Paul Klein IV

Paul Klein IV is founder and CEO of Browserbase, a company in San Francisco, California, that runs web browsers in the cloud for AI agents and automation. He started it alone in 2024, and it also maintains Stagehand, an open-source framework for writing browser agents.

Five hundred applications

Klein studied at San Francisco State University and applied to 500 internships and was rejected by 498 of them, according to a profile in Solo Founders. He got his break when a tech lead at Twilio pulled his resume from the pile, and he went on to spend three years as an engineer there. He then co-founded StreamClub, a startup that let people live stream from a web browser, and served as its chief technology officer until it was sold to the video company Mux.

A web browser for your AI

After StreamClub was sold, Klein wrote a monthly essay about startup ideas, and one of them became Browserbase. “Browserbase is building a web browser for your AI. The future of software is software doing work for you, but everybody does their work using websites and web browsers. Why can't your AI do that?” he said in an Okta founder profile.

He has chosen to run the company without a co-founder. “I do think I am a five-tool founder where I can do soup to nuts, everything you need to do,” he said. He is also frank about the downside. “People often say that your company becomes a mirror of your flaws as a founder. That's totally true,” he said.