Founder Leadership

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Brett Schulman

Cava CEO Brett Schulman isn’t your typical founder. Ike Grigoropoulos, Dimitri Moshovitis, and Ted Xenohristos had already opened a couple full-service Mediterranean restaurants and were looking to expand when a friend introduced Schulman, whose expertise was in consumer packaged goods, to them.

For Schulman, delivering results was key to earning the trust of the original founders.

“When I came in to help, I was immediately able to get it profitable and kind of prove my worth, and more importantly, me and the guys hit it off,” he said.

Together, they opened the first Cava in 2011, and today, it has grown to more than 460 locations nationwide. In a conversation with Founder Brew, Schulman discusses what he had to earn before being seen as a true partner, the leadership trade-offs that come with scale, and what he’s had to unlearn while growing the company.

What’s something you’ve had to unlearn as Cava has grown?

You can’t do everything. You have to be very clear and know what matters in the business, and disciplined about not chasing too many things. It’s like the metaphor of driving a little speedboat versus now driving an aircraft carrier. You can’t swing it around too quickly. If you want to innovate and you want to grow, you’ve got all these great ideas, but it’s about how you regulate and stay disciplined, because if you pull yourself in too many directions, you’ll do nothing well.

I’ve learned to be a much better listener and be less hardheaded. In my younger days I was probably a little more stubborn, so it’s helped me gather more information to make more informed decisions.

I’ve had to unlearn how I spend my time, and that I personally can’t be involved in everything. How do I influence outcomes and trust others to affect outcomes that I’m not directly involved in? The business won’t grow if I’m involved in everything.

The bigger the business gets, you have to be able to have great talent and people around that you’re able to direct and influence and hand off responsibility to. I’ve had to unlearn being involved in every decision or being involved in every initiative, and how I can lean on and trust others around me to deliver the outcomes that I believe are going to lead to our success.

Read about how Brett Shulman gained the trust of the original Cava founders.—JH

      

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Starting Your Business

Amelia Kinsinger

So you’ve got an idea for a business. Now you need funding.

Many early-stage founders may not be ready for venture capital. Some may never want to take outside funding. But it takes bucks to build, and there are several funding pathways, depending on a founder’s goals.

But first

Before deciding on a pre-revenue funding option, early-stage founders should ask themselves a few questions: What problem are they trying to solve? Why would customers pay for their solution? And who should be on their team?

“These are the things that you have to have super clear,” Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at VC firm Eclipse, told Morning Brew. “The capital will follow getting those things right, whether it’s venture capital, early accelerator capital, angel capital, or…non-dilutives.”

From there, she suggested that founders look within their networks for people with entrepreneurial experience, including potential angel investors—and they shouldn’t be shy about asking them to write a check.

Read more about pre-revenue funding 101.—JG

      

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Fireworks AI, a Nvidia-backed developer of enterprise AI tools to help companies customize AI models, raised $1.5 billion in Series D funding. Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV led the round. (CNBC)

Wonder, a kitchen operator and meal delivery service platform that owns brands including Blue Apron, Grubhub, and Seamless, raised $650 million in a Series D funding at a pre-valuation of $9 billion. The round has strong participation from existing investors, including Accel, GV (Google Ventures), and New Enterprise Associates. (Restaurant Business)

Walden Robotics, a startup developing general-purpose robots for manufacturing and logistics, emerged from stealth with $300 million in funding at a $1.1 billion valuation. Toyota and Deviation Capital led the round. (Bloomberg)

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Stat: 30%. That’s the share of baby boomer business owners cutting their marketing budgets in 2026 so far, according to UPrinting. Only 6.5% of Gen Z entrepreneurs reported making similar cuts. (UPrinting)

Quote: “We want a lot of small businesses to continue to stay in our corridors, because that is really the backbone of our local economy and really helping our community thrive.”—Supervisor Connie Chan, after announcing a package of policies to protect San Francisco small businesses from rent hikes and rising costs (San Francisco Chronicle)

Read: If you’ve started a business in the last five years, you’re part of a growing trend. Data from the Census Bureau, academic research papers, and reports from B2B vendors all point to a sharp uptick in entrepreneurialism in the United States. (the New York Times)

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