The Personal Assistant Thesis

If you had millions of people using a product you spent years building, would you kill it?

That’s exactly what The Browser Company did with Arc.

Originally recorded in July before The Browser Company’s acquisition by software giant Atlassian earlier this year, we’re republishing this episode because its lessons are truly timeless. Today, the team continues to operate independently under Atlassian’s umbrella.

The internet backlash when the company killed Arc in May 2025 was intense, but cofounders Josh Miller and Hursh Agrawal saw that AI was about to make the web something you talk to, not just click into. The best home for that assistant was the thing that's already between you and the internet—the browser. And they realized they couldn’t just duct-tape it on to Arc.

One year of heads-down work later, the team launched Dia in beta, and people are raving about it. Dia is a sleek, fast, browser with AI at its core—it gets better with every tab you open, becoming more and more helpful with time.

And even though it’s still early, Josh and Hursh’s big pivot looks like one for the ages.

In this episode of AI & I, Josh and Hursh spoke for the first time in a full-length podcast about their pivot from Arc to Dia. We talked through their decision-making process, the very public backlash the company faced, and the grit it took to stay the course.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

Want even more?
Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.

To hear more from Dan Shipper:
Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe
Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Start
00:00:48 - Introduction
00:02:22 - The story of how Dan might've been the CEO of The Browser Company
00:09:40 - The moment Josh and Hursh knew they had to walk away from Arc
00:16:59 - How to handle the weight of the unknown in a pivot
00:23:24 - The prototype-driven culture that kept The Browser Company alive
00:25:06 - Why having a product loved by millions of users isn't enough
00:32:12 - The architectural decisions underlying how Dia was built
00:46:04 - How Dia almost shipped without its best feature
00:50:45 - The best ways people are using Dia in the wild
01:07:27 - How Josh and Hursh think about competing with incumbents
01:17:13 - How romanticism informs the product decisions behind Dia

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Hursh Agrawal: @hursh
Josh Miller: @joshm
More about Dia: https://www.diabrowser.com/
Writer and investor M.G. Siegler’s essay about the AI browser wars: https://spyglass.org/ai-browser-wars/

Note: This episode is a rerun from our archives.