Hello, hello. Rollercoaster, roller, roller, rollercoaster of a week that that was. So it started last Friday. Of course, I was out at a dear college friend's wedding, our head of security. was out on vacation. Hirsch, my co-founder and our CTO, was gearing up to go to the hospital for his wife to be induced with their first child. And in that moment, of course, of course,
One of the kind of biggest incidents in the company's life happened. And what was so interesting about it is it actually wasn't an incident. There was this security vulnerability that was revealed to us about a month ago. We fixed it within 24 hours. No ARC members were impacted. life moved on and then for a bunch of reasons it bubbled up last week we handled it poorly we learned a lot from it it's behind us now but it exploded on this day where we were all
MIA. So there'd be just seminal moments in our company's history that I will never forget. One of them being when our money in our bank. count evaporated thanks to Silicon Valley bank imploding. That was a moment. Last Friday was a moment too. And as not fun as they are and as intense as they are.
in the moment you are living them in retrospect there's a lot of pride that comes in these in these crisis moments because you just you see the team that you've assembled and you see the way they've rallied and you're challenged in new ways and you have that feeling after this like hard fought learning and progress. So I don't want to glorify it. I've never experienced that before. Kind of don't want to experience it again, but I feel better for it and grateful for it. So
All to say was somewhat of a distracting and clarifying few days, but I'm glad we're through it and grateful for the team's help along the way. But what it distracted from is what's top of mind right now, which is I'm sitting down on the, you know, hopefully third.
rev of the first draft of a vision document for arc 2.0 so this episode 10 is kind of bringing us all the way back around to episode one which is after what is now 10 weeks of prototyping and mind wandering and experimentation user research and podcasting and everything comes in between pen to paper articulating to our team and then hopefully eventually you what is our vision for this 2.0 product where are we going how do we want it to feel why is that valuable why is that unique
Why can only we do it? Why do we want to do it? And it's, you know, these sort of vision documents, I will be honest, are hard for me. And they're hard for me in a surprising way because... I'm a dreamer. And if you've listened to this podcast this far, you probably know that I am a weird dreamer. So it's not that I don't like thinking about the future. It's actually probably one of the most fun parts and most rewarding parts of this job for me.
But the purpose of a vision doc isn't really for you. It's for the people that you work with that need... a guidepost that need inspiration, that need clarity about the work that they do every day and why they show up and why we're all here and how that translates down into the decisions we make. And so our team, 10 weeks in, tried a bunch of things. Some things feel great. Some things don't.
But more, it's just like we need clarity. And what is tricky about the idea of a vision doc, which is really about the big picture and the multi-year time horizon, is we also have this deeply felt... value of assuming you don't know. And so this culture of none of us have any idea. We're going to figure it out as we go along. Doesn't.
necessarily jive with this idea of like, we're going to write this seminal document that is going to tell you what the future looks like and has all the answers. So it's just this really interesting. encapsulation of both parts of my and our personality collective personality which is we are dreamers we aspire to something concrete and we actually want to be even more concrete than we are today about what it is we're aspiring to but on the other hand
We sort of don't buy that anyone can predict the future or knows the right answers, and we're going to figure it out along the way. And so how you write a clarifying, comforting... vision document for a group of people who believe that can be tricky, including for myself. But at the end of the day, I think I've learned the lesson the hard way of it's better to have clarity even if that clarity changes than it is to just say, well,
we have no idea. So let's just take it day by day. So, you know, it's challenging, but I've, I deeply believe it now, even if it's hard to pick the exact diction for when, when pen hits paper. The other interesting dynamic with it is we're writing this vision document with almost five years of learnings. And so...
You know, when you got a blank page mentality, when you're really dreaming up, like, what do we want the world to feel like on Tuesday at 3 p.m. in five years on your laptop? If we're successful, you really want to take a blank page. Just almost you're writing up.
fictional novel like what does the world look like but at the same time we have five years of like hard-fought lessons and things that worked really well and things that didn't and so you also don't want to be like totally naive and ignore those lessons while also recursively being like, okay, but if a company was starting out today with this prompt,
ignorance can be bliss and like the world's changed a lot in those last five years. So anyways, you can see me even swirling this answer to you. I'm doing so intentionally to try to capture this feeling of do not get me wrong. I get paid to open my computer and write on a digital piece of paper my hopes, wishes, and desires for how computing works in the future. And I'm doing my job if I do that. That's very cool. I don't take it for granted.
deeply believing in we have no idea we're going to prototype and figure it out And now having five years of learnings about like what the reality is on the ground of this technology, it can sometimes pull you out of dreamer mode and try my best to like pull me back up. So it's my intention, our intention to actually like share this vision document with you all.
soon as possible in the same vein as the first youtube video we ever published was a video called internet computer which effectively was the vision for arc 1.0 in many senses for arc 2.0 but we'll do our best to share it with you which is a good transition to say bittersweet news. This is going to be the last podcast episode, at least for some time. We're 10 episodes in. It just kind of felt like a natural moment to like pause and say, how'd that go?
And I'd say from selfishly, I am so thrilled that we did this. I hope it wasn't too self-indulgent, but it's been very therapeutic and energizing to have this kind of natural check-in point every week to talk to all of you about. what's going on in the world of the browser company and Arc 2.0. But in many sense, I feel like it served its purpose. When we had the idea for this podcast, it was the beginning of summer and we were setting off, setting course on Arc 2.0.
In many ways, talking was a way to think through what we were experiencing live together with all of you. And in the grand scheme of things, we're still at the very beginning of our journey on Arc 2.0. But you know what? We got a thing. I think it's time to stop talking and start shipping, right? And like start showing. And so almost symbolically, I want to like pack up for a minute on this podcast and focus on it as quickly as possible.
getting you the product in your hands, getting the vision in your hands, getting it all in your hands to get all of your thoughts. My wife actually, Valerie, she pulled me aside tonight in the context of something totally different, but related to paraphrasing. Summer is over. The fall leaves are falling. We've moved to New York. That move is slowly going in the rearview mirror, even though we're missing from furniture. You did this Wyoming retreat with the founders.
Time to dig in, time to get back to buckle up, right? Like these, these are the months that's fall and winter. This is what you've been talking about. Time to go. And that energy is right. And so I am grateful for these 10 episodes, these 10 weeks with all of you. I'm sure we will be back to you on this podcast with more in the future. But for now, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you so much for tuning in for all of your emails to me and the team. It has been deeply energizing. And next time you hear from us, it will be with something concrete about this 2.0 product. We can't wait for you to try.
So don't be a stranger. JoshM at TheBrowser.com if you want to get in touch from now until then. And expect in the future, by the way, like the other reason it felt time to move on from this podcast is I've always really believed in championing and celebrating our team. It's not about me.
It's about all of the people together on this team that do work. That's why, whether it's on Twitter or YouTube videos in this podcast, always try our best to shout out the individuals on the team that are really making the things. And so something about me...
personally getting on this podcast and talking to you every week and like not giving a voice and space and platform to the other individuals of the team also didn't feel right. So this podcast will live on in spirit in some way, but expect whatever comes to you next to be. a lot more showing versus telling a lot more voices and faces on our team and also like
It's going to be fun. It's about to be a new chapter beginning, and I can't wait. So I want to end with an email that felt really fitting from Celine. Celine is a student at NYU, also here in New York. I'm just going to read two fragment sentences she wrote to me. Celine said, just wanted to say that listening to you and watching the browser company's content is able to evoke a feeling I don't feel for many teams.
which is an authentic passion and belief in your own product. She ends by saying, it's inspired me to want to bring my ideas to life. And while I don't know how, I hope to have your passion and resilience in bringing them to life. Celine. Thank you. It feels like a very fitting, fitting note to end on and your sign off, especially a huge, huge thank you for bringing your why to your life. I appreciate you.
I really appreciate you. It's not always easy. There's some weeks that are harder than others, but I feel very lucky that I and we get to do what we do. And I'm really glad it touched you in some small way. So we're going to see you on the internet. Uh, it's going to be a great rest of the year and, uh, I am nervous and so damn excited to show you what we've been working on. So more on the internet more soon. Take care.