Magnus Müller, browser-use: ClawdBot, hammock-nomad life, Claude Code and the agentic browser revolution

Welcome to another YC wisdom podcast with Magnus Mueller with us today. He's the founder of browser use YC Winter 25 batch. Interesting guy traveled the world uh machine learning engineer would guess also in research.

So we're going to talk about his startups, his background, everything he did. Uh Magnus Mag, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're up to.

[snorts] >> Hi. Yeah, one year ago we found a Prozio got into YC. I don't know what what do you want to know?

I grew up in a very tiny town in the south of Germany. 500 people, 5,000 cows and [laughter] there was not not much out there. I worked in a cheese factory and studied studied cognitive science.

That's the best study program out there. You can learn from I don't know from tracks or neurobiology or philosophy to AI you just learn everything and yeah I got very very addicted to automate stuff on my laptop to to build automation scripts but it always takes so much time to build them. So last year me and Craig we sat together and thought how can we combine those two fields like AI and browser automation so that you can just tell your computer what it should do and actually does it for you and so we built small prototype push it to hacker news youth and it took off.

>> Very nice. Um who are your parents cuz you said small town small town 500 people but I guess they very much valued your education and they injected curiosity in you. Yeah, [snorts] my father builds aircraft.

He's like a measurement engineer. Um, my mother, she she is more on the social side. She always encouraged me to do like volunteering, so to work in a kindergarten or to to try Yeah.

It's not a typical mom who who tries Did you become a doctor or something? She was more the opposite. Hey, Magnus, maybe you would like to be a kindergartener or something like this.

Interesting. And then yeah, you said you got addicted to automating stuff on your laptop. I guess that's pretty uh unique addiction.

I mean, at that age, I was addicted to money, I guess, right? Like building companies that could bring up fast money. I don't think I ever gave a [ __ ] about automation back then.

It was just like how can I produce money fast, right? That was my priority to gain my financial independence. How did you get addicted to that?

>> H [clears throat] a friend of mine, he designed 5,000 t-shirt designs to sell them online and my job was to upload them online. But I I hate repetitive work. I hate to go there, fill out the same form over and over again.

So I start to Google, okay, how can I automate this? And the first thing which would suggest you is, oh, you can use this macro recorder which records your mouse movement and then you can press play. But yeah, if the website changes a little bit, it breaks, right?

So over time, I learned, oh, you can even use Python, Selenium, like those Python libraries to automate those things. But yeah, it's just a pain if you if you teach it yourself to to start automating with them, >> right? H yeah, I can see that.

And my first serious company, I think, was a neutropic. So that would have been valuable for all the e-commerce pages we we had to do in all the images and all the variances uh of that. Um you travel the world 2021.

Uh I was a nomad also during these years. I think I stopped when around the time you started. I started in 2017 and stopped around after COVID, right?

Because we couldn't travel anymore. It was like they just locked the borders on us. Why did you uh start traveling?

Where where does did the nomad uh desire came from? >> This was actually during co like in in Europe they shut uh things down. I was in in university my bachelor and everything was online and I thought okay why should I stay here like I could go to Mexico and it would be much nicer much cheaper and I could still do everything remote and at that that time I was in a relationship and yeah I felt I felt very very very stuck stuck in life at at that point they went over summer to this to the seminar it was like about neural linguistic programming, okay, NLP thing where they were just the weirdest and craziest people you can you can imagine from all sorts of life.

and they just showed me how much more there is to life and that there's there's a world out there which is worth to be explored and this creates some I thought in myself I don't know sometimes you just feel it in your heart right that you that you need to go out and it's just a curiosity which then I I just booked a oneway plane to Mexico and [clears throat] traveled around and beginning Airbnb to Airbnb but then one night There was in this hostel in a bonfire. There were like people from all countries around the bonfire. And there was a Spanish guy who was telling a story how he is hitchhiking around the world.

How he takes off from his lawyer job to hitchhike around the world. And there again I felt this in my heart that I don't know it just beats fast and you feel you heard those stories you know but it would be incredible to experience them yourself. And I just thought okay I have to join this guy.

And so we decided to hitch back together around the world. >> Huh. Interesting.

And you said you slept in hammocks. Uh so yeah, how tell me the logistics of that. Didn't Weren't you afraid to get your [ __ ] stolen?

The mosquitoes. Uh yeah, tell me about that. >> It actually teach you a lot about startups is that you learn to accept the worst case scenario.

So, in the morning you say 9:00 a.m. you say, "Okay, let's hit the road. Let's hitch south." Okay, one direction always south.

South Mexico, always south. This guy, he wanted to go on to Argentina. Okay.

And [laughter] and so we Yeah, we hit a road. We had tents and hammocks and you know, we always thought, okay, you always struggle, okay, will someone will pick you up? Where will you sleep?

What will you eat? But there's always this thought. Okay, if no one will pick me up now, what's the worst case?

Oh, over there are some trees. We'll just sleep there. And then you accept this.

Okay, this is the worst case that we will sleep here next to this gas station. And you say, okay, it's not too bad. And then from there, you just started checking and it always ends up well.

Like we did this for many months and it it worked out great. So, how much time did you slept in a namk in some random places? And what were some fun funny ass story now that you can look back at them?

>> This is the crazy thing like in one single day you experience more than others in like an entire year because you just interact so much with people and your your brain is in such a state which >> is it just doesn't know what happened. So it's hyperactive and and just everything directly gets like frozen into your long-term memory and yeah we we were around like hitchhiking three months in Central America then I did some internships machine learning internships then we hitchhiked again three months through Middle East like more Iran and and that region and then we I did again internship machine learning internships and we and on on this route I introduced more and more people to hitchhiking So I took my sister with me or or friends, other researchers, for example, Singapore. I did some some work.

I introduced them to hitchhiking and we hitchhike together from Singapore up north to in direction in Thailand. And people people love it a lot. It's a great way to to meet people.

>> And hitchhiking um I guess has a bad rep, right? Like with I don't know the serial killers and all that [ __ ] Like didn't you get into hurdles with that or were people just nice with you around the world and were like, "Hey, why not pick up this kid, have a nice uh conversation partner while I ride down there?" >> It's actually a great filter hitchhiking because if you hitchhike, like only people who are up for the adventure or who are very friendly take you. You know, normally people who hate you, they don't take you because they don't like you, right?

So, it's an awesome filter for for people. In terms of bad rep, I think your human instinct is incredible, right? Like you're in a fuel station and you just feel, okay, do I like this guy?

Do I not do I want to go with him or not? Like your human instinct is incredible. So, I've never had any I mean I I've of course had many weird situations with people, but I've never felt like an like >> and like a technical guy.

[laughter] >> Yeah, I know that. Thanks for mentioning um a technical guy like you, why not use blah blah car, you know, or have a systems behind it and why not try to build an app on the back of that concept. >> I use blahla car a bit, but I would say it's more adventurous.

You know, it's so much more like in Braa, you select, okay, this city to this city, and it works, but it's much less boring than going through Central America, sitting in the back of a pickup, having like your friends around you, listening to music, and then you go by like thousands of banana plantages, and I don't know, and then the people with with camels on back of their pickups. I don't know. It's just so so random.

And your like your brain is so much more like a life and in the moment than if you would have something where you know exactly the outcome. >> Yeah, I love that. Makes me envious because my nomad journey was more on the luxury side of things and less adventure adventurous.

It was like long-term stays on Airbnb, right? And I always wanted the best Airbnb with the best view. Um, don't you miss that adventure nowadays that you're more stable right now?

How do you bring that up to yourself nowadays as a more stable uh foot on the ground guy? >> Yeah, it's a very hard question. I I think there a the question is how can you bring adventure into your everyday life?

How can you make your daily meeting adventurous? How can you make your interactions? How can you make those tasks in your linear dashboard adventurous for you?

And it's definitely harder, but because in a startup there just it's similar. Okay, there are so many unexpected things happening. You get a lot of rejection.

You have not a lot of control. You have one direction. It's very very similar to hitchhiking.

My question was more maybe like live a somewhat normal life during the weekdays and then just like on Friday just take your hammock and go in the SF mountains or whatever. Uh do you still do some of that? [snorts] >> I I can my life it's more I go fully in on one one thing like for many months and then I go fully in traveling for some some months.

So it's not like I'm not I don't like to split like in the week I like to just work like just focus my entire brain on this and then after some time yeah maybe I mean for sure there will be one point in my life a point where I will do many new adventures again. >> But do you think this is startup compatible? Are you saying like having an exit in like less than a year or like if I'd be an investor and knowing that I'd be like [ __ ] I wouldn't never invest in that guy knowing he'll just bounce after like a year or two.

>> Ah no no no I don't I don't plan this at all. I also don't plan exit in the in the next year. >> How would you describe your personality?

Granted that you're like a weird mix that loves to go on adventure but al also can focus. I I believe these are rare traits to exist in one person's brain. [snorts] >> H maybe it's just curiosity something.

I don't know. >> What does a day in your life look like nowadays? Are you crunching like 16 hours like pure code?

Like what's your role in the company? M right now I do less coding. I'm more co right now.

We're now eight people. And so this morning I wake up or okay this day started. I don't know.

We went to bed at like 3:00. We're like coding in the night fixing stuff. But normally it's okay waking up Hubberman start getting some sunlight.

Then we have a daily war room at 9:00 a.m. where where our team comes together and we have to do it. Everyone gets one goal for the day.

Okay. And if they don't complete this goal, all others have to do push-ups. Okay.

So, for examp I thought you'd say all the others needed to help them to complete that like do push-ups. [laughter] >> No, for three people don't manage to achieve their goal, then we have to do 60 push-ups each of us. makes them adventure.

Okay. How you can bring this into your your company [snorts] >> I know it's like sometimes meetings sometimes I right now use a lot of cloud code. I use cloud code and say please analyze my retention in my database.

What which people run more than 100 prompts but struggled and then never came back. Oh, please draft them all a personalized email and send it out via Gmail MCP or the them emails or I say stuff like oh I don't like this conversion play on our website please fix it and merge. So it's like I'm a and but I don't type I I speak or whisper flow.

I have like 20 cloud code instances open. Then sometimes they events yesterday here the cloudbot driver for for CNSF. So I went to like a YC event.

Sometimes there other YC founders coming over to our hecker house. Then yeah speaking with customers fixing things for them. I would say it changes a lot the dayto-day, but it's nice.

>> Yeah, I like that. Hey, help me understand how can people only speak and stop typing? Like, you're not the first uh SF guy that I heard using Whisper Flow.

I could never get used to it. I love typing. It helps me think.

It helps me see my thoughts. >> Do you understand what I mean here? Don't then like what how how can you break that?

How does that make you more efficient? >> I see. So basically when you type, you like to see for example notion or something.

You like to see your thoughts in a structured way. >> Yeah, because else it's all in my head. I can also visualize stuff pretty quickly.

So I guess that could uh fix what I'm saying, but I love just seeing the words as I type them. Or is that just a habit? How does it help you?

How did you went from that the classic way to that way? And you feel it's a real productivity hack. >> Yeah, definitely.

Like for me typing feels like a bottleneck often like I for me I don't want to see my words. I want to see my output. For example, I want to I want to see um how I know website okay maybe the conversion flow is is ugly and I hate this phone button.

So I just I want to change that. That's my end result. So I say hey change that fix that.

But I don't care about the words which I type here. I don't even look at my words or I look I even send it without looking at it. I don't go back to the prompts or to the words.

I just look at the PR or at the website which is then changed and see if this is fixed or if I send emails like it helps me a lot with procrastination like if I get like tough emails for example which I procrastinate and I don't want to respond them. I get this a lot because it's it's for me I'm a coder right it's much much easier to get into the flow with coding than with like business stuff. So if I procrastinate on such tasks, I just tell God, hey, I procrastinate here.

Please help me. And even if it just formulates a draft and or like it already has them like in Gmail as a draft, um even if it's like not ideal and maybe I need to change something because it's like the first step, you know, people always said to overcome procrastination, you need to do the first step in this direction and this is for me the first step. just telling cloud what I need to do is like such an easy first step.

it does something and often it doesn't even matter that it's like the correct step but it's a step towards the goal and I say oh I don't like this be strange this and then I think oh I'm like 90% satisfied with this just sent you know and it yeah overcomes this fear of procrastination this pain >> huh interesting I tend to have fix that procrastination stuff years ago I would say except after supper when I have a lot of food digesting in my body. I feel my brain is uh a bit lazy and inefficient and I I fix that through various stuff like taking tease or just uh engaging in a 15 minutes session of Call of Duty which gives me cortisol and adrenaline. Um how do you manage being a technical guy and handling the business side, the CEO role?

Do you feel you're already good at the human side of things and making deals, taking decisions, or is that something you're still learning? I get better and better at this. Um I would say for me the shift was in October last year where I did like 90% coding to almost zero.

And this was super hard like I would say I down super hard to get into flow procrastination and so on. And now I would say I get better and better and just know what the impact is of my decision. what the impact is if I don't do the stuff like you you you just get more experience and see okay if you do this what will happen if you do this way what will happen and based on this I feel I get much much better and but yeah there there's many things to learn of course hi Joe >> yeah Joe's in love with Magnus um I'm in love with you too like you have a a very intriguing brain that I don't uh even get the often get the chance to dissect.

Um, what are very cool agentic flows that you have right now that I'd be like, "Oh [ __ ] this is intriguing and useful and efficient and makes me loads of money." >> So, for sure code for email. Okay. Gmail MCP super helpful.

Then code connected to your user database. analyzing task, analyzing retentions, fix, finding users who turn, finding users who struggle writing customized emails based on a task. Super helpful.

>> Why cloud code and not co-work? >> Um because I'm used to cloud code. I don't know if I've never tried co-work.

I think I guess it's the same. I guess it's it's the same. >> Yeah, very much.

[snorts] >> And then >> Okay, what else? Yeah, the browser agents they just become very very good right now. So you can run them like on your LinkedIn for example to say oh please find from my network find like the last 1,00 connections and see which of those are inside my ICP and then cluster them and to which should I reach out and draft me a message and then it says oh okay here are your drafts like some hours later then say okay please reach out to all of them.

So browser agents doing stuff in a browser for you, they get better and better. I would say often also for data analysis tasks like we for example have some workflows set up every day when someone goes to our GitHub and likes or stars or GitHub. Then every hour we have like a claw bot running who checks to and with brows your skill gets our recent stargazers and then gets their profile enrich them sees are they interesting to us like should we hire them should we maybe sell something to >> whoa >> and then >> that's cool >> and then it says oh this person's very interesting and pings us on Slack okay this person is interesting and I can even send them emails >> so that's cool >> yeah I like that >> or or I think for to hire these people have you raised something yet or >> we raised 17 million.

Yeah. >> Um >> 17. >> Yeah.

17. And so I I think one one flow which is also interesting is especially when you ask for making money is if you have for example power user let's say you have a power user who does like logistic automation. Okay.

You can just ask cloud code find similar companies like this. Okay. And then you say, "Oh, please find the head of AI for those." And it can just go, you know, and find like 50 similar companies for you.

And then you can say, "Oh, please draft them all a personalized message and send it out to them." You know, it's and stuff like this, which you always >> How fast does it does it, right? Because I do outreach as a service to me is like, uh, I have more efficient ways of doing that, but how fast does it send these emails? How good are these emails?

>> Yeah. M this is the thing you can just go over them. So >> but you have a high conversion rate it works for you.

So you >> so this is this is something which I started last week doing with with cloud code. So I can tell you a conversion rate next week. >> Okay.

Okay. >> But yeah it's just another task you know which I always procrastinated on and just gets so much easier to complete it. >> Yeah I love it dude.

What are your goals for this year? Uh where do you want to? >> Yeah, we want to be the default way.

>> We want to be the default way how AI interact with the browser. So everyone who has some AI agents running who should interact with the browser they should use browser use everywhere like an open claw in an agent browser in if people if enterprise want to automate flows inside the browser and run like millions of them for to download files to fill out forms to extract data to login somewhere to extract data behind we want to be the default way how people do this with browser agents. >> Okay.

Do you have to be technical to use your product? When will you have your own uh chipd like product? >> Yeah, we we have this already.

Um you don't have to be technical. >> Um you can yeah use it. That's actually the the cool thing.

You don't if you want to automate something in browser, you don't have to like write some code anymore. You can just prompt it and then if the website changes, the agent can just adopt and yeah, it's very robust. Okay, I love it.

Hey, last random question for you. You said Claudebot. How do you trust Claudebutt?

Like you installed this thing on your terminal can do like whatever it [ __ ] wants with your computer. Like why do you trust it? How did you vet these guys?

>> Yes. So we have it on a on a Mac Mini. Um so one important principle >> separate Mac Mini I hope.

>> Yeah. It's like it's like there are two components, right? The question is who can prompt your cloud code and what access does your cloud code have.

Okay. And I would say those are always in a bal in a balance. If it has like maximum access to all your emails to all your production data to all your I don't know all your data whatever then there should be like only like one person only you who can prompt it.

If you give it like restrictive access and you give it maybe no access browsing tool only like CHVt like functions then you can for example give it access access to your entire customer support that if someone from your customer support sends a ticket it just gets sent there it has like minimal access and can respond to them so that like the likelihood of someone prompt injecting doing prompt injection there is like low so I would say it's always the question how much access you give versus how many people have access to Got it. Well, Magnus, thank you for um coming on. Where can people find out more about you?

[snorts] >> Again, just follow us on the expo. Go to proies.com and try it out. They can try it out for free and start automating stuff in a browser and so that they can only just tell their computer what it should do and it does it for them.

>> Yeah, I love it. That was Magnus and Charles for another YC wisdom