About Us
20 July 2025
We're a couple in Lisbon building the browser for people who think differently. No venture capital overlords, no growth hacking nonsense—just 2,000 happy users who choose to support independent software that turns ADHD into a superpower.
2,100 words by Pascal Pixel & Eleanor McKeown
We are Pascal and Eleanor, a couple living in Lisbon1, building Horse Browser from our home offices while eating too many pastéis de nata. We built Horse for ourselves—because traditional browsers weren't designed for how our minds actually work. They pile up tabs, scatter your research, and leave you retracing your steps instead of moving forward. We wanted something better: a browser that remembers where you've been, helps you find your way back, and keeps you focused on what matters.
The story began when I saw Eleanor struggling with her photo library work. She needed hundreds of tabs2 open just to do her job—searching images, cross-referencing sources, managing client requests. Traditional browsers treated this as a problem to be fixed. They'd suggest tab managers, shame the tab hoarding, try to force linear thinking onto a fundamentally non-linear process. But that's like trying to fix creativity itself.
Meanwhile, I was dealing with my own struggles. As someone with ADHD3, I couldn't get anything done in traditional browsers. Every interesting link was a rabbit hole. Every research session ended with 50 tabs and no memory of how I got there. Browsers felt like they were actively working against how my brain naturally operates—following connections, exploring tangents, thinking in webs rather than lines.
So I started building something different. Not another tab manager or productivity hack, but a fundamentally different way of browsing. Tabs are a band-aid4 on a broken design—a 30-year-old compromise from when browsers could only show one page at a time. Horse doesn't try to manage the chaos; it turns it into a superpower. Every link creates a new trail. Every tangent is preserved. Your browsing history becomes a map of how you actually think.
I spent years building other people's dreams. I dropped out of high school, taught myself to code and design, and by my early twenties was making homepages for Silicon Valley startups. My last job was Head of UX at ZeroDown5, doing front-end engineering from my bedroom in Lisbon. But I was tired of building for others. I wanted to build something that solved my own problems.
Eleanor studied history at Oxford, then moved into photo research—working remotely for European agencies6, helping designers and museums find the perfect visuals. It was fast-paced work that required keeping hundreds of tabs open. Every project meant searching across dozens of archives simultaneously. Each search spawned new searches. The modern web was a nightmare for her kind of research.
We met in Lisbon in 2021. When I saw her browser—hundreds of tabs, multiple windows, sticky notes everywhere—I knew exactly what to build. In 2022, I quit my job and started working on Horse full-time. Two years later, it won me Product Hunt's Maker of the Year7 award. Now Eleanor runs community and marketing, helping people discover the browser they didn't know they needed. I handle design and engineering. Together, we're building the future of browsing from our Lisbon home offices.

Us visiting DisneySea Tokyo, the day after we released Horse Browser, and a well deserved break.
We're not just building a browser—we're building a better way to work online. Horse is designed for people who research, write, and think deeply. It replaces tabs with Trails, so you never lose track of where you've been. It helps you stay focused. It works the way your brain works.
We built it for ourselves. Turns out, a lot of other people needed it too8. Especially folks with ADHD. Traditional browsers punish the way ADHD minds naturally work—exploring connections, following interesting tangents, thinking in webs rather than lines. Horse doesn't try to fix this; it turns it into a superpower. Your seemingly chaotic browsing patterns become a rich map of your thoughts. What others see as distraction, Horse sees as discovery.
It started as a tiny project in our one-bedroom Lisbon flat—me coding in the bedroom, Eleanor working at the dining table. Now it's our full-time job, we have proper home offices, and somehow this little browser is helping thousands of people work better every day. That's absolutely crazy9 to us. And wonderful.
Try Horse and see where it takes you!
Footnotes
- We moved to Lisbon in 2021. Thanks to Horse's success, we upgraded from a tiny one-bedroom flat—where I coded in the bedroom while Eleanor worked at the dining table—to a place with proper home offices for both of us.⤴
- Photo research involves searching across dozens of image archives, publishers, magazines, and museums simultaneously. Each search spawns new searches. Each image leads to similar images. It's inherently branching work that browsers were never designed to support.⤴
- ADHD minds don't think linearly. We think in networks, connections, and possibilities. Traditional browsers punish this way of thinking, making us feel broken for not conforming to their rigid, linear structure.⤴
- Tabs were invented in 2001 as a workaround for single-window browsers. They're not a feature; they're a hack. We've spent 20 years building elaborate systems to manage a hack instead of questioning why we need it in the first place.⤴
- Remote work for a Silicon Valley fintech startup. Great mission, great team, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I should be building my own product.⤴
- Remote sales and organization work for photo libraries across Europe. Every project required tracking hundreds of images, sources, and client requirements simultaneously.⤴
- The award was unexpected. I was just trying to build a browser that didn't frustrate me. Turns out, that resonated with a lot of people.⤴
- Nearly 2,000 paying customers as of December 2024. From students managing thesis research to developers navigating documentation to writers tracking sources. Every one chose to pay for a browser that respects how they think.⤴
- We still can't believe people pay for something we built. Every new subscriber email makes our day. We screenshot them and share them with each other like excited kids.⤴