Becoming Blisk browser (part 2)

As we wrote in the previous post, we came up with an idea to create our own browser. The browser for web developers.

But after we started showing just our JS library to different customers the majority always asked us one question: do I have to have the devices to test?! This was the key point of what we have never thought about before. And we even did not expect to meet so many people having the same problem.

There are so many small dev teams and freelancers around the globe, who does not have a tablet and a phone to test. Before creating a startup, we did not understand the key pain points of our potential customer. But interviewing people fixed this weak point and our team started brainstorming about the possible ways to how to get out of this situation.

It was not so easy to find the way out for us. The whole team spent almost two weeks brainstorming. Finally, we reviewed the results of our interviews and noticed that so many people were ok about using emulators in spite of real devices. And this understanding changed our project. Because previously our startup targeted using only real devices.

Changing our model to using emulators meant starting the whole project from the very beginning. Because dealing with emulators meanes that you have to create the desktop application. Our concept turned into creating a browser.

None of us had an experience of creating desktop apps. But we managed to build the first prototype ourselves. Of course, only some of its modules were working. But it was enough to start showing our browser to potential customers asking for a feedback. We even presented it on an Estonian investor demo day. In few words, the feedback was great and we were sure that we're on the right way.

We decided to build the browser based on Chromium. Chromium is an open source project by Google. For example, Chrome browser is built on top of it. So, it was a great place for us to start from.

We spent almost three months searching for a Chromium developer. In general, our searches are worth of a separate blog post. Finally, we found an awesome C++ developer who joined our team.