Brave is on a mission to fix the web by giving users a safer, faster and better browsing experience – while growing support for content creators through a new attention-based ecosystem of rewards. Much more than a browser, Brave is a new way of thinking about how the web works.
Last time I checked, Benchmark has one board seat? A bit bizarre for them to assert themselves (note the plural) as a benevolent agent for employees. I know 'corporations are people too', but how are employees supposed to respond to this letter? They're not. This is a PR release. Good thing "this isn’t about Benchmark versus Travis."
The CFO inclusion screams IPO, which, consequently, is all this comes down to: money. Benchmark wants to cash out.
Entrepreneurs will still work with Benchmark. Yes, they'll push you out a la Twitter and Uber style, but, at the very least, you'll be a billionaire by the time they do.
In line with Female Founder Stories & the Employee #1 series, it'd be fascinating to hear (un)successful founders' perspectives on previous failures (potential program title: "Start Overs"?), what they would have done differently, if there's still a market for their idea, and what they learned from it for their future successes.
Jobs didn't run Pixar. He was a principal investor and Chairman of the Board, negotiating a few milestones like the sale to Disney, but most of his focus was on NeXT and then Apple. Ed Catmull and John Lasseter ran Pixar's day-to-day ops.
Creativity, Inc. by Catmull covers all this. It paints a better portrait of Jobs than Isaacson's Jobs biography. Plus, you get to read about the history of computer graphics and Toy Story.
The last tidbit I would add is that if you don't get in this round, apply again. And then again. And again (don't use the same application / idea/ company each time). A single application is not going to 'make' your company. Perseverance and applied intelligence will.
FWIW, Einstein was also an avid musician. In Walter Isaacson's biography, "His Life and Universe", Einstein was caught in the middle of a meal when he began to ruminate on the Theory of Special Relativity. His wife described the next two weeks as a solitary exchange between meditation in his office and fiddling on the piano. He credited music to being a source of inspiration and creativity.