First off, I hope Brave and BAT succeed. I like what I have read so far.

I am posting this to be helpful. I am posting as someone who gave Brave a brief test run. My thoughts might be similar to others who decide to kind of give it a try.

Most of my points are intended as constructive criticism. I am concerned that any combination of these concerns can lose potential users.

-The only reason I even know about Brave is due to my interest in crypto and what I have read regarding BAT. None of my friends or family ever even heard of it before. I understand word of mouth is important, but hopefully there are plans to market it better. Even when I Google the top internet browsers of 2020, Brave is ranked much lower than I was hoping for.

-I use a Chromebook currently, so my experience may be different than a "normal" laptop or desktop. However, the look and feel of Brave is smooth and nice. There are concerns though.

Some people will give up right away when they go to popular websites like Facebook or Gmail and it is too different than they are used to. Again, this might be specific to Chromebook though. Even if the differences are all enhancements, people do not usually want too much change at one time. They need to be eased into something.

Something I feel is a small yet significant difference between Brave and Chrome is; when I open a new tab in Chrome, my cursor is immediately and conveniently in the URL search bar. This is not the case in Brave. Any time I open a new tab, I do not want to have to click in that box before typing. It slows me down.

Maybe I downloaded the wrong version of Brave, but I do not see how to opt in for BAT. I looked at a few brief tutorials and I just do not see the option. I feel a large percent of your market are joining Brave to earn BAT.

Also, at first I was excited to see some frequently used websites pinned to the homepage. However, it seems either not an option or hard to find how to add more websites to pin. I highly suggest just allowing people to pin what they want and maybe even drag them in the order they want.

Overall, I strongly appreciate the privacy and speed aspects of Brave, and it has a slick feel. However, I feel that most people will make a decision within the first five, maybe ten minutes, if they are going to convert. This especially holds true when Brave is not well known among average people. Even when majorly successful websites like Facebook and Google started to gain popularity, I remember many people taking time before joining in, but eventually did mostly out of popularity and then realized why people enjoyed those things more than MySpace and Internet Explorer.

I look forward to hearing solutions to my concerns, but more so my post is trying to take a realistic look at what an average person may think if they ever give Brave a try.

Personally for me, I might eventually switch over. I strongly feel the cursor needs to be in the search/URL bar after opening each tab. That is almost a deal breaker right there. Having trouble opting in for BAT is not a deal breaker for me, as I know once the setting and/or correct version of Brave is installed, it is good from there on out. But for some people, they might not care as much and just return to Chrome or Firefox or whatever. If you can get the pinned websites to be more customizable where people can add many and drag/re-order them, this will likely draw a lot of people. It has the feel of a smart phone with apps. That is a good thing. Websites looking a little different is expected. You will lose some people due to that, but if that is the only "issue", I feel most people will be patient and give it a longer test run to see if they can adjust. Regarding marketing, perhaps you are waiting until you have Brave more perfected, or maybe just relaying on word of mouth and hope for the best?

Again, I am a fan of what I have read so far, and hopefully my insight may help out. Most people want a browser that is intuitive and does not require any research or asking support any questions on why Brave can't do what Chrome does, or how can I get Brave to do this cool thing that Firefox does for me already.

Thank you for taking time to read my first impressions after finally downloading and installing Brave.