Joyent was founded in 2004. Bryan joined in 2014 - I doubt he had much, if any, say in the sale proceeding or not.

Joyent was likely a part of what convinced Brian Cantrill that a new cloud machine was needed. They had their own stack running on commodity OEM hardware in their own cloud - likely a painful experience, since Brian talks a lot about how much of a difference it makes to own the complete root of trust and everything in it.