In this discussion, we talk to Michael Foucher, VP of Product at Shift, and Sabrina Banadyga, VP of Marketing at Shift. Shift is a browser that brings all accounts, apps, and workflows together into one seamless online experience. It was founded in 2016 to solve the pain points of managing multiple email accounts and web apps in one browser. Shift evolved by moving from the Electron platform to Chromium, which improved performance and security. The guiding principles of Shift’s browser include leveraging muscle memory from Chrome, providing an intuitive user experience, and meeting users where they are in their internet journey. Shift benefits entrepreneurs, developers, and management professionals who need to organize their work and personal life in one place. Privacy and security are top priorities for Shift, and they have a unique product development process that prioritizes features based on customer value, revenue implications, and development effort. Shift is constantly working on new developments and offerings, including an upcoming version that focuses on app integration and AI functionality.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Shift is a browser that brings all accounts, apps, and workflows together into one seamless online experience.
- It was founded in 2016 to solve the pain points of managing multiple email accounts and web apps in one browser.
- Shift evolved by moving from the Electron platform to Chromium, which improved performance and security.
- The guiding principles of Shift’s browser include leveraging muscle memory from Chrome, providing an intuitive user experience, and meeting users where they are in their internet journey.
- Shift benefits entrepreneurs, developers, and management professionals who need to organize their work and personal life in one place.
- Privacy and security are top priorities for Shift, and they have a unique product development process that prioritizes features based on customer value, revenue implications, and development effort.
- Shift is constantly working on new developments and offerings, including an upcoming version that focuses on app integration and AI functionality.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and Background of Shift
03:08 – The Evolution of Shift’s Browser
08:15 – The Pain Points Shift Solves: Managing Multiple Email Accounts and Web Apps
12:10 – The Guiding Principles of Shift’s Browser
15:55 – Who Benefits from Using Shift?
18:23 – Factors to Consider When Choosing a Web Browser
22:56 – The Future of Browsers and Shift’s Unique Approach
33:18 – Shift’s Product Development Process and Prioritization
41:16 – Upcoming Developments and Offerings from Shift
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:05)
Hello everyone. And welcome to the SourceForge podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton, Senior Editor and Multimedia Producer here at SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. We have two guests here today to talk about Shift a company that is rethinking the modern browser to bring all of your accounts, all of your apps and your workflows together into one seamless online experience. So to talk more about that, we have the VP of Product for Shift, Michael Foucher, and we also have Sabrina Banadyga, VP of Marketing at Shift. So we have a lot to cover today. Welcome you two. Thank you for joining us.
Michael Foucher (00:46)
Thanks for having us.
Sabrina Banadyga (00:47)
Yes, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Beau Hamilton (00:49)
Michael, I want to start with you. Could you kind of start by sharing the story behind how Shift was founded and what its journey has been so far?
Michael Foucher (00:56)
Yeah. The story is typical of many applications that start. It was scratching my own itch. I was managing multiple projects at our parent company, Redbrick. And we would spin up all these different products. We would create email domains. And I was having to manage all of these multiple email domains. And I really, we had often defaulted to G-Suite or Google Workspaces.
And, but having to manage all of those in one browser was very difficult at the time. Get logged out, get logged in. It was just a terrible experience. But I really liked the web interface. So I was trying to think of a tool that we could use that combined everything, but allowed you to switch between your multiple workspaces. And that was sort of how Shift was born, that concept of creating this application that rendered the web interface, but that you could easily switch between all of your email accounts all in that one interface.
And that was the beginning of how we started. And then quickly from there, through early feedback, we added an app directory. When you added your email account, it automatically added your calendar and drive associated with that account, whether it was Google or Microsoft accounts. And our early users found that extremely compelling to have that all-in-one interface. And that’s how it started.
Beau Hamilton (02:13)
Wow, interesting. So what was the timeline there? I have in my notes, it looks like you guys were kind of started in 2016. Is that about right?
Michael Foucher (02:21)
Yeah, so we released our version one in late December of 2016. And that initial version was very basic. It literally was just switching between email accounts, no app directory, nothing. But we took that first year getting feedback from users. And then we launched our version two in November of 2017. And that was the one that included our first app directory, which at the time only had less than hundred apps in it. And you could then add, we added Microsoft support in that version and yeah, and yeah, then just grew from there.
Beau Hamilton (02:50)
Wow. So, okay. So that’s, we’re going on almost a decade now. Could, could you sort of elaborate on how Shift has evolved from when it started back in barely 2016 to where it’s become now in 2024?
Michael Foucher (03:04)
Yeah, we started off and you know, I would imagine with your, your customers the people who know probably a bit more technically focused, we started building our product on the Electron platform, so we were cross-platform using the Electron framework and It had some limitations and we were on that for almost six years six to seven years until about three and a half years ago, we moved from electron on to the onto build on top of Chromium. And that had a couple of major benefits. One, it was much more performant. And two, it allowed us to take advantage of the incredible security and update mechanisms and focus that’s part of the Chromium platform. So we were able to leverage that.
And so we’ve been on Chromium now for close to three and a half years, and there was no looking back. So there’s been a lot of change and we’ve had a lot of features and functions, but from a platform perspective, that was kind of how we evolved.
Beau Hamilton (04:03)
Interesting. Yeah, I want to hear some more about kind of the philosophy behind what sort of got you to start this venture. What were some of the pain points or the problems that Shift started out to kind of solve? Do you think that the browser experience is broken? What? Sorry, there’s a few questions here, but what is Shift doing with its browser that you don’t see from other browsers out there?
Michael Foucher (04:28)
Well, let me first focus on what we sort of landed on that really seemed to solve like the initial pain point that I had, which was the ability to maintain all these multiple email web-based email accounts in one interface without getting logged out and logged in. By creating these partitioned spaces between each of these logins allowed people to smoothly add all these email accounts and know that when they move between them, they weren’t going to get logged out. Or if they opened up a Google Doc, it would open it up and not, you’re not logged into that account. That was the initial solve. And we found that there was a portion of the market that really loved that.
But the other pain point that we saw as we started doing that, because we created this partition between their email accounts, we recognized that there was a lot of value in segregating each of those into the individual workspaces, as we call them. So for example, if you have an account that’s tied to your work email, you probably have several apps that you use at work that may use Google as the auth provider to log into that account. And what we found is people really love that because they would add those apps into that workspace. And when they clicked on the app, you know, it say, do you want to log in with Google? Sure. You click. It already had those credentials in that workspace. So it was a, a two click thing and you’re into that app and that workspace kept those credentials and it allows you to easily log into that account and wouldn’t log you out. If it did log you out, it would just quickly, do you want to log in with this account? You just click it and you’re back in working. So that was another pain point that we solved, people adding unique apps to each of their workspaces that are probably tied to a specific email account. So that was another solution we had. So that was the integration of the apps and the tools in the space.
The other thing that we solved was going back to the general browser workspace. There are many great browsers out there, Chrome being one of them, and we are built on top of the open source project Chromium, which Chrome comes from. So it is a great foundation. You know, they work hard to make it performant, secure, and less memory intensive as they can. But the interface that most of the general browser companies make are designed for the general user. You know, everyone knows a browser, they have all these tabs that they create, they have bookmarks, they have an input bar. But as we’ve evolved over these last particularly accelerated in the last 10 to 15 years is that no one is building native apps, particularly on the windows platform. Everyone’s building web apps. So people have become overwhelmed with these apps, these web apps.
So now when you, you know, you get on a zoom call or some sort of web comp, people have to share their desktop and their browser. There’s almost a bit of shame for some people because they’ve got 150 tabs across the top. And when we were talking to our customers, this was another problem that we were solving. They were able to move many of those tabs that they had in their browser, and they could move them into Shift, and they could group them into these different workspaces where it no longer became overwhelming. Where you had 150 apps open, now you could group them into your different workspaces and you didn’t spend all this time searching for a tab that you knew was open. Now it was, you know, it lowered the cognitive load so that you could go, okay, I know where that is. It’s in this workspace, it’s here. It’s here rather than, where is it in my tabs? And that was a real, another pain point that we came across that we solved. And that was huge.
Sabrina Banadyga (07:54)
And I think further to that, Michael, is that the amount of hours that you’re actually wasting, you know, switching between tabs and there’s studies out there that say that like it’s about an average of four hours a week that people are wasting and to think of what you could do with those additional four hours without all of that context switching from one tab to another, helping to organize the ways of working or the ways of living. It’s not just work that’s done using a browser. It’s also different aspects of your life, whether that’s a hobby or whether that’s social media, various different aspects of…if you’re a parent. There’s a whole other level of organization that happens that you use the internet for. it’s really kind of saves time and helps you actually get off your computer so you can get out and actually enjoy your life off the screen.
Beau Hamilton (08:43)
It’s so true. it’s so frustrating trying to find a tab that you’re looking for. And this is a daily occurrence for me where I have, I’m like one of those users where I have like 100 tabs open and maybe not that many, but a lot of tabs open when I’m trying to always find the right one shifting between webpage after another. And it’s just like, I get hard on myself because I just get frustrated.
Michael Foucher (09:08)
Yeah, it’s a real pain point that we solve. And, you know, I’ve looked into some research that there are people who, and some of the research I’ve looked at, people are afraid to even close tabs because they’ve done research or they’ve done a bunch of work and they’ve opened tabs for some particular task at some point, like a week ago. They know it’s up there and they’re like, I should close some of these tabs, but I know there’s something up there.
And so they are reluctant to even close the tabs, but yet the time, it’s also an overwhelming thought to go through the tabs to find what they were working on before. So it’s a bit of a catch 22. And I think by us providing this sort of scaffolding for people to put things into places that they can manage is part of our special sauce that we deliver to people. And we hear it loud and clear from our users that that’s what they like.
Sabrina Banadyga (09:53)
We’ve called those the emotional support tabs.
Michael Foucher (09:56)
Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (09:56)
Emotional support tabs.
Sabrina Banadyga (09:57)
Can’t really get rid of them because you don’t know what’s going to happen if they go away.
Beau Hamilton (09:59)
I like it.
Michael Foucher (10:00)
Yeah, we sort of, you know, I always liken it to, you know, we bring calm out of tab chaos.
Beau Hamilton (10:07)
And you bring calm out of via user experience and intuitive design, which is really leading to my next question here, because that’s such a vital element for any web browser and just for adoption. If it’s not intuitive, if it’s not user friendly, I know personally I start getting averse to it. I get the ick. I want to just switch back to something I’m more familiar with. So what are some of like the guiding principles that shape how Shift’s browser is crafted? Both for casual and power users. And how do you try to bridge that gap?
Michael Foucher (10:42)
Yeah, so one of our guiding principles is that we try to leverage as much muscle memory as there is out there, particularly from Chrome and Chromium. So when you can use our application, and you can tell visually it’s different, but all the elements are there. And all the keyboard shortcuts that you’re used to in Chrome work, you know, adding new tab, adding a bookmark, closing a tab. You know, we make sure we keep all of those same things so people feel that comfort level.
When they import their bookmarks into our product, bookmarks look the same. When you go into our settings, it looks different than Chromium settings, but all the things you’re used to are there because we’re based on Chromium. But we really rely on that sort of comfort level.
And then we allow people to explore as their needs expand, our product sort of meets them where they’re at as an internet user. So you can use our product and it looks and acts just like a normal browser. And you can be in a default workspace and not even see it. It’s just you’re, you’re just working on the browser. But as soon as you need to add, say a workspace for your home account or one for your hobby or your volunteer group, you can easily add them and move between them. And that becomes kind of easy, and then we guide you on how to add apps in each of those workspaces. So we don’t push it into people’s faces. We hope that they find it and discover it as their needs change while they’re using the internet.
Beau Hamilton (12:08)
OK so yeah, if you’re coming from the Chrome browser, which I imagine most people will be, you’re going to be right at home, sounds like. You’re going to kind of find some familiarity.
Michael Foucher (12:20)
Yeah, we really work hard to do that. We also have a very unique onboarding experience as well, we feel, that also guides you and sets you up in a way that’s perfect for your needs. We ask in our onboarding process if you’re willing for us to import your Chrome bookmarks and all your Chrome data, not all of it, but most of it. And if they say yes, we actually on the, during the onboarding experience, we look through your history just locally. We don’t on the servers, just happening to the client. We look to see if you’ve logged into web email accounts. And then we present them to you. Do you want to add these email accounts to Shift? You can say yes or no. But if you do, they’re all added. And then we also look through apps that you may have visited and used often. And if they match to our app directory, we sort of pre-check them and ask you if you want to add those.
So we try to make that onboarding experience based on your current day-to-day usage of Chrome, and then bring that into Shift, but present it in a way that’s not overwhelming. We take all those apps that you have in those 100 tabs, and we move them into a workspace. And so we try to make that move over very seamless.
Beau Hamilton (13:28)
That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Kind of focus it on for the focus it to the user that’s using the browser. What, you know, I want to, I want to send it over to Sabrina as the marketing guru, the person, the people person for Shift. Could you maybe expand upon some of kind of the points Michael was saying and talk about who exactly might benefit from using Shift.
Sabrina Banadyga (13:52)
Yeah, well, every marketing person never wants to hear or say, well, this product is for everybody. And ultimately, that’s certainly not how we market. Although it really can be, in that, what Michael was saying about meeting the user where they’re at, you don’t have to be a super techno file to be able to use the product. And you also don’t even need to use the entire product and, you know, the unified calendar and some of the maybe more advanced features that you might not even ever need. But if we can be that ultimate power browser, which is what our tagline is, what we mean by power browser isn’t just that we’re, we just want to compete in the browser space.
It’s very much like we’re beyond a browser. It is using productivity and weaving that into the reason why we’re here to really ultimately help our customer experience a different way of being online. And how we do that is really unique. So who benefits from that outside of everybody would be more of those entrepreneurs, the individuals that are maybe marketing individuals, or they’re developers, or they’re designers, and they might have multiple clients, that they actually, there is a bit more of a demand on having more productivity focus or being able to organize your work life and your personal life all in one. It’s certainly we have a bit of a niche. We focus on communicating to more of the tech enthusiasts mainly because a lot of the mainstream audience does look to tech enthusiasts to inspire what’s the next cool product to use to really help. So while we focus on those early adopters and those tech enthusiasts, there’s really a lot in there for everybody really.
Beau Hamilton (15:56)
Hmm. Yeah. Where do you see the browser going, you know, in the next maybe decade or even beyond? Because I mean, right now you see some browsers really taking a privacy-first approach. You see some startups working on just kind of changing the overall design, largely with tab management. You guys, I feel like your approach is integration with services and kind of managing all the different services that somebody uses both for work and personal. Where do you just see it going? And do you think the web is changing? You mentioned web apps are becoming more popular.
Michael Foucher (16:39)
Yeah, I think it’s, I mean, I can’t predict exactly where things will go, but I am sure of a few things. I think if privacy and security are not job one for all of the browser competitors out there, they won’t be in the market for very long. I think that is becoming so clear for people that that is just kind of they have to feel it, they have to know it, they can’t just, you know, there will always be people who don’t care that much, but I think for most people that will be table stakes work that you need to do. I think that there are, Chrome and Chromium are so dominant in the space, that their design and layout, and Firefox follows much the same, Microsoft Edge is the same, well, it’s built on top of Chromium as well, but Opera, Vivaldi to some extent, they all following very much the same sort of common browser layout, which we do as well. We are leveraging that muscle memory that people think of. There are tabs at the top. Ours are in a slightly different position, but around there, there’s an input URL input bar. There’s a bookmark bar.
And there is just a familiarity there that doesn’t meet the needs of most people today. I think right now it does. And there are some interesting, different takes on it. You can see that with Arc is taking a much different approach and it’s unique and it’s interesting, but it’s quite a massive change. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s where things will coalesce. I think there will always be a group of people that will take the time to learn that new interface.
I think where we will evolve is by using everyone’s talking about AI and AI functionality, but really, and that will be in the products, but it will be plumbing. It will be things that happen where you open up a bunch of tabs and you will have a feature that will just group them automatically based on some set of criteria that the AI has figured out and you’re okay with, and it just groups them for you. And it works. It just makes sense. Like you don’t even think about it. Just does it.
But I imagine it will group them for you and it will make sense and you’ll go, yeah, great. And you won’t even think about it. And if you want a summary of everything, great. If you open up, you’re doing some shopping and you open up four or five shopping sites, then a new tab will come up that will take, will instantly create a comparison of all of those items for you and give you a summary of those items.
I think whenever you are writing an input field in a browser, you will have this thing that will pop up and it will correct it, it will rewrite it for you if you want, it will do all those things and it will just be plumbing and it will be something we expect. But everything will be more organized, more efficient.
And I think that we will also move into a world where everything will become, again, more safe and secure and private. And I think this is what we are moving towards. And I know for us, we are constantly thinking, we talk about these workspaces where people move into these different spaces, but what we haven’t talked about and the other benefit that we found is creating this distraction-free environment.
The other thing we hear loud and clear from our users is by moving your work into these different workspaces. When you move into that workspace, and one thing we’ve worked on is our notification and muting system. So we allow people a lot of control over how they get notified so that when they move to a workspace, they can be in a distraction-free environment. They’re no longer getting notifications from their other workspaces, or we’ve got a setting where if I’m in a meeting, turn off all notifications. You can set that. That’s hugely popular with our users. And I think that’s another benefit of our workspaces is that, okay, I’ve done work. Now I’m working on my volunteer work. I go here, I’m no longer distracted. I don’t see those unread messages. I’m just in this space. And that’s another thing that we bring.
Beau Hamilton (20:42)
Yeah, speaking of the workspaces, and maybe Sabrina, you can answer this. Are there any specific user groups or types of organizations that you would say derive the most value from what Shift has to offer? Because we talked a little bit about the casual and the power users out there and what you’re doing to kind of bridge the gap and reach both of those types of people. But I’m curious if you have any like real world examples of kind of illustrating your ability to reach the different type of users out there.
Sabrina Banadyga (21:12)
Yeah, such a good question. I, taking it further from what I mentioned before, those entrepreneurs, developers, management professionals, they’re all really engaging with Shift. And we look at data in our product and we know for sure that those groups are using our browser three times more than any other professionals. And we see that through who it is, who is engaging with our marketing content out there. We see it with information that we get from our direct users and Michael did mention how it is that we speak to our users and get their insights.
Also, we have a ton of case studies that indicate that people are really looking for those innovative ways that can help them manage their work so that they can actually spend time doing other things. Or if they’re an entrepreneur, rather than trying to organize their life, it’s organized, then they can actually focus on their subject matter expertise rather than getting stuck in the inefficiencies of processes.
While technology is great and all the advances in it. Of course, there’s always that shadow side, which there’s thousands and thousands of apps out there that can, they’re built to help us and the overload of them can actually do the opposite. And so the organization of them really can help make a difference. So, our product does that as well as when we’re speaking to our users, I hear them saying things like, you know, I knew I had this problem. I knew that I was struggling with inefficiencies, not really knowing exactly what was causing it. And once they were introduced to Shift and start using it, it solved a problem that they almost didn’t even know that they had, and that they don’t know how it is that they would function once they’re in it. They feel almost like they’ve lost something if they’re no longer working in Shift or cannot work in Shift any longer, if they happen to take a laptop on a vacation, which of course we don’t ever do. And it happens to maybe be a personal laptop when they’re used to their work laptop and how to function and how to get around it. So it’s definitely become a way of working and we sort of function as that assistant that is there to help you organize things and to help things go a little smoother.
Beau Hamilton (23:44)
Yeah, I’ve just been, it seems like a perfect fit, you know, cause we have every company nowadays with the remote shift that we’ve experienced these last handful of years. We’ve been adopting Teams and Slack and all these, these remote applications. And I feel like it’d be a perfect avenue to kind of integrate that with, with Shift and, you know, help, help spread the help get Shift out there for some of the enterprise users.
Michael, could you kind of, you know, you touched a lot on the development process, but I want to hear a little bit more about some of the nitty gritty features and behind the stuff, behind the scenes stuff you’re working on. Is there anything that you can share that is maybe unique about your product development process? And how would you say you prioritize new features to add to shift?
Michael Foucher (24:32)
Sure. Well, I’ll start with one of the unique features that we have and something we lean into is how we do build our interface in Shift. Building interfaces for browsers is very difficult. For products like Chromium, Chrome, the interface that you see is in a layout language that’s just completely unique to Chrome and it’s all written in C++. That’s why when you see a lot of Chromium variants out there like Brave or even Microsoft Edge and dozens of others, it looks very much like Chrome because to actually alter the interface is extremely hard. You need very well-versed Chromium developers in order to do it.
Now, Microsoft is unique in that they can deploy thousands of people at that and they have done a pretty good job of altering that interface. But for all the other smaller companies, it’s much more difficult. What we do is we have, we’re leveraging a unique system which allows us to draw our interface. We have this empty shell and we’re able to create our interface using standard internet technologies, HTML and JavaScript. And we are able, what is beautiful about that is that we are able to change and alter our interface very quickly. So we kind of have that competitive advantage in that we’re able to create quite a unique looking interface using standard technologies. So number one, that’s one of our differentiators.
The other thing from, you know, more from the product perspective, and how we work with our developers is we’ve deployed a very unique prioritization mechanism internally to help us really focus on working on those items that have the most value to our customers. So we, for every, you know, we call them stories that we create, which are, kind of a unit of work focused on the user. We go through quite a process of assigning both a customer value, a revenue implication value and a development effort value. And we have an equation that we use that applies a certain number to that story. And then we use it to rank. And we’re not strict, it’s a guide and we have other priorities that we have at top. But we found that that has really helped us zero in on working on those items that have the most impact to our end user.
And that’s really allowed us to focus and prioritize our work.
Beau Hamilton (27:02)
Yeah, I imagine, yeah, I imagine that’s quite the task, right? Trying to, trying to figure out which products, which features to move up the list and prioritize.
Sabrina Banadyga (27:14)
Of course, all of marketing’s requests are always…
Michael Foucher (27:16)
Oh yeah, they go to the top of the list.
Beau Hamilton (27:20)
Yeah. Got to prioritize marketing. What is some of the, so as a Shift user now myself, what would you say would be the best channel to communicate my feedback to you guys?
Michael Foucher (27:31)
Yeah, 100% to our customer support channel. We support, our support team reports in to me, they come in on their product and we take that feedback and I, and we have a system where that’s fed up into our systems and where, you know, it’s not, doesn’t go into a black hole. If you’re having an issue, go to our support, and we’ll get back to you. That’s another thing that we think is a key differentiator of our product as a browser company is you can actually reach our support and there are real people there that will respond to you. We have an internal SLA of during working hours, we try to respond within two hours and we’re often meeting that at a 95% plus average and we work very hard at that. For such a small company that we are, you know, I’ve got a five person support team. It’s quite big for our size.
And it’s because we are keen to not…we want to have that connection with our users. And we survey to get CSAT values back. And we work really hard at making sure people are served. Because if they pay for our product and even our free users, we still give them as much support as they need as well. We just think that’s incredibly important. We think it’s another differentiator that you don’t really see in the browser market.
Beau Hamilton (28:45)
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s, that’s great to hear that it’s really important because I mean, we, talked to, many different companies and, you know, of course they mentioned the importance of customer service, but I feel like when for a company like Shift, it’s more important than ever, you know, we talked about the browser market share and how it’s dominated by some of the biggest tech companies in the world. And they integrate their browser with their operating system and their other services. And then just generally speaking, we know that people are generally resistant to change because they get comfortable with how things work, look and function. So it’s no easy task to chip away at that and get people to give you a chance.
So I think that’s great that you’re really listening to users and trying to get them to take the leap and see what Shift is all about. And also just to, yeah, what to improve upon, because there’s always going to be things to improve upon.
Michael Foucher (29:39)
The other thing I should mention is that we also have set up a customer advisory board. We’ve reached out and it’s been running for a couple of years where we’ve reached out to some of our most loyal users and we polled them to see if they want to be part of our customer advisory board. And we meet with them every quarter. We have an active Slack channel with them. We review new features and functions with them before we release to get their early feedback. And so we really tap into that, our users to help us guide the development of our product. So customer is, you know, it’s just not lip service. really kind of, we think we walk the talk.
Sabrina Banadyga (30:17)
Outside of product as well, we definitely use that customer advisory board for marketing and testing messages. And if things are resonating, are we, are we getting it right? Are we a little bit off? Cause I think sometimes we can get a bit myopic when it is. We think we know, but there’s nothing like talking to the user to really get the truth. We can see truth in reviews, which we’re out there on all those review platforms, but ultimately being able to have a dialogue and a conversation is really invaluable from a marketing perspective as well.
Beau Hamilton (30:51)
Yeah, I can imagine it’s great for AB testing and just pushing surveys to try to gauge the audience. That’s really interesting. Well, looking ahead, I know we talked about this a little bit, but we’re coming down to the last couple of questions I have for you. We talked about where you see the browser going in the future. Along those same lines, what are some new developments or offerings from Shift that are on the horizon and that we should be watching for?
And is there any like one particular feature or something that you’re particularly excited about and you want to share with us?
Michael Foucher (31:27)
Yeah, well, we can’t talk about any specifics, but we are working, you know, we’re obviously always working on the next version. And what we are hoping to do at a very high level with our next version, obviously, is continue on providing the most incredible experience for our current users. But we are really leaning in this next version into sort of the app focused browser concept. So you’ll see some really interesting offerings in that space in the next version.
And, you know, as mentioned, I talked a little bit about how, you know, AI will be how it will be part of the plumbing in applications moving forward. And I think that’s although I can’t talk specifics, we will have something in that space as well. And, but I’m just excited that we are moving forward and really, we have this interesting niche group that we’re working with now. And I think in the future, we hope to expand that to an even bigger and broader audience, but still leaning into that ability to transform our interface to meet users where they’re at, we’re also going to be leaning into that concept as well.
Beau Hamilton (32:43)
That’s great. Well, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing all that you guys come out with. And, I like the tease there with the AI and, kind of keeping a tight lip or I won’t pry too much. I’ll try not to, but I’m looking forward to it.
Michael Foucher (32:58)
Sabrina has briefed me well.
Sabrina Banadyga (33:01)
I know. I’m just here to mute him.
Michael Foucher (00:05)
Yes!
Sabrina Banadyga (33:04)
He says anything. I can share one other thing that is quite exciting. is not deep yet. Michael has no idea. No, I’m just kidding.
We have been working on it for a couple of years and it is something that’s going to put us on the map for being the first in the browser space to do this.
And that’s all I’m gonna say.
Michael Foucher (33:25)
Wow, that’s a good tease.
Beau Hamilton (33:26)
Yeah, no, I love headlines like that. Anything I can, the first, the world’s first…
Sabrina Banadyga (33:30)
World’s first.
Beau Hamilton (33:31)
…browser, the best, yeah. Those are the best.
Michael Foucher (33:33)
And I’m glad I didn’t say that because I would have gotten in trouble for even saying that, but the marketing, our VP of marketing can, which is great.
Beau Hamilton (33:39)
All right, well maybe…
Sabrina Banadyga (33:40)
I didn’t say first in what, so.
Michael Foucher (33:42)
No, that’s true.
Beau Hamilton (33:43)
Maybe you can elaborate after we end this. We’ll stay in touch but.
Sabrina, last question I have for you. For those interested in learning more about Shift and maybe giving it a try, where should you send them?
Sabrina Banadyga (33:57)
So definitely Shift.com, click on download, experience it for yourself. We have a lot of really engaging content out there on YouTube. We’ve launched a couple of new YouTube series, one of them called Shift Tips, where we’re just providing you tips on how to make your digital life simpler using our product, but also outside of our product.
You can find us on Instagram and on LinkedIn and we’re on the Reddit now and we are recently growing quite quickly our TikTok audience as well. So lots of places you can find us online and yeah, stay tuned for some fun content upcoming.
Beau Hamilton (34:40)
Awesome, all excited. Shift.com and you guys should all give it a try. Yeah, maybe it’ll be your new main default browser. Well, thank you guys so much for your time. I know you guys are very busy and have to go. So Sabrina and Michael, thank you.
Michael Foucher (34:56)
Thank you so much, Beau.
Sabrina Banadyga (34:57)
Thank you Beau.
Beau Hamilton (34:58)
Of course, this has been a great conversation and hopefully we can have you back maybe, maybe six months or a year or something, we can talk about what has changed in the new features you guys are rolling out.
Michael Foucher (35:07)
Yeah, that would be exciting.
Sabrina Banadyga (35:08)
Sounds great.
Beau Hamilton (35:09)
All right, well, thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I am your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of the upcoming B2B software-related podcasts we have for you. I’ll talk to you in the next one.