The future of software is software doing work on your behalf. If you think about the work that we do, we're doing this work in a web browser. I go to this website. I check the information. I do something with it. In the future, software is going to have like a button. You're going to press that button and it's going to go out and use other software for you. It's a gentic. You hear a lot of talk about like AI agents and stuff, right? But what that really is is just smarter software that can use other pieces of software. Is that a definition of AI agent? I would say my definition of AI agent. I'm not

even say the word AI. Like it's so controversial, right? Like my definition of like agents is like

software that uses other software. That's that's agentic. And if software is using other software,

guess what? A lot of software

lives within a web browser on websites. So the thing about browser base is like there are so many

different use cases. Literally anything you can do on the internet, you can automate with

browser because it's a web browser that's controlled by an LLM that's going to click buttons,

go to pages, fill out forms just like you would.

Welcome to the Peel. I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. Today's guest

is Paul Klein, founder and CEO of Browser Base, building infrastructure for AI browsers.

Here's the sheet code, use a real web browser.

Our conversation gets into the future of software and AI agents and why he didn't want to start

another company.

I think that you should do a startup as a last resort.

We talked to why authentication is a huge problem in AI, how the best infrastructure companies

become product companies, and the memo he wrote that convinced him to build browser base.

And by like the 50th conversation, it became abundantly clear that there was a need for

headless browser infrastructure.

A year ago, Paul was a relatively unknown commodity who didn't want to start another company,

and definitely did not want to raise venture capital again.

He shares how he went from zero to raising 27 million in nine months, in his words, as a non-famous person. You're supposed to never talk to VCs. Talking to VCs is like talking to the cops. Talking to the cops. He's like, they're going to pull out their little notepad and everything you say is going to the record. I have a rap sheet, I guess, because I'll talk to, I'll talk whole palli-tier database. Yeah, on Paul's opinions. I love this conversation with Paul. He's currently in the arena, sharing lessons as he's processing them, like what he thinks will unlock better AI agents, why you should like your own tweets, and how browser base competes with incumbents. Customs support is our biggest differentiator. Before we talk to Paul, a thank you to Zach Hargett, Alana Goyle, Jack McClelland, Rahul Sunwalker, Chris Plasick, Jason, and Anarood at BrowserBase, and prior guest to the show Joseph Nelson for introducing us. A reminder, I publish from episodes of the Peel every week exploring the world's greatest startup stories,

just like this one.

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