Why Products Win When They Stop Serving Everyone | Krystian Kolondra (SVP at Opera)

Vit Lyoshin (00:01.08)
Welcome Krystian. Thank you for joining me today.

Krystian (00:04.925)
Thanks for for having me. It's a pleasure to to to to join.

Vit Lyoshin (00:09.772)
Yeah, of course. so I wanted to start with question that most companies who build browsers try to focus on mainstream users. but with Opera GX, what convinced you to go after gamers and that it's a large community rather than just a niche user base?

Krystian (00:36.039)
So if you think about Opera, like overgrown startup, we're on the market for over 30 years now. And there is probably only one other example of software like browsers, which is an operating system that is as long as the market, on the market as as as browsers. It's a major market. And for us, having around like 300 million users and competing with the biggest players,

Even with 300 million users, we're not mainstream. And this is like something that is maybe shocking though when when when you when you hear it that 300 million users is not mainstream, it's actually a niche play, right? So yes, so for us it was always about innovation. it was always about thinking what is the right type of a user that we're building for, and in different on different like

Products on mobile or on PC, there might be different users, in different geographies, different users. We were always trying to think that your product should not be just the bare minimum and then you have to install extensions or configure it, but it should work like

out of the box that you get communicators in your sidebar, that you get ad blocker, that you get the screenshot tool, and then many other features built in straight there. And then for for Opera GX, this wasn't really like obvious for us. In I remember around 2018 we've been researching market and looking for software that is actually growing on PC.

because PC install base is pretty much stable over the last decade. So it's it's not growing. You you don't get a like a tailwind on just basically being there, right, and enjoying the free ride. That's not happening. So we've been we found actually Discord back then growing rapidly, just crossing 100 million users, and the natural instinct is

Vit Lyoshin (02:41.314)
Mm.

Krystian (02:47.065)
Something is growing. can we either copy it or could we bolt it in into the product? Like you see right now. You you if you try now try to go and b buy a fridge or a washing machine, try to buy one without AI. Impossible. Everything is smart, right? It's so it's a natural instinct. You find something that is hot and trendy, and then you try to put it in. But it it didn't start with thinking about.

gamers ask this is a great segment there's plenty like lots of users there they spend a lot of money on games on their like a hardware and so on let's build something for them this is not how it started it more started with just looking at other software and then realizing after we started talking with gamers that we were asking wrong questions

Vit Lyoshin (03:32.877)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (03:47.789)
Yeah, I see. that makes sense. So you looked at Discord growth and and made an assumption basically that that could be something big here. So and and dig in. Yeah, interesting. And then when you started building this product, what were the some like first signals observations that it's actually working, people actually liking it?

Krystian (04:09.117)
So even like I'd say that the actually even more a little bit more complicated. So when we when we realized that we've been asking the wrong question, then what happened is we realized that gamers, and some of us are gamers. I'm a gamer myself with over three thousand hours spent on League of Legends, but I stopped playing some time ago.

Vit Lyoshin (04:17.206)
Okay.

Krystian (04:38.223)
It's a I I'd love to play more, but but the time is the limited, only limited resource we have of course, on the planet. but when talking to gamers, we realized that they actually use already browsers and then they the browsing needs are are actually handled already by any browser out there. They could pick Opera, they could pick Chrome, they could pick other browsers, and they would still be quite satisfied.

Vit Lyoshin (05:07.16)
Uh-huh.

Krystian (05:07.761)
But what we what we realized is that that they have also other expectations that come not only towards the the web browser but anything that they that they do. So the initial instinct was that after we killed the idea of trying to build a a Discord clone was created lots of mock-ups and

Our current head of Opera GX, who used to be back then product manager for PC, prepared lots of mock-ups and went to Gamescon in Cologne. they did interviews with 130 plus gamers out there, and then most of them they said that we'd love that, we'd love to see that product and then

Vit Lyoshin (06:01.356)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (06:03.621)
Of course, you one could say easily, when someone approaches you and asks, is this do you enjoy the idea of having a product product built specifically for you? What happens is that you say yes, right, because you're flattered and etc. But but there was a one thing at Opera back then is that no one amongst leadership believed we could actually build more browsers.

Vit Lyoshin (06:18.413)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (06:32.793)
Or that the world needs one more browser. So that was a confirmation for myself because we built Opera GX completely in hiding. So we build it against being told not to build another browser. So I asked the Matik, who I trust is a great product person, he also a gamer, to actually grab a few people with him.

Vit Lyoshin (06:46.222)
No.

Krystian (07:02.413)
And we've hidden them and built.

Vit Lyoshin (07:05.71)
Well, yeah, that's an interesting story. I have to ask to you about this. how how do you do that? How do you either convince your leadership to go with this bold idea that nobody believes in, or you just decide to go with it? And how long did it actually take to execute?

Krystian (07:26.683)
So so there are two to two aspects. So a little bit I've been maybe a little bit in a privileged position because I was able to hide the team to to to actually build something. But normally how how you can approach things like this is is to not try to

Vit Lyoshin (07:41.858)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (07:51.184)
think about the vibe and try to convince and get a buy-in from like a leadership but more important I believe is to create an experiment that can either qualify or disqualify your thesis. So you could come in that case you could come to

Vit Lyoshin (08:07.874)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (08:11.345)
to to to to your company leadership and say, look, we have been seeing that the like some other companies being successful in that market. We have studied the user base, the audience, and we believe that we have something we would like to test, whether there is a a business. We this is the thesis that we want to test and that's the cost of running that experiment. I believe that most

At least I would be extremely receptive if I heard a case set like this. The worst case is when someone is coming with a vision only and then with not

Vit Lyoshin (08:44.534)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (08:53.585)
considering that they might be wrong because I have seen that I have been wrong so many times and proven wrong so many times after doing something or launching, testing something that I laugh when when someone comes and frames it the way that this is more an experiment to either qualify or disqualify a thesis. It's a much stronger case.

Vit Lyoshin (09:14.615)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I like this idea. I think it's like I I had somebody a while ago an idea about metrics and and this is actually when you set something like this as experiment with certain metrics and you say if we get this, this is gonna be go ahead, this is gonna be kill it, and this is gonna be pivot, and and and you make a decision like that. yeah, I really like this idea. This is great.

Krystian (09:42.685)
Yes, so when we when we worked on on GX, we built the first version. and then of course there was a moment where everybody at the company learned that we're actually launching another browser despite being told not to. So we launched this at E3 because it was a gamer browser for gamers, so we no longer have e free, but it was twenty nineteen. And

Vit Lyoshin (09:57.058)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (10:05.166)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (10:06.546)
And then it got a great reception. Of course, people were in disbelief. Gaming browser, what's that, right? It's like how is it a browser where you game in, right? You play games inside, or people were not getting fully what it is, so it was sparking a lot of curiosity. But we were we were struggling with distribution back then. So

Vit Lyoshin (10:18.487)
Yeah.

Krystian (10:31.746)
the funny part was that the metrics, the key metrics that we care about, the engagement, the retention and so on was through the roof. It was so much better. It was almost the double of the like our even if our product is not mainstream, it was like our product. It's like

Vit Lyoshin (10:39.862)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (10:49.05)
It was it was great, so that was an extremely strong case for me. So I knew that once you find the right user and that user sits in front of Opera GX, they will love it and they will stay there and they will use it only that right. But then the

Reception from in in the company was like, okay, great that you've launched it's great that you have nice metrics. it will not grow more than half a million users, right? And of course, it did grow many, many times more because we we long time ago crossed 30 million on just that product alone, and just on PC. And

Vit Lyoshin (11:20.438)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (11:33.519)
the the truth was that we had to crack the distribution because then every time you launch a new product, then you need to learn again how to spread the word about it, right? And it this wasn't like really obvious because it was a first gaming browser, so people needed to be educated to to like understand and initially the the word was not spreading quickly enough.

Vit Lyoshin (12:00.812)
Yeah, yeah. I wanted to follow up on something you said earlier, when you went or s or project man a product manager went to the conference to get interviews with gamers, and you actually build this browser to look very different. It's it's different color scheme, different panels, different options there. Why was it important to build it that way?

Krystian (12:23.846)
Mm-hmm. So we've been doing many, many things trying to like understand better and formulate our thesis correctly. So even today, if you go and look at the gaming accessories like keyboards or you take a gaming mouse as an example, then we realize that you you can notice like a three spheres. And then sphere number one is the looks.

gaming keyboard from the first glance looks like a gaming keyboard not like an office keyboard right and gaming pc looks like a gaming pc even if you like some people can't like easily just elaborate on it like what does it mean really right but instantly that looks like gaming right so so that was important but the second if we if we think about the mouse then you have

Vit Lyoshin (12:50.499)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (12:57.112)
Uh-huh.

Vit Lyoshin (13:12.334)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (13:19.506)
The second sphere is about the performance. So you have a high DPI, so you have high sensitivity because you need precision, you need also the minimal luck, because when you're playing games, especially competitively, that it's what matters. And the same is for keyboards. also the input luck, but but also

Ghosting that you can press as many keys as you like and then they are all properly captured. So you have a performance. They are much more performant versus the office equivalence. And then the third sphere is the customization options. So you can create your own macros for your keyboard. You can configure the colors and everything. And the same is for mouse. You can configure what each button would do, or even configure or

change the weight distribution in your in your mouse in some in some cases. So so then you have these three spheres. And then what we thought is like that when we're building the product, we need to capture all three. So we need to capture both customization, performance, and the looks. Because the looks is something that people will see first, and that's about the identity. If you are spending maybe a few thousand on your gaming setup.

Vit Lyoshin (14:13.709)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (14:27.277)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (14:33.741)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (14:38.386)
The last thing you want to see, if you have the the like a glass window, you have you have all your RGB lights in your liquid cooling, and it looks amazing. And then it's something that looks like a TurboTax, something that looks like your office suite, or something that your either parents or your aunt or uncle would use.

Vit Lyoshin (15:05.164)
Right.

Krystian (15:05.256)
that that is that is killing the identity, right? So so so this is like yes you're right. Opera GX has been built from the beginning to look different and it was not

That it was just the a theme, because you can't make Opera GX to look like a office software. There is no way to do that. Which means that some people love the concept of the browser where you have these power features and so on, but they say, okay, but why why I can't use this just looking like a regular browser? No, you can't. Because this is this is the this costly signal about the identity that

Vit Lyoshin (15:29.782)
Yeah.

Krystian (15:49.99)
It's a choice. You either love it or you hate it.

Vit Lyoshin (15:53.855)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I guess it's it matches the specific user or persona that you're building it for because they're used to all these neon colors, customizations, performance, etc. and you wanna be in the same kind of environment for them, right? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. was there a moment when you or your team felt that this is becoming too unconventional product, just too weird, too crazy?

And and you maybe need to back off a little bit or no.

Krystian (16:25.214)
So being a company like Opera, I I think when we are constantly trying to innovate, I feel that it may be a little bit the

It's like nothing is too weird, and that maybe is also something that we should and control a little bit because I think but I think that is not the the the the the the question here. The question here is are you staying truthful to your audience? Because that is what is I believe important with products. So I can give like a two examples here. So one is that

Vit Lyoshin (16:48.158)
Ha ha ha.

Krystian (17:11.152)
One one example can be when we saw that this customization needs is really necessary. And Machek, our like head of GX, has came up with the idea of let's do mods. Gamers are modding the games, let's do mods for the browser. Everyone will understand this. And and by the way, we have enormous customization options there. but more on that later. But

Vit Lyoshin (17:30.892)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (17:39.891)
When we built this, we we did run a campaign pimp my browser, which is for everyone who watched MTV, pimp my right, and so on was quite obvious. But but half of our users were actually a different generation that had no idea what the MTV was. And and this is like an example that you you're doing something that feels like weird, cool, great on the spot, but

Vit Lyoshin (17:52.141)
Right.

Krystian (18:09.18)
Not necessarily for everyone, not necessarily for your core audience, right? So this is like a something that is very important to think, will it fit? Will it be like create the that's me, the identity moment, or will it be a cringe moment where someone will say that, I wish they haven't done this? And there are examples also in the industry where some companies are doing things right.

Vit Lyoshin (18:13.73)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (18:33.612)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (18:38.32)
And some companies are doing it wrong. So Opera GX is on the market already for a couple years. And and then we initially captured a lot of younger audience as well. so you have to think how basically you have to follow more Harry Potter rule.

So every book is growing with the audience and becoming darker and darker and darker because the audience grows. If you kept it at the level where you caught your audience first time and don't grow with them, especially important with when we're building products for younger audience. Younger I I don't mean kids, I mean like basically people at the intersection of like a high school, college, university, and then getting the job.

Vit Lyoshin (19:04.94)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (19:27.258)
So this is extremely important because I think it took ages for Disney and Lucas to realize that being Star Wars fan, I want more series like Andor, and I don't want the childish editions of of the movies or or or or or or series, right? Because it captured me long time ago and now

Vit Lyoshin (19:27.735)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (19:51.054)
No right.

Krystian (19:52.497)
in a different place. So I want that series to grow with me. And of course, like companies are right to pick their own strategies, but I believe this is extremely important. And then if you think about this

modding and customization and things that you can, for instance, change the the sound that keys are making or even other sounds in your browser. Many people who are gamers they suddenly finish university and my god, they have to go and get the job. So they get maybe MacBook and then they they are no longer at the mechanical keyboard, but they can put the headphones on and still using Opera GX, they can feel that this is their true identity.

Vit Lyoshin (20:22.412)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (20:34.076)
can hear the mechanical keyboard sounds without annoying anyone around them. So it's a so this product is growing with with with with people letting them to continue because they feel about themselves as people who still care about those things, right?

Vit Lyoshin (20:51.916)
Yeah, this is great. I think we're getting here into like an emotional connection with your product, right? Which is also great because it it keeps people using it for longer, they feel good about it, about themselves maybe, even things like that. Yeah, I think this is great and I feel like many products out there

forget about this and and especially when they go mainstream and trying to please everyone, at the end they don't please many people. So I think it's very important to remember this, yeah.

Krystian (21:23.367)
In fact.

This is this is like important thing that you're you're touching here because you you you're right on that. Is when thinking about Opera GX, we didn't think about the total addressable market or basically what's the opportunity sizing, what is the

how we can like launch or run the advertising etc we've been trying to we didn't talk about features we we thought about the user what this user needs and then like i mentioned when the user grows we we grow with them we let them

Vit Lyoshin (22:09.698)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (22:10.63)
If they have less time to play, they can at least enjoy the sound of the mechanical keyboard while at work, right? So it's a it's a little bit like f following following through. And I believe that is a much better strategy where you are identity first versus thinking about features. and then identity is usually costly. So that means that we actually made the jokes early on.

Matchek could tell you that we're we built a projects because we could. It's and that is so so true, right? we this is exactly because we have done it because we we we could I I guess we had a lot of fun while building it and on on on this whole journey but what is what is important is that it's

Vit Lyoshin (22:46.871)
Ha ha ha.

Krystian (23:05.798)
It's the question what does it mean when you are a person using the product versus which features you need, what problems you need to to to get solved. Because when when you take it at the identity level, then the funny part that I wanted to mention is that the initial reaction when people see the product first time is either, my god, I love it, or I hate this.

Vit Lyoshin (23:17.74)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (23:32.863)
And that's exactly what we want. If you were building a mainstream product, you would like to get everyone to love your product. And and that's great if you've got endless funds and a distribution or already captured more than half of the market, but

Vit Lyoshin (23:40.269)
Yeah, yeah.

Krystian (23:50.471)
If you're trying to let some people to stop using other products and come to you, then that's the strategy. Because that strategy cannot be copied by the mainstream. Because that for them that would mean that they would have to basically e to to win your audience, they would have to give up the audience that says that they don't like the product.

Vit Lyoshin (24:15.329)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krystian (24:15.806)
So it's also good as a as a as a strategy.

Vit Lyoshin (24:19.074)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. you mentioned you had initial idea came from like Discord performance and success and things like that. But I imagine you also deep into those communities and engaging with them. did you get any like influence for features or influence for like how product product direction from communities like Discord or maybe some other gaming communities?

Krystian (24:46.75)
So I believe that for gamers, Discord is probably the main place where where you can find them and where you can interact with them. I believe it's it's extremely important to to to be there and talk with your audience. I believe there is something called like emotional adoption model for

How to think about products where at the early stage of the product lifecycle you not only have like early adopters or innovators and early adopters, but you divide early adopters into two groups: the irrationals and the lovers. And the irrationals are basically

People who who will feel same emotions as the majority of of put your potential users or customers, but they will

they will make irrational moves. So they will pay for the technology more early on because they they believe in so much that they are not making a rational move or rational decision, they are they are eager to go there earlier than anyone else. But then there are also lovers who love some technology aspects, right? And examples could be here when thinking about

Vit Lyoshin (26:00.142)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (26:15.192)
when electric cars came, like when you got first Teslas, and some people were amazed. clean energy cars, great, but too bad they are too expensive. But early on some people still were investing, and then some people said, my god, below three seconds to 100 kilometers an hour, and love it. But then the the next time the new technology comes in, the

Vit Lyoshin (26:25.282)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Krystian (26:43.944)
Be it hydrogen or whatever new cool engine they will they will get into cars or maybe flying cars, they will jump on it. They will they will not stay there because of this clean energy and so on. So it's important when you talk to your users to understand, especially for products like Opera GX, that many people will come because and they will voice the opinion, but they will tell you that we need

Vit Lyoshin (26:53.676)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Krystian (27:13.944)
This feature, this feature, and that feature, and give option to make it look like a traditional browser, just keep everything else. And then the keys to distinguish the two and not listen to the ones that are talking technology only, but listen to the ones that are talking.

Vit Lyoshin (27:28.76)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (27:31.331)
emotions, the real real needs, you you need to separate this because the moment you you you enable yourself, and it's very easy and it's very tempting because someone will sooner or later, even on your team, will come and tell you, if we implement these features, so many people are asking for it.

Vit Lyoshin (27:50.691)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (27:51.657)
But then you no longer will be true to your identity if you do so. So an Opera GX, we will never allow it to look like an office application because that's not what it is, right? So so you you you have to basically understand who is who. But once you're there, I believe

Vit Lyoshin (28:03.778)
Yeah.

Krystian (28:13.68)
Important is to is to talk, not just make a survey and let people upvote what to build, but try to understand how the day look looks like. What they how they really use your product, what for in connection do they do use it after something, before something. try to understand it's never in a vacuum, right? People are

Vit Lyoshin (28:38.594)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (28:39.159)
Day lives both analog and the digital lives, right? And and then they are using various products throughout the day.

Vit Lyoshin (28:47.894)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think it's yeah, it's very important for keeping keeping eye on what people do with your product, how they're using it, and so forth. Yeah. I also wanted to talk to you about like the the innovation culture overall at Oprah. You mentioned it's a 30-year-old company. you have many senior leaders who've been there forever, including you. You've been a long leader in the company, right?

Krystian (29:16.062)
From years.

Vit Lyoshin (29:17.568)
So how do you keep this like a startup type innovation mode in your organization to keep building new products every few years, essentially?

Krystian (29:29.47)
So early on, Opera has been, already early on, Opera has been extremely innovative. Even before I joined, I actually been Opera user before joining Opera or before hiring Opera to hire me. But I started using Opera because of two simple facts. You didn't have to open a separate window for every tab you wanted to open, and we're using even a word tab now.

and then it was actually it was capable of showing the page while it was loading, which twenty something years ago has been extremely important because otherwise you would have to wait one minute to to actually get a page to be visible. Today it's always like like second, two seconds. If you have to wait more then you're annoyed, right? But the reality in the past was was was different. So it was

Vit Lyoshin (30:19.544)
Right.

Vit Lyoshin (30:25.335)
Yeah.

Krystian (30:28.688)
A true technological excellence that that Opera has been showing. But then through Opera has been a B2B company and then Taylor like moved itself into B2B to C until finally reaching maybe a decade ago B2C stage. because

Vit Lyoshin (30:50.573)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (30:52.176)
being a company means that you need to to run business, right? And then pre-Android era was that we've been building browsers that people were able to include on their mobile phones, the phone manufacturers were were buying it from us until eventually we

Started focusing on the consumer itself. So that alone is very helpful because that means like we are within this 30 years time frame, we are like at least three different companies because the the the business model or the strategy dictates what company you are, how you act, right? but staying in staying innovative, I believe it's

it's not about having ideas. Because ideas are cheap. In fact, today with AI, you can just say, like okay, hey AI, give me that 100 ideas on something, and you'll get

Unless it's better at counting, which happens, but you chances are you'll get a lot of ideas, right? So ideas are cheap. And of course, some people would say the quality of ideas will differ, right? Of course, some people will be in disbelief that AI can generate good ideas. for me, it's a more always an input problem. so

Vit Lyoshin (32:00.067)
Yeah.

Krystian (32:19.09)
Which means that same as with AI, the quality of what you feed it with will actually determine the like the quality of the of the of the result, which means that if you want to stay innovative, the the major thing is asking right questions. And if your organization is in the mode of experimenting and coming up with ideas, then this is

Vit Lyoshin (32:39.265)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (32:48.048)
usually too random and rarely from experience and from what I have seen and then observed other companies rarely generating great outcomes. Even some companies in the past had this

idea of having one day for experimentation and then it did result in hundreds of forgotten experiments that didn't really materialize in in in in anything. The innovation is by asking a question no one else has asked. And this is difficult. The easiest way of course is to and the biggest trap is to think logically.

Because the truth is very simple. If you ask yourself why someone has not built it yet, then most likely it's it's probably not worth thinking too much, my experience at least. Because if that is something that is l logical, then for sure many people have thought about this. Maybe even some people did try.

Vit Lyoshin (33:52.332)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (33:54.371)
And and then if you don't see products out there yet, then there could be only few things. It could be either there was not the right timing for that, or maybe that's not really worth pursuing.

Vit Lyoshin (34:05.74)
Uh-huh.

Vit Lyoshin (34:10.188)
Yeah, yeah, okay. interesting. And then also, are there any advantages in a larger organization f for like many experiments and innovations versus startup who which obviously has limited resources and things like that. what do you think about that?

Krystian (34:30.114)
I I think there are some certain advantages of being or having a a more stable organization that is actually

profitable and has a stable situation on the market because you can afford few things. You can afford distribution, you can afford spend enough time if you see the right metrics. Like with Opera GX, it took us like maybe seven eight months to figure out how to spread the word properly so that all the KPIs were great.

Vit Lyoshin (34:55.81)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (35:13.682)
But we needed to find a way how to let people know about the product. because everyone is fighting for the attention of gamers, which means that like you know, all the new games, all the equipment, etc. So you can't just afford to go and buy in your way with a free product, right? So so this is this is challenging. But being a larger organization gives you ability to or

Possibility to be wrong and learn from it. If you're a startup, you need to have really good investors or early investors that would help you to pivot based on your learnings. But if you don't have it, then it's challenging.

Vit Lyoshin (36:00.815)
Uh-huh.

Vit Lyoshin (36:06.646)
Yeah, yeah. another thing I wanted to discuss with you is AI with browsing and just looking a little bit in the future, how do you think AI will have will influence or change how people interact with web browsing and and stuff like that?

Krystian (36:27.856)
Okay, so AI revolution, because we we can call it revolution happened already, like started a few years ago, and we can see a number of things already happening on the market. first of all, the immediate instinct of everyone, adding AI everywhere.

we see that we we also have done that ourselves as an experimentation and to see where this will take us. You're basically bolting in AI charts into the browser, but I have to say it's convenient because it allows AI to see what you see. So if you want to to get

like a transcription of that YouTube video you don't have time to watch or you want maybe not the transcription but the the summary of the transcription or you want to very quickly compare a few products synthesize something that that is very very useful but

I believe, and this is the strategy that we are embracing now, is that from now on, all the products we're building for both our users and their agents.

And so we just recently launched CLI tools which allow our browsers to be used also by your agents. So if you run like either cowork or something on your on your machine, you can actually get it to use Opera browsers. And the reason why is that

Krystian (38:03.359)
in the browser you're already logged in, you are already using your tools, your services, and if you want to

your agents to help you with something, then it is extremely convenient to be able to use the same environment. But you of course don't want AI to take over your browser and then just see something's happening and and and so on. You you you you'd rather have AI to just be able to use that environment but not take over the tool. So important for us building browsers or products for both

Vit Lyoshin (38:33.101)
Uh-huh.

Krystian (38:39.618)
Users and their agents. And then what you asked how I believe that the world is going to change. I I feel that so funny part, a couple of years ago I would say that the voice is amazing on a mobile phone. but I could not imagine that people would be talking to their laptops.

Today I can't imagine typing again. And I believe in a few years, like that might be a new reality. There might be something we will make jokes of that in the past people used keyboards to to type in. I mean we have seen this with mobile phones. Mobile phones had physical keyboards, and where we are today. I I am a great advocate of using voice for everything on the PC. of course, typing if you're

Vit Lyoshin (39:05.965)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (39:32.518)
in a crowded area and you you can't really do this, like of course still makes sense, but as a backup, not as a main way how to operate. And then AI really does enable that. And and I believe that that's that's that's really way to go.

Vit Lyoshin (39:51.331)
Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I I I sometimes think about the same thing, like how the input interfaces will change with mouse or with with the typing. And what's interesting also is many of these tools now can speak back to you. with the push of a button, they can tell you or read from the screen what is written there. So you don't have to read it, you can just listen and like

Krystian (40:13.192)
That is that is great for I believe for accessibility, but I

I actually prefer the mode where you speak but you read so that it does not talk back. because it usually is much faster at writing something on the screen and you're reading faster than it talks. So so actually the hybrid mode is is something I I I I I like most. But it's it's really changing how how we behave. It's trying to do

Vit Lyoshin (40:34.69)
Yeah.

Krystian (40:47.67)
Things that you don't like, like doing finances, doing taxes, just throw that in all the receipts to AI, to classify, to basically read everything that is that is there, group it and then I I believe that is that is really transformative for me, that small things that I hate to do, I can just offload now to to to to to agents.

it's like we're we're trying so like at opera like we're we're quite serious about ai so we being like european company we of course have set up like our super pot Nvidia super pot on Iceland we're we're joking that

First of all, it's great for cooling for to have a data center on Iceland, but also if AI would become self-aware, there are volcanoes there, so it's it's a safe like you know kill switch. that is that is there. But what what we believe it's it's it's quite awesome to to to have data centers under like you know your European jurisdiction, GDPR. I know that many people are saying that because of this

Vit Lyoshin (41:45.25)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (41:52.604)
Yeah.

Krystian (42:09.31)
laws that Europe is introducing that certain innovations might not be coming to to to Europe. I I actually believe that it gives a lot of a lot of good protection for the for the consumer so so yeah.

Vit Lyoshin (42:25.854)
Mm-hmm. Okay. What about this idea of AI agents browsing the internet? Because I I had this thought and I keep asking people about this. internet is optimized for people right now to have interface, buttons and things like that. but the more and more agents are being deployed by companies, by individuals, whatever.

How do you think that will change? Will we have to have some sort of special browser for AI agents? Or how do you s foresee this will work in like five, ten years, maybe two years even?

Krystian (43:02.432)
I think it'll be faster for sure. it is true what you said that the browser so the the web today is really a h hostile place for for agents. It's it's not really a friendly place. And like we have seen because we've been experimenting with the kind of

not computer use but the web use or browser use agents ourselves for for a long time and showcasing this how browsers can like basically buy something for you, book something for you, find something, and and this is this is great genuinely, but but the web is

Still so unfriendly that there have to be better solutions. And there are two two potential like directions that this is headed. direction number one is is that AI is becoming kind of taken care of by developers same way as mobile did. So we had a web built first for PC and now later for mobile, and then

Basically the either responsive design or or or or something like this is like you have more and more sections for agents. Especially engineers see it when documentation has sometimes a a copy button where you copy for your LLM just the the the part of the documentation.

Vit Lyoshin (44:23.18)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (44:33.09)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (44:33.586)
The the second part is so then that could be hidden text, not only meant to hijack your prompts, but actually helping the agent to navigate, and then some companies do this already. The second is where companies don't really want to to let agents to to go through the pages because they want real people to be there.

There could be many reasons. One reason could be that they want to own the experience because that is how they build a brand connection and so on. The other could be that maybe their business model is ad-sponsored. And of course, if agent goes there, they they they they're not exposed to the advertising. So the business model does no longer works. And and it's and it's really really valid. But then companies also can implement web MCP.

Vit Lyoshin (45:08.674)
Mm-hmm.

Vit Lyoshin (45:15.82)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (45:23.358)
or any other MCP or APIs that in the era of AI, if you've got the proper documentation, AI can actually connect on the fly with almost any service. So I believe this is how the web is going to evolve. There will be more and more services built with agents in mind, but I

What what I believe, and we we're we're experimenting with this, I believe there will be agents both in your browser at times, but more than likely, and that's where we are betting on, is that the agents will browse your internet on your behalf using your browser or your browser environment, but not

be physically present in your browser. So this is like about how I imagine that. And there are many reasons for for for for this. And like today we are spending so much time on switching tools in the browser. You basically just just imagine that you're reading an article and then you figure out that this is great, you want to share this with your team and then more you want to actually

Vit Lyoshin (46:16.237)
Mm.

Krystian (46:40.444)
set up a meeting to discuss it with the team. And then maybe like what you need to do is like a copy URL of that article, then switch to Sluck. Then you need to see where you are on the Sluck, which means that talking about like in the AI AI terms, your context is

Flushed now, empty. You need to see the Slack interface. You need to figure out where to click. Yes, that's very easy. You're doing it many times a day. Your brain is trained where to click, where to find your team. paste the link, then switch to calendar, find the spot, check your team.

when they are available and then suggest a few basically slots on on on on Slack and say, Hey, let's let's talk about this. How about next Wednesday, 10 a.m.? And you know, it would be so much more convenient just say to AI, this is interesting, share it with the team and see where we could meet to talk about this.

Vit Lyoshin (47:40.663)
Right.

Krystian (47:40.787)
No cognitive switch, like no cognitive load of switching, the effort of switching the context yourself, which is actually making us tired at the end of the day. It's like you're getting overwhelmed and with switching between so many tools, while these simple things offloaded, you can enjoy having

Vit Lyoshin (47:52.024)
Mm-hmm.

Krystian (48:02.966)
focus on what is truly important for you. So I believe in that future. I actually love the idea of that agentic future myself.

Vit Lyoshin (48:12.49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I've been experimenting myself too and so far I I like it and it's like a like a video game to me. It's it's almost like magical experience when when you like automate something and it works and and it it's it feels like you know we live in the future already. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Krystian, thank you very much for information. This is great. I think everybody will

Krystian (48:32.914)
What is that?

Vit Lyoshin (48:40.628)
like like your ideas and love what what you guys do over there. This is very interesting approach, very great to see your lessons. And at the end I usually go through my innovation Q&A which is just three questions that I like to ask everybody. So the first question is can you define innovation in a few words?

Krystian (49:04.926)
Okay, in in a in a few words. I'd say that creating something that wasn't there, not just rearranging what was already there. It can be either like a knowledge or it can be the idea or concept, creating something that wasn't there. That would be my view on the innovation.

Vit Lyoshin (49:26.062)
Uh-huh.

Okay. The second question is which one innovation in the history do you think changed the world the most and why?

Krystian (49:39.239)
Okay, here there would be two candidates that are obvious. some people could say mobile, some people could say AI or the internet. but I'll be less popular and I'll go for the philosopher that I admire most, Karl Popper, and I would say falsification, which enabled like

r further research like Albert Einstein's theories and everything else because that allows us to actually experiment today and I believe that to me personally and then when when you look at David Deutsch's books and and and read through I believe is something that did advance the technology world further than than than we would think. But of course what we see, we see mobile, we see internet, we see AI.

But the the the the grand thinking behind is the idea very idea of falsification.

Vit Lyoshin (50:35.841)
huh.

Vit Lyoshin (50:42.018)
Yeah, yeah, that that's great. And the last question is, and maybe you already kinda answered this earlier, but maybe you have an another one. which one technology or software or tool that we use today we will be laughing at ten years from now?

Krystian (51:00.484)
I I really believe we will be laughing from like laughing at computers with keyboards. It's I I I really think being myself advocate of not using voice, I I I really believe that the software can be a lot better. and just experience personal experience for over like last twelve months.

Vit Lyoshin (51:07.766)
Yeah.

Krystian (51:30.02)
almost don't type and I have never produced more within that period. So so I I would say that. That maybe is not not so funny but it's once once once you you you you get there it's like there's no turning back.

Vit Lyoshin (51:38.382)
Vit Lyoshin (51:49.89)
Yeah, yeah. No, I like this idea. I think it's really true. that more and more people use invoice as an input. So I I think it's coming to life rather quickly, yeah. All right. Okay, Krystian, thank you very much for your time today. It's been great talking to you and we'll stay in touch.

Krystian (52:08.274)
Thanks. Thanks for the conversation. Bye.

Vit Lyoshin (52:11.801)
Thanks, bye.