denise and I
- 10:22need you guys to work on this thing over here.
- 10:25Yes, yes. You know.
- 10:29I mean it, it makes me so happy and excited for you to say that
- 10:32because this is at the core of what we want to create when it
- 10:36comes to the experience of using this AI companions, they should
- 10:40be like your team, right? Your very own team of AI interns
- 10:45that just love working on even the most grunt work tasks,
- 10:50right? And it should feel fun to work
- 10:53together with them. You, you should be doing the
- 10:55things that you're great at, which is like, of course,
- 10:58recording this podcasts, then doing all of the follow up after
- 11:02the podcast or sourcing all of these people you want to speak
- 11:06to. That should be done by your
- 11:07team, right? And they should be collaborating
- 11:09and working together and have this, this amazing personalities
- 11:13that make it fun to, to, to, to do your work right.
- 11:18Yeah. Do you mind if I get a little
- 11:19philosophic? Absolutely.
- 11:22I love that. So there's a, a contemplative
- 11:27technique that I really like called noting.
- 11:29And basically what you do is you sit it calmly and breathe and
- 11:33you just notice how your body's feeling.
- 11:35So and you note here's like, OK, I feel a little bit of warm
- 11:38sensation on the back of my neck.
- 11:41My shoulder blades feel a little bit tight and as you start to
- 11:45notice different sensations in your body, you start to see
- 11:48there's a, a relative feeling to the emotional state or mental
- 11:52state that you're you're going through.
- 11:53So often times like, you know easily, like if something scary
- 11:58happens, you feel it in your gut.
- 11:59You're like, oh, my stomach kind of feels sick.
- 12:03So what's interesting about like solving problems, especially
- 12:07when we're starting to get more sophisticated with companions,
- 12:10is that the, the better I'm able to like communicate my, what I'm
- 12:16going through my frustrations. Ultimately, the companions are
- 12:19there to fix my problems. So it's about it.
- 12:22The, the, the skill that would become valuable is I identifying
- 12:26what's driving you crazy so you know how to tap in the help.
- 12:30And that will come, I think auditory first, where you can
- 12:33say like, you know what, my morning ritual is driving me
- 12:37crazy because I have to copy the events from my calendar into the
- 12:41other calendar because for whatever reason, Google doesn't
- 12:45allow me to connect these things.
- 12:47So and then, you know, then, you know, Google Calendar Charlie is
- 12:54going to be like, oh, Ryan, let me take care of that for you.
- 12:56Thanks for explaining that so well.
- 12:58And it's like, great, OK, as you're going through like, hey,
- 13:01actually it's kind of irritating that I have to wait 3 seconds
- 13:04for these answers. It's like, oh, well, wow, that's
- 13:06cooking. Why don't I pull up two
- 13:08different tabs? I guess the the point is, is
- 13:11that the skill I'm trying to figure out is which is going to
- 13:13be very important in the future is how to carefully enunciate
- 13:17exactly what my problem is to a point where the the companions
- 13:21can then build on top of that to create solutions.
- 13:26Absolutely. I think this does at first
- 13:30glance and first thought seem like something that we aren't
- 13:34too far away from, like we already have these models that
- 13:36can express themselves, but really capturing this small
- 13:40nuances, I think this is going to be really tricky actually.
- 13:45I think this is going to be one of those achievements within AI
- 13:50that is like years away still. And you know, we're thinking
- 13:54about it every single day and it's going to require some
- 13:58progress within the base models themselves.
- 14:00But if you just think about how the interface should be, how
- 14:04your models see you work, of course a chat is not the way to
- 14:08go here, right? Of course we shouldn't write out
- 14:12a workflow with like drag and drop like, oh, like that.
- 14:16That's the old mindset, right? The way we want to do it is it
- 14:19should be like jumping into a call like this and like, OK, hi,
- 14:23agents. And, you know, there, there are
- 14:25four boxes and your agents, they have their avatars and they're
- 14:28kind of looking at you, like nodding their heads, right?
- 14:30And then you're like, OK, I'm going to show you guys how to do
- 14:32this. This is so annoying.
- 14:34Let me share my screen and you share your screen.
- 14:36They kind of ask questions whilst you're working, right?
- 14:39Like a real colleague would do. And then, you know, when they
- 14:43feel confident, like, OK, yeah, we can do this now.
- 14:45And the call is over. And then all of a sudden, you
- 14:47know they're opening up tabs in the background, automating
- 14:51things for you just like that. Yeah, no.
- 14:54And what I think I it's, it's brilliant.
- 14:56And what I love about what you're doing too is if it is,
- 14:59we're adopting a chat function and it that'll, it's already
- 15:02voice, we can that, that'll be enabled and what we can touch on
- 15:06what the future might look like too.
- 15:08But you're not making somebody go to a website.
- 15:11So when I've been, I've been building all these tools and
- 15:14then I just get frustrated working on the UI 'cause I'm
- 15:16like, I don't, nobody wants to get an app, nobody wants to go
- 15:20somewhere. So the more I thought about it,
- 15:22it's like the more I should just be building this into text
- 15:24messaging because that's where people already are.
- 15:28But the browser is the other place that people already are.
- 15:31They're already there. They don't need to go to the
- 15:33website. It's right there waiting for
- 15:34them wherever they're going, which is, which is brilliant.
- 15:38I, I love that, you know, and so it, it becomes like more
- 15:41intuitive and I'm with you here. I just, my battery dies all the
- 15:45time. It, it becomes more intuitive
- 15:48and it, it, you don't have to think about using it.
- 15:50It's just there to help. There's not a destination, you
- 15:53know what I mean? It's it's more like you bought
- 15:56buddy wants to go over to his house to watch the game, but
- 16:00Yep, he's got a terrible Internet connection and it's
- 16:03always glitchy. You're like, no, dude, I want
- 16:05you to come to my house to watch the game, you know, so.
- 16:11Cool, now I I I get you 100%. Yeah, look into the future.
- 16:16Here's one thing that I'm curious about, and I just want
- 16:18to run it past you. As as we begin to more and more
- 16:22use the tools to solve problems, the tools get smarter so they
- 16:26can anticipate our problems before and they're moving
- 16:30things. That's more pleasing for me in a
- 16:33certain way. Now, my buddy Dave, you know,
- 16:36said that the best AI tools make our humanness more human.
- 16:41It makes us more human. So one attribute I think that's
- 16:45interesting about human is kind of like attitude mindset.
- 16:48If I'm engaged with the world in a curious and positive way, then
- 16:52the world organizes itself in some ways around that.
- 16:55You know, in the same way that if you see somebody who's like
- 16:58brooding and all pissed off over here, you kind of stay away from
- 17:01them. So they're organizing their
- 17:03world in a way. OK, so, so let's say that like
- 17:07the attributes, feelings that I have in my body are showing up
- 17:11in my expressions, which is creating a, a world around me.
- 17:15Is there going to be a future where are they're not predicting
- 17:19your move in a browser or anything else, but rather
- 17:21they're, they're taking your vital signs.
- 17:23It's gonna know better than you do if your blood pressure's up,
- 17:26if you have a bit of a fever, if you're tearing up, if your
- 17:30pheromones are producing more. And so it will be able to Orient
- 17:33things for you to, to create a feeling of whatever that may be
- 17:39for you, you know? Yes, yes there.
- 17:42I absolutely think that we're going to see that in the future.
- 17:46I think it's a tricky problem to solve.
- 17:49Specifically that part about like the blood pressure and
- 17:52these vital signs that might be Apple's job, you know, or some
- 17:56hardware company because they have the Apple Watch, right And
- 17:59then, you know, all of a sudden series like, oh, hey, Ryan, I
- 18:02note that you're feeling a bit stressed.
- 18:04Is it due to this e-mail you just got or something like that?
- 18:07You know, and then and then it could help you, but I, I think
- 18:10like, yeah, in not too long inside Strawberry browser, you
- 18:15know, you're going to be in a meeting with your companions and
- 18:18you're, you're, you know, you kind of express yourself with
- 18:21the facial expressions. You didn't seem more tense.
- 18:24You're like giving short answers.
- 18:27And you know, all of a sudden one of your companions like, hey
- 18:29Ryan, you feel a bit tense. You know what's going on, what's
- 18:34happened? And and you're like, oh shit,
- 18:36this thing happened, you know, and then and then and and then
- 18:39that that could lead to resolving some kind of issue,
- 18:43right. So, so I definitely see this as
- 18:46future, yeah. Or like neural linked.
- 18:50Totally. You have a tough call, You have
- 18:53a tough meeting. You're feeling bad.
- 18:55Lunchtime, someone knocks on your door.
- 18:56You're like, did you? Did my companion order me
- 18:59flowers? What a thoughtful gesture you.
- 19:06Know Oh my God, you just gave me such a good idea right there.
- 19:09I I'm writing that down right now, man.
- 19:11Oh my goodness. Cool.
- 19:15Let's let's go through that. Let's get out of science fiction
- 19:17land for a second here and talk about the other use cases that
- 19:20you're really excited for. I mean, inside the inbox, huge.
- 19:24Inside the calendar, huge. Be scraping data in like pulling
- 19:28potent information off LinkedIn, huge.
- 19:31What else is like really exciting you about Strawberry
- 19:33right now? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a lot
- 19:37about those ad hoc moments as well, right.
- 19:39So say that you're a developer or a vibe coder, that's fine.
- 19:43I'm not judging. And you're inside some kind of
- 19:46documentation, right? And you're really having a hard
- 19:49time finding like, oh, where do I find my API key?
- 19:52Like where do I create an API key in this platform?
- 19:55So then you will just open the sidebar and you will ask your
- 19:59companion, hey, can you see where, where I can find the API
- 20:02key? And you know, it could be some
- 20:03link obscure far down on the page that you need to Click to
- 20:06get there. And your companion will just
- 20:09point that out and oh, OK, thank you.
- 20:12And you'll pick that you know these small moments.
- 20:16These micro frictions that get resolved, they don't seem
- 20:20significant, but they compound over time and it just feels like
- 20:25you can stay in the flow for the entire day when you have these
- 20:29moments, right. That would definitely be one
- 20:35another thing that would. Real quick, I'm just thinking
- 20:39about my problems right now. Yeah, so.
- 20:43I'm kind of a data hoarder, let's call it that.
- 20:45So like for example, like I got, I have probably 75 different
- 20:50links just short linked on my browser, you know, so I can go
- 20:55there and I know I got to go through them and get rid of
- 20:57stuff that I haven't, you know, looked at in a while.
- 21:01But if I could be like, hey browser Billy, like just if
- 21:05there has been a link in my bookmark bar that I haven't used
- 21:09in three months, get rid of it and just have it go like.
- 21:14Yes, yes. I mean, yes, yes, yes, this.
- 21:21Of course, your companions should be able to control the
- 21:24websites, click around and ultimate things on websites, but
- 21:28they should be able to do the same with the actual browser,
- 21:30right? So, so that definitely it should
- 21:33be able to ultimate things inside the browser.
- 21:35But say that you want to have your browser in the style of
- 21:41Terraria or Minecraft or like I want the Tamagotchi themed
- 21:45browser. You know, of course, one of your
- 21:49companions could just start editing the styling code inside
- 21:53of the actual browser and all of a sudden, boom, you have a
- 21:56completely customized browser that suits your needs.
- 22:01Oh, actually, I wanted the tabs as a sidebar, right?
- 22:04Or, you know, could you make the tabs fly around like small
- 22:08airplanes? Did you like vibe coding the
- 22:10entire browser experience, right?
- 22:13And this is like far down the road map, right?
- 22:16But it's just an example of what we can do.
- 22:19It's great, you know, and it's, it's really Sky's the limit.
- 22:22What it takes is like integration and I'm curious
- 22:24about you and how you're integrating AI tools into your
- 22:27life. This weekend was kind of
- 22:28interesting. I went to a developer and
- 22:31they're building properties and my wife and I were just going to
- 22:33check it out. And so we had some, some
- 22:36questions with the agent, you know, and so my wife's asking a
- 22:39couple of really good questions, very specific.
- 22:41And she, the agent was like, well, if you go to the website
- 22:45and we'll look for it, she started looking, I just typed it
- 22:48into GPT and I was like, oh, no, the answer is 18%, you know, So
- 22:53like for me, I'm trying to figure out every instance I can
- 22:56possibly use this to make my experience and everything I'm
- 22:59doing better. How about you?
- 23:01How are you kind of implementing different AI tools in kind of
- 23:04your daily life? Hey founders, let me ask you
- 23:08this. Are you building with AI or
- 23:11getting left behind by it? If you're serious about scaling
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- 24:04think bolder with AI for Founders.
- 24:07Now back to the show. Well, I mean, I would be a
- 24:09massive fraud if I didn't say that I of course use Strawberry
- 24:14every single day, right? That's that's my favorite AI
- 24:18tool, but I'm I'm biased, right? I'm biased.
- 24:21No, it's second second most used AI tool, absolutely critical and
- 24:27has saved me hundreds of hours, if not thousands at this point.
- 24:32It's cursor and I am a developer.
- 24:36I've been programming professionally for six years and
- 24:42you know, in the beginning I was like, this is kind of like VS
- 24:46Codes, but it doesn't have everything I want.
- 24:49So I was skeptical. But I, I, I promise you, man, we
- 24:53have become maybe 3 * 4 times as productive just because the
- 24:58entire team is using cursor and there are ways to use cursor
- 25:02effectively. You need to know how to do that
- 25:04all. Right, any any quick tips for
- 25:06folks that are new to cursor? I mean, it's generally like you
- 25:11should have good coding practices.
- 25:13So if you vibe code the entire thing, that might be tricky.
- 25:17But if you learn the basics about like how can you create
- 25:20encapsulated code that has like single responsibility this this
- 25:25types of things. You can have like 1 file that is
- 25:28completely vibe coded that you don't fully understand maybe.
- 25:33But it it has, you know, its own isolated world.
- 25:37And then one day, if you ever need to optimize it or really
- 25:40understand how it works, you can rewrite it with minimal effort,
- 25:44Right? And then, I mean, after a while,
- 25:48you just get an intuition, I would say, by using it a lot for
- 25:52what the models are capable of, what they're not capable of.
- 25:55You can kind of see when a model starts writing if it understands
- 26:00what the, what the prompt was, right?
- 26:03Did you? Used a little bit, yeah.
- 26:05Yep. Yeah, yeah, cool.
- 26:11You know, these strawberry companions ultimately are
- 26:14solving a problem. If you were to put a bow on it,
- 26:17what problem is Strawberry solving?
- 26:21Yeah. So right now, the main problem
- 26:26that we're solving, it's kind of this abstract thing where it's
- 26:29like you have all of these like World Gardens with loads of
- 26:36amazing data. LinkedIn would of course be one
- 26:38example, which would be tricky for a normal agent to kind of
- 26:42access. But since we're in the browser,
- 26:45all you need to do is you need to log in to LinkedIn and then
- 26:47your agents will be able to access that via their own tabs,
- 26:50right? So you're taking this valuable
- 26:53data from World Gardens could be a dashboard, and you're
- 26:56structuring it with the help of the AI system.
- 26:58So it's just looking at the page information and it's outputting
- 27:02it in a structured way. And then finally that you you
- 27:06would insert that into some service like a Google Sheet or
- 27:10some other CRM, right? That's kind of the thing that
- 27:15we're the best at right now, that is saving our users the
- 27:18most time. Yeah, it's given.
- 27:21So it's giving people ease. So you're like, I don't want to
- 27:24look at the LinkedIn page like this.
- 27:26I want to see it itemized on a spreadsheet.
- 27:28Boom, done. Ease.
- 27:31It's like, yeah, totally removing groundwork.
- 27:35You you don't you shouldn't be looking for hundreds of people
- 27:39in your connections tab, for instance, because you you don't
- 27:43want to accept salespeople, but Co founders.
- 27:46You want to accept, you know, you can just easily create the
- 27:49companion, teach one. Hey, every week, every Monday,
- 27:53go for all of my connections and you know the criteria.
- 27:56So just do it please. Yeah, love it.
- 27:59Cool. You guys just launched pretty
- 28:01recently, still in a personal beta.
- 28:04How have you financed the project so far?
- 28:08Yes. So we have actually taken in the
- 28:10precede round from a Tier 1 investor here in in Europe
- 28:16actually and and a few smaller investors in the US as well.
- 28:21And that has been the, the main way we have funded things so far
- 28:26like computation costs. But otherwise we've been really
- 28:31lean. And the, the plan is actually to
- 28:34move to San Francisco. So we are a Delaware C Corp.
- 28:37We are moving to, to SF. That's the place to be right
- 28:41when you're building cutting edge.
- 28:42Oh. Denver, you got to come to
- 28:44Denver. We got a, we got a nice squad
- 28:46here. I will definitely come and
- 28:50visit. I would love to do that, but
- 28:52it's cold. It's cold.
- 28:53It's like Sweden. Yeah, and guess what?
- 28:57I don't like that. I'm trying to move for a reason.
- 29:00Nice. How much have you raised so far
- 29:02to date? So I, I, I would actually prefer
- 29:08maybe not to speak about it right now.
- 29:09We still have not announced that yet.
- 29:12No problem. Oh, I see that Anton Osika is
- 29:16actually calling me right now. Let me say, can't speak.
- 29:21Can't. Can I call in 30 minutes?
- 29:25Get the Strawberry CEO sing him. Sing him a song.
- 29:29Yeah, yeah, I actually had a demo for Anton the other day
- 29:34where I I told my companion Laura, go to Anton's page, do
- 29:38some deep research about him, and then write a lullaby about
- 29:42everything we know about him and send it to him.
- 29:44Beautiful. I love it.
- 29:46How many people are on the team? So right now we are four people
- 29:51and we're looking to have like this, a team of seven.
- 29:54So pretty Lynn, until we until we start seeing some very clear
- 30:00signs of product market fits, you know, having like 100 users
- 30:04who use it every single day and saving many, many hours at that
- 30:08point, we will definitely look at scaling up more, scaling up
- 30:11faster. Awesome, cool.
- 30:14How many customers do you have right now using it?
- 30:18Yeah, so I mean, we just launched so like I would say we
- 30:22have a few 100 users, but they're they're mostly on the
- 30:26the fridge tier, right. Yeah, but definitely got some
- 30:31some teams looking at buying a teams plan.
- 30:33We have one large Co working space here in Stockholm that
- 30:36want to buy licenses for all of their companies.
- 30:39So super exciting times. It's great.
- 30:43And as you're looking at a business model, it's kind of a
- 30:45SAS seat model. It looks like you're going for
- 30:47and with usage. How are you kind of structuring
- 30:50the business model like in kind of a precede stage?
- 30:55Yeah, so it's kind of copy pasting what cursor have.
- 30:59Right now you have the, the, the, the, the free tier that's
- 31:04super generous. So people can try it out and
- 31:07really test everything. And then, you know, the
- 31:10personal, personal tier for $20. We'll see if we land on that or
- 31:15change that. And then $40.00 for the team's
- 31:18plan. And the team's plan will of
- 31:21course have some some extra nice features, goes without saying,
- 31:26but just having unified billing is is a big one.
- 31:29Absolutely. Nice.
- 31:32You mentioned you've been writing code for six years.
- 31:36What? Talk to us about your
- 31:38entrepreneurial journey. Have you had companies in the
- 31:41past and how does that tie into what you're doing now?
- 31:45Yeah. Absolutely.
- 31:46I mean, I started coding when I was 11, so I've been
- 31:48professionally coding for six years, but it started way, way
- 31:52earlier. And you know, back then it was
- 31:54just creating video games and different apps for the iPhone.
- 31:58Things like that. Got serious.
- 32:01Actually built my first AI agents back in 2019.
- 32:04And that was actually an ecosystem simulator.
- 32:07She had these small microorganisms that had simple
- 32:11feed for feed for would neural Nets and they would evolve over
- 32:16time to kind of attack each other and and have herd
- 32:19behaviors. Managed to win like a
- 32:23international science competition with that which is
- 32:26pretty insane. Wow, did you really?
- 32:28Then felt yes I won like one of the largest in the world.
- 32:33I think they're 10,000,010 million participants each year
- 32:37so it's in China. Cool.
- 32:41And yeah, and I have no idea how I managed to win that because
- 32:46there were way more impressive projects, man.
- 32:48Like what 1 Turkish girl had had managed to find a way to detect
- 32:53if you're more prone for depression through using quantum
- 32:56mechanical analysis on the blog. That's cool.
- 33:02I know, man. Yeah.
- 33:05But I think the project was just really creative, right?
- 33:09And and I had this thing going where, you know, I had the AI
- 33:13aspect where I had programmed, of course, the brains of each
- 33:18agent, each Organism. So when a biology jury came up,
- 33:21I would only talk about the AI part.
- 33:24But then when an AI jury came up, I would only talk about the
- 33:27biology part. So I would leverage the things
- 33:30that they didn't know that that well.
- 33:32And they, they were always super impressed.
- 33:36Anyways, Fast forward after that felt, you know, I don't, I don't
- 33:39need to do university. I can just, I, I, I felt like I
- 33:42was on top of the world, right? So founded a green tech company,
- 33:46which I was the CTO for. We actually ended up being
- 33:51acquired by customer. So they bought the IP there and
- 33:56then after that worked on a video game actually.
- 33:58So built a video game company, released a few games.
- 34:02The most popular one was a game called Fish Arts, which is a PvP
- 34:07multiplayer game where you play as a fish wizard, you shoot
- 34:10spells at each other with your friends.
- 34:15And then after that, did some consulting for the Swedish
- 34:18government. You can kind of hear that I've
- 34:19been all over the place finally now about two years ago, I
- 34:24guess. Yeah, almost two years ago, GPT
- 34:284 API drops. Played around with that, did
- 34:32some consulting work, realized that hey, I want my agents to be
- 34:36able to go into LinkedIn and do things right.
- 34:39And for that, since there was no good API, you'd have to spin up
- 34:42a browser and and maintain all of the things related to the
- 34:46browser. So essentially built ASDK that
- 34:51developers could use to build web agents and then that
- 34:54eventually evolved into a more complex version of that initial
- 34:59project. And then eventually evolved into
- 35:03what you said today, which is not a technical product, but
- 35:07still has the vision to build this Internet with web agents
- 35:12communicating and alternating things.
- 35:14But we're we're kind of making it accessible for non-technical
- 35:17users as well. Incredible.
- 35:19How old are you? 24. 24 Unbelievable married You
- 35:26got kids. No, no, nothing like that.
- 35:30Nothing like that. Awesome.
- 35:32When you're thinking about going to San Francisco, obviously
- 35:37there's a community there that's waiting for you.
- 35:40But aside from that, what are the benefits of being in San
- 35:42Francisco or America as it as it relates to Sweden?
- 35:47Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, Stockholm is
- 35:50kind of touted as the Silicon Valley of Europe, but you know,
- 35:56it, it still pales in comparison to the energy and the the, the
- 36:03kind of knowledge flying around in San Francisco.
- 36:05You have all of the great partnerships.
- 36:07You're way closer to all of the great partnerships with all
- 36:10kinds of amazing companies. You know, and all of the world's
- 36:14largest companies are sending their product managers to San
- 36:17Francisco to figure out their AI strategy.
- 36:20And, you know, the best talent that is the most bleeding edge
- 36:25within the space. They're all in San Francisco.
- 36:28Like all of my best Swedish founder friends are in San
- 36:32Francisco for this reason. And, you know, the capital
- 36:36market is maybe maybe comparable for early stage, but medium and
- 36:42late stage, you know, it's completely different.
- 36:45Yeah. So yeah, these are just a few of
- 36:48the reasons to be honest. No, it makes sense.
- 36:51I don't do politics on the show, but Trump's selling green cards
- 36:55for 5,000,000 bucks. You think it's a good deal?
- 37:01I think it's just easier to get the normal lawyer and do it.
- 37:04I think that's going to be way cheaper as well.
- 37:06So I mean, maybe that one is good for people that usually
- 37:11could not legally get get one or just want to do it really fast.
- 37:15I, I, I, I don't know. I don't know.
- 37:18Cool, where can people connect with you best online?
- 37:23I would say probably LinkedIn and X right now.
- 37:28Got it. Cool man.
- 37:30When you are raising your next round, will you send me a deck?
- 37:35Of course, of course I will do that.
- 37:38Yeah, this is, this is really exciting.
- 37:41And now Anton is calling again here, yeah.
- 37:44We can wrap absolutely and tip for those calls.
- 37:46Bye. Yeah, yeah, that would be nice
- 37:50actually. That's good to get some good
- 37:52advice from him. Cool, Charles, thank you so
- 37:54much. Have a wonderful day.
- 37:57Thank you. Bye.
- 37:57Bye. So let's talk about podcasts for
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