Episode 29: David Friend - Co-Founder and CEO of Wasabi

Welcome to Episode 29 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast of Boston's most trusted source for startup and tech jobs, news, and insights! This episode, I interviewed David Friend, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wasabi. Here’s a fun fact. You know the legendary synthesizer sound to "Baba O’Riley" by The Who? Well, that legendary sound was created by David’s first company, ARP Instruments, which provided synthesizer technology to The Who, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, The Beach Boys and many others. The company was ultimately sold to CBS. As you will find out, exits are a common theme throughout our discussion. David and his business partner, Jeff Flowers, have started five companies together, all of which have been acquired or in the case of Carbonite, that company went public in 2011 and currently has a market cap over $1B. The duo’s current company, Wasabi, is taking on the cloud storage giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft by offering faster storage at a fraction of the price. In this episode, we cover: -David’s entrepreneurial journey through many successful companies -The details on Wasabi and why they aren’t afraid to compete against the giants -Why he keeps building companies, plus the secret to staying young -And of course, a lot of useful advice for entrepreneurs! Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!