7 ms·

This is the sort of thing I’d invent. More a hobby than a business. Technically cool, you can make up some use cases if you try hard enough. No real compelling

This is the sort of thing I’d invent. More a hobby than a business. Technically cool, you can make up some use cases if you try hard enough. No real compelling purpose though. I’ve spent many years building useless stuff that was technically cool. A solution looking for a problem.

keepamovin 3y ago
You’re very perceptive! That’s a great sledge (put down, for non-Aussies). I had the same fear. But thankfully our customers rescued me from that delusion! :)
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
  It's not a hobby. You just didn't market it properly. CloudFlare has the exact same product https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/browser-isolation/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/browser-isola... You need to learn to sell, and not just build.
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    I totally agree! That's our failure: it's not that it's not a product, it's that we didn't market it properly. Thank you! :)
    - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
      I suggest you leverage the open source nature to gain publicity, and offer a hosted cloud version. Change the licensing to a clear cut apache license and remove all the current "strings attached" usage clauses and put any "enterprise" features in a specific folder to make it obvious. Companies are more willing to pay for a hosted service, especially if you can figure out compliance like HIPAA, SOC2 etc. Another value added service is a "managed hosting" offering, where you connect to their GCP/AWS/Azure account via OAuth and deploy the (managed) instances directly on their infrastructure, billed to their own cloud account.
      - keepamovin 3y ago
        Thanks! I really appreciate the constructive feedback! These are good ideas :)
    - MrMarkItDown 3y ago
      Other than the marketing thing, could you explain why a customer would pay for your 1 year license and not just use cloud flare's 7$/user plan? I'm a newbie so sorry if I'm missing something.
      - keepamovin 3y ago
        What I normally try to do is ask any customer what their needs are and try to understand those, rather than just push my product on them. It may not be a fit. But in general, if customers want to customize it (UI, extensions, streaming methods, add-ons), it's way easier to customize your deployment with BrowserBox Pro, than to get Cloudflare to customize your deployment of their browsers. And if you purchase our licenses in bulk it works out cheaper than 7/user/month (we are from 3.33/user/month to 1.05/user/month at scale). Maybe Cloudflare also offers volume discounts, but I don't know. Also, if a customer wants to build a customer-facing product around this virtualized browser technology, can they do that with Cloudflare? Can I, for instance, licenses the SKIA-drawing S2 tech from Cloudflare to use in BrowserBox Pro? Maybe, but I don't know. BrowserBox Pro license covers all of this in one easy to purchase package.
        MrMarkItDown 3y ago
        If you use BrowserBox Pro don't you have to pay for the infrastructure? This might change the prices you listed.
        keepamovin 3y ago
        That's a good point but typically larger customers already have infrastructure they can put this on, as it's fairly low overhead, works across OSes (with a bit of config in some cases), and doesn't require anything specialized. It can be added to their existing cloud or baremetal at minimum marginal cost. Strictly speaking, even if you were to go with a public cloud provider, and set up new infra specifically for BrowserBox Pro, you can essentially get an infra cost/seat/month of < USD1 anyway--making it still cheaper than Cloudflare, at least at scale above 100 seats.
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
Simply not true. Corporations already use products like this because they're terrified of zero days. It's also much easier to monitor what your employees are doing.
antonvs 3y ago
We have functionality similar to this in our product. It's a pretty important feature of the product, since it allows customers to monitor and debug workflows that are being executed remotely.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  How are you doing it? What problems do you face? Happy to jump on a call to talk shop: cris@dosyago.com :)
  - antonvs 3y ago
    We run browsers in containers - all major kinds. We use remote desktop type software which we've integrated into our app to allow customers to access the containers running on our clusters. I.e. they use our web interface to connect to and interact with a running container. I don't think that aspect of our stack has any serious problems - we haven't had to do much work on it since the functionality was first released. We have issues with things like proprietary browsers and limitations of mobile emulation. I'll drop you an email.
suction 3y ago
[dead]

keepamovin 3y ago

You’re very perceptive! That’s a great sledge (put down, for non-Aussies). I had the same fear. But thankfully our customers rescued me from that delusion! :)

KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
It's not a hobby. You just didn't market it properly. CloudFlare has the exact same product https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/browser-isolation/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/zero-trust/browser-isola... You need to learn to sell, and not just build.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  I totally agree! That's our failure: it's not that it's not a product, it's that we didn't market it properly. Thank you! :)
  - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
    I suggest you leverage the open source nature to gain publicity, and offer a hosted cloud version. Change the licensing to a clear cut apache license and remove all the current "strings attached" usage clauses and put any "enterprise" features in a specific folder to make it obvious. Companies are more willing to pay for a hosted service, especially if you can figure out compliance like HIPAA, SOC2 etc. Another value added service is a "managed hosting" offering, where you connect to their GCP/AWS/Azure account via OAuth and deploy the (managed) instances directly on their infrastructure, billed to their own cloud account.
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      Thanks! I really appreciate the constructive feedback! These are good ideas :)
  - MrMarkItDown 3y ago
    Other than the marketing thing, could you explain why a customer would pay for your 1 year license and not just use cloud flare's 7$/user plan? I'm a newbie so sorry if I'm missing something.
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      What I normally try to do is ask any customer what their needs are and try to understand those, rather than just push my product on them. It may not be a fit. But in general, if customers want to customize it (UI, extensions, streaming methods, add-ons), it's way easier to customize your deployment with BrowserBox Pro, than to get Cloudflare to customize your deployment of their browsers. And if you purchase our licenses in bulk it works out cheaper than 7/user/month (we are from 3.33/user/month to 1.05/user/month at scale). Maybe Cloudflare also offers volume discounts, but I don't know. Also, if a customer wants to build a customer-facing product around this virtualized browser technology, can they do that with Cloudflare? Can I, for instance, licenses the SKIA-drawing S2 tech from Cloudflare to use in BrowserBox Pro? Maybe, but I don't know. BrowserBox Pro license covers all of this in one easy to purchase package.
      - MrMarkItDown 3y ago
        If you use BrowserBox Pro don't you have to pay for the infrastructure? This might change the prices you listed.
        keepamovin 3y ago
        That's a good point but typically larger customers already have infrastructure they can put this on, as it's fairly low overhead, works across OSes (with a bit of config in some cases), and doesn't require anything specialized. It can be added to their existing cloud or baremetal at minimum marginal cost. Strictly speaking, even if you were to go with a public cloud provider, and set up new infra specifically for BrowserBox Pro, you can essentially get an infra cost/seat/month of < USD1 anyway--making it still cheaper than Cloudflare, at least at scale above 100 seats.

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

Simply not true. Corporations already use products like this because they're terrified of zero days. It's also much easier to monitor what your employees are doing.

antonvs 3y ago

We have functionality similar to this in our product. It's a pretty important feature of the product, since it allows customers to monitor and debug workflows that are being executed remotely.

keepamovin 3y ago
How are you doing it? What problems do you face? Happy to jump on a call to talk shop: cris@dosyago.com :)
- antonvs 3y ago
  We run browsers in containers - all major kinds. We use remote desktop type software which we've integrated into our app to allow customers to access the containers running on our clusters. I.e. they use our web interface to connect to and interact with a running container. I don't think that aspect of our stack has any serious problems - we haven't had to do much work on it since the functionality was first released. We have issues with things like proprietary browsers and limitations of mobile emulation. I'll drop you an email.

suction 3y ago

[dead]