[2016-09-18] coindesk.com] Bitcoin and the Brave Future of Browsers

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Bitcoin and the Brave Future of Browsers

The first question I typically ask a founder or co-founders is a simple one: “Why did you name your company X?” I want to know the story behind the name.

In my experience, the best stories, the deepest stories, tend to convey the mission, the ambition, the scope and the culture of the founding team.

For example, I remember walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago with Andrew Mason while he was explaining this new company concept called The Point. My first question was; “Andy, if you tell 100 people to visit ThePoint.com, how many are going to type in Point.com, a domain that somebody else owns?"

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-brave-future-browsers/

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"In the case of ThePoint.com, every marketing dollar spent would have bled off and benefited another domain name – Point.com. And, it was just plain uninspiring.

A week or two later, I met Andrew at the same spot. Andrew seemed like he was bursting at the seams to tell me the new name of the company. He had this dead-honest huge smile on his face when he said “Groupon! We are a group coupon.”

Think what you may of the company over the years, what the startup has or hasn’t become, but I’ll never forget seeing that intense moment of clarity in a founder’s eyes.

I had this same moment recently when investigating Brave, a bitcoin-based content monetization startup. Having launched the first large-scale test of this concept with The Chicago Sun-Times, I had high expectations and some reservations.

But as CEO Brendan Eich spoke of his unique experience in browser knowledge, and why his company might be the one to change the modern browser dynamic, he said in a self-deprecating tone: “I worked for 20 years in the coal mines.”

There are only a handful of individuals on the planet who know how to build a web browser to the extreme – Brendan is one of those. We talked about quite a few things, but most importantly, to me, I asked them to tell me the story behind choosing the name, Brave.

It was riveting, but it also spoke to my own journey with bitcoin as well."