Peteris Krumins: How I went to Silicon Valley and raised $55,000 for Browserling | Hacker News Reader

Peteris Krumins: How I went to Silicon Valley and raised $55,000 for Browserling

catonmat.net

132 pointsnoas52 comments

Check out their startup: http://browserling.com/

It allows you to not just get a screenshot of the site you are working on in a variety of browsers, but you can actually navigate the site, click on links, enter text, etc. Impressive!

For designers/developers who need big coverage on browsers, I suspect they are going to do strong business.

I think the $20 pricing might be a bit high, but the 5 minutes free should help a bunch of folks.

Yeah, the browsers run on Windowses and we stream the desktop to the browser!

$20 also gets you tunnels, so you can tunnel localhost or local network to Browserling. Not available in the free plans!

OOh. That's sweet. You need, need, need to make that clear. Being able to local dev and then share that with clients or customers is pretty huge.

Keep testing your pricing model. Don't get locked in this early. I suspect that $15 might be the price point where it's a no-brainer for a certain group of dev/designers.

Will do that. I'll redesign the pricing page altogether and make it obvious what's what.

What are you using for the streaming?

VNC + node-rfb + node-binary + node-png + dnode + browserify

http://github.com/pkrumins/node-rfb

http://github.com/substack/node-binary

http://github.com/pkrumins/node-png

http://github.com/substack/dnode

http://github.com/substack/node-browserify

I knew of each of you separately and have long thought you are brilliant. (How YC passed on you I'll never know.)

I'm really happy to hear you're funded and going. Best of luck!

Thank you sir!

Miss for YC, big win for the Hackers and Founders incubator. Browserling was the start up I was most excited about on Not-a-Demo Day, in part because all of their business cards were hand drawn and ripped from sheets of paper and their browser logo cutouts were made from cereal boxes.

<3 Jonathan and Laura

These guys were literally the perfect example of the mythical "starving entrepreneurs" who walk into your office with a brilliant idea. I had to make sure they could eat! :)

The treehouse in the bg is a nice touch.

Congrats! Adam Rifkin can really make things happen. Definitely worth meeting and knowing him.

<3 Adam Rifkin

Congrats... nice to see some real hackers get a leg up!

Thank you!

I'm sorry I was unable to recruit you to Splunk back in the day, but good luck with Browserling!

Thanks. :)

If I had money, I'd invest in you guys. Congrats on the funding!

You better save some up for when we raise the next round! :)

"Success, I was known in the Silicon Valley!"

Good read. You can feel the passion jumping out of the post.

Awww yeah!

Congrats Peteris! Prieks, ka kādam izdodas! Veiksmes! :)

Paldies! :)

Are you a US citizen, or did you have to sort out work visas to make it happen?

Went on a B1 visa "to raise investment for StackVM", which took 15 minutes to get.

As a fellow EU citizen, I'm interested in this. Could you elaborate? Are you able to found or work at a start up in the U.S. with only a temporary visa?

You're allowed to found a company in the US - just not work for it nor be paid by it. The B1 is a 3-6 month visa, most people just use the visa waiver program.

Surely you can get paid by your own company? Do you mean you can't become an employee for it?

You cannot work for an American company

I just did five minutes ago, and the invoice was paid two minutes ago, so you clearly can. Perhaps you mean you can't become an employee of one?

Do you live in the US?

No.

Please do elaborate on this

You can't do that with temporary visa. That's why I have my awesome co-founder James Halliday, who's US citizen. :)

Thanks for the reply. So I guess the plan is at some point to get a work visa with the help of your own company. Best of luck for your endeavours!

Browserling is some seriously impressive work. Congrats and thank you for all the Node.JS open-source work too!

You're welcome!

I see tunnels as a key feature, but you know this - I've been talking about tunnels on browserling for ages :) Glad you raised money and very happy that the H&F family made it happen for you.

Looking forward to you being back in the Bay Area.

I'll announce tunnels in my next blog post! They are already live (the ssh icon on the right, when you use Browserling) but I haven't announced them anywhere, so almost no one knows about them!

See you soon in the Bay Area!

I really love your service, however, I'm not a fan of the design (seems cartoonish). Was this just the design aspect you were going for or are you seeking a redesign in the near future?

We like the design! We're not looking for a redesign.

Nice work! A "check on the spot" definitely helps validate the idea.

It sure does!

Great story and best of luck to you guys going forward. This is a very useful tool. I find myself using it more and more lately when I need a quick test spin in the explorers.

Awesome that you like it!

Congrats Peteris and James! I've had a lot of fun watching the progress of Browserling through interacting with it. And congrats to Jonathan and Laura too!

Jonathan and Laura took us to dinners when we were almost out of money and hungry! They are truly the kindest people I have ever met.

Good job guys, and remember, if you're ever hungry, come back to Treehouse for a meal. -Katy

His co-founder is SubStack, the same guy from yesterdays Browserify article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2805195

SubStack is the best hacker I know.

his reach is beyond imagination.. dnode, hook.io, nowjs.

testling is going to take browserling to the next level!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com