Interview with Peter Krumins, CEO and co-founder of Browserling

Today we’re interviewing Peter Krumins, CEO and cofounder of Browserling.

Browserling is an awesome cross-browser testing service that we’ve been using for a long time. We thought we’d ask Peter some questions about it. 

When did you start Browserling and what inspired you to deal with browsers? 
I started Browserling in 2010. I and my friend James Halliday had an idea to make virtual machines usable from web browsers. We wrote this tech that streams desktops of virtual machines to browsers but then we were like, how do we actually make money with this? So we thought, ok let’s try building a cross-browser testing service on top of this code and stream all browsers to your browser. That’s how Browserling got started.

Here are two fun articles on my blog about this. First one is the announcement of the technology that streams VMs to browsers, and the other is Browserling’s announcement.

How did you begin and what are your aspirations for it? 

I’ve been a fan of Paul Graham’s essays since 2003 and I always knew I wanted to do a startup. In 2010 I met James Halliday and he was also a fan of Paul Graham’s essays. We both enjoyed coding so we quickly wrote all the code together and got Browserling going.

There are huge plans for Browserling. I’m building a global team and right now I’ve people from 4 different countries working at Browserling. Two biggest features that we’re soon launching are – Headless API that lets you directly interact with browsers’ JavaScript engines and Screenshots API that lets you capture screenshots through a very neat API.

Who will benefit most from your services? (Which industry/which type of service users are your target) 

Browserling gets used by JavaScript programmers, who want to make sure their JS code works in all the browsers, web developers, web designers, and design studios, who want to make sure their web designs (HTML and CSS) looks and acts the same in all the browsers, and web QA teams, who’re responsible for making sure the whole application works correctly before shipping.

How long does it take to test a website of 10 pages in all available browsers today?

I’d say it takes less than 10 minutes. You just open one browser after another and quickly go through the websites. We’re working on providing better tools for quicker testing. For example, we want to create a tool that loads all browsers at once and provide screenshots first that you can flip through in a minute. 

If someone is interested in using your company's services, how can they engage your services? 

They can just go to www.browserling.com and start testing in a few seconds. We provide a free version for quick testing but if you’re doing more serious testing you can get a full developer plan. People can also tweet us at @browserling, or they can email us hello@browserling.com. We love getting tweets and emails!

Where can they find you? 
People can find me at my blog www.catonmat.net, twitter @pkrumins, or facebook facebook.com/pkrumins. 

Thanks for your time Peter! 

Thanks for interviewing me!