Smooth

What do they actually do

Smooth provides a hosted browser-automation API that opens web pages and performs clicks, typing, and navigation on behalf of your code. It’s delivered as a serverless API with SDKs and a web Playground where you can watch runs and fetch results programmatically (homepage, Quickstart).

The product includes features needed for production web automation: persistent sessions to keep logins/cookies, custom proxy configuration, automatic CAPTCHA handling, and elastic scaling on demand (Docs, Introduction). Pricing is usage‑based at $0.005 per agent step with free and paid plans (Starter, Growth, Enterprise) visible on the pricing page (Pricing, Plans docs).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Developers building scraping or automation pipelines: Headless‑browser scripts are brittle and break on logins, CAPTCHAs, or minor UI changes. They need persistent sessions, proxy support, and automatic CAPTCHA handling so runs don’t require constant babysitting (Docs — Intro/Guides).
• E‑commerce or growth teams monitoring competitors, prices, or social channels: At scale they get blocked/rate‑limited and face the overhead of running many browsers. They want an API that handles proxying, sessions, and scaling for them (Pricing, Guides).
• Finance/accounting/data teams extracting invoices/statements from gated portals: Manual copy‑paste or fragile scripts across many vendor/bank sites are slow and unreliable. They need dependable, logged‑in automation that returns structured results securely (Guides, Enterprise features).
• QA and test engineers running end‑to‑end browser tests: Tests are flaky and slow to debug. They need reproducible runs with an inspectable playback URL and programmatic results for actionable failures (Quickstart/Playground).
• Enterprise IT/platform teams evaluating internal automation vendors: Security, compliance, SSO/SAML, BAA, and deployment controls are required before production use. They need single‑tenant/on‑prem options and SLAs (Enterprise pricing).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Recruit early adopters from GitHub, YC network, and automation communities, offering hands‑on Playground onboarding and 30–60 minute guided builds; convert with personalized support and trial credits (Quickstart, GitHub).
• First 50: Publish ready‑to‑use guides/templates (invoices, gated portals, price monitoring) and example repos/integrations (e.g., n8n/Zapier), then distribute via targeted developer communities and paid search; use small case studies and referral credits to drive inbound (Guides, Pricing & integrations).
• First 100: Run short sponsored pilots with finance, e‑commerce, and QA teams that need SSO/BAA or on‑prem; assign an engineer to remove integration friction and close with clear SLAs and deployment plans. In parallel, sign integrations with automation platforms/marketplaces to capture platform‑first teams (Enterprise, Docs).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

A broad ceiling for anything touching browser automation is about $36.6B in 2024, combining web‑scraping (~$0.7B), RPA (~$18.18B), and automation testing (~$17.71B) markets (web scraping, RPA, automation testing).

Bottom-up calculation:

A realistic browser‑centric SAM is roughly $3.5–10B today. One illustrative split: ~80% of web‑scraping (~$0.56B) + ~30% of RPA (~$5.45B) + ~20% of test automation (~$3.54B) ≈ ~$9.6B, with a conservative floor at ~10% of the combined markets (~$3.6B) (sources, RPA, testing).

Assumptions:

• Large share of modern scraping requires real browsers (JS‑heavy, logged‑in sites).
• A meaningful portion of RPA spend is browser/UI automation within web portals and SaaS UIs.
• Only part of testing spend is browser E2E; rest is mobile/API/other tooling.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Browserless: Managed headless browsers and REST APIs for scraping, screenshots/PDFs, and automation, with session reconnects and a large browser pool for scaling (site, REST APIs).
• Browserbase: Cloud browser infrastructure geared for AI agents and automation use cases (workflow automation, web scraping) with SDKs and templates (site, docs).
• Apify: Platform to build, run, and host web scrapers/automations (“Actors”) with SDKs, proxies, monitoring, and professional services for managed builds (site).
• Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub): Full‑stack web scraping API and services with built‑in anti‑ban, headless browser rendering, and AI extraction; emphasizes legal/compliance posture (site, Zyte API).
• UiPath: Enterprise RPA platform with extensive UI/browser automation capabilities (Studio Web, UI Automation activities) used for web workflows and testing at scale (web automation overview, docs).