Meet The Inventors: David Friend of Wasabi On How To Go From Idea To Store Shelf
David Friend is the co-founder and CEO of Wasabi.
By Tyler Gallagher
Don’t be afraid to compete with companies that are bigger than you. Just because they are bigger doesn’t mean they are the best at everything. This has proven to be very true with Wasabi when it comes to competing against hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure.
As a part of our series called “Meet The Inventors”, I had the pleasure of interviewing David Friend.
David Friend is the co-founder and CEO of Wasabi, a revolutionary cloud storage company. David’s first company, ARP Instruments developed synthesizers used by Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and even helped Steven Spielberg communicate with aliens providing that legendary five-note communication in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
David founded or co-founded five other companies: Computer Pictures Corporation — an early player in computer graphics, Pilot Software — a company that pioneered multidimensional databases for crunching large amounts of customer data, Faxnet — which became the world’s largest provider of fax-to-email services, Sonexis — a VoIP conferencing company, and immediately prior to Wasabi, what is now one of the world’s leading cloud backup companies, Carbonite.
David is a respected philanthropist and is on the board of Berklee College of Music, where there is a concert hall named in his honor, serves as president of the board of Boston Baroque, an orchestra and chorus that has received 7 Grammy nominations. An avid mineral and gem collector he donated Friend Gem and Mineral Hall at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
David graduated from Yale and attended the Princeton University Graduate School of Engineering where he was a David Sarnoff Fellow.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
Yes. Here are a few highlights: I grew up in a house full of engineers, and was lucky enough to have a great basement lab from the age of 6 and on. At the age of 19 I actually received my first patent for an R-C Active audio filter now known as the “Friend filter” or the “Deliyannis-Friend” filter. When I wasn’t experimenting in the lab, I was studying classical piano which I continued throughout my childhood.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is from my 100 year-old-friend, Jack. It’s “Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.” These are things I try to prioritize in my life, and words I try to live by.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
The book for me is “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher, who was a professor of law at Harvard Law School. What I appreciate about the book is that many people see life as a win-lose, zero-sum proposition, but Roger Fisher’s famous Negotiation Project teaches you that winning is not about the other person losing.
What was the catalyst that inspired you to invent your product? Can you share the story of your “ah ha” moment with us?
Storing all of the world’s data is an ambitious undertaking. After 12 years of building cloud storage at Carbonite, my co-founder and I realized that we could build cloud storage that was far cheaper and faster than anything available from the hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. It was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up!
There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How did you overcome this challenge?
For me, it’s all about focus. No matter how big you are as a company, you can’t be “the best” at everything. At Wasabi, what we focus on is being the world’s best cloud storage vendor. Our cloud storage is just like Amazon’s, so there’s nothing new about the idea. But where we stand out is that our offering is 1/5th the price with a very different business model. It’s all about raising enough money and having a team that can execute. And focus, focus, focus.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
People should not get hung up on if an idea is new or not. I like a good idea, especially if somebody else has already proven that. Then go do it better, faster, and cheaper.
Did you have a role model or a person who inspired you to persevere despite the hardships involved in taking the risk of selling a new product?
I have an alternative take on this question. In my opinion it’s not risky if you surround yourself with people who know what they are doing and you are willing to listen to their advice. And I don’t view it as a hardship at all. I prefer it over having a more secure, predictable job, but not everyone has that luxury.
For the benefit of our readers, can you share the story, and outline the steps that you went through, from when you thought of the idea, until it finally landed on the store shelves? In particular we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
We sell cloud storage through 4,500 channel partners consisting of value-added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs), and communications service providers (CSPs). These partners have tens of thousands of sales people calling on tens of thousands of customers, and commerce takes place between these sales people and their customers. Ultimately what gets sold is the product that fits the customer’s needs, is easy to sell, and makes money for the salesperson.
In Wasabi’s case, we knew that everyone needs some amount of data storage. So we asked ourselves, what would make someone buy our product over a competitor’s offering? We found that a lower price and higher quality is a good start, but ultimately margin for the reseller is what seals the deal. It’s important to understand what motivates the salesperson and the customer, and then optimize for both.
As for patents, they are a good defense tactic, but I personally prefer businesses where success hinges on experience, access to capital, and extraordinary execution.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I co-founded my first company right out of college called ARP and we made synthesizers for rock bands. We sold a synthesizer to the rock band Steely Dan but it unfortunately broke down during one of their recording sessions. So they called me up in the middle of the night just so I could hear them nailing my synthesizer to the wall of an LA recording studio by driving a spike through the middle of it.
This made me realize that customers don’t really care about you, they care about themselves and what your product does for them. Nobody’s going to thank you when your product works, but they will call you in the middle of the night when it doesn’t. I also learned that I wanted to stay away from the music business.
The early stages must have been challenging. Are you able to identify a “tipping point” after making your invention, when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
In general I have found that a good business should be like a machine: you put a dollar in the top, turn the crank, and 3 or 4 dollars should come out the bottom. When you’re first starting off, only a nickel comes out the bottom. But when you reach the point when a dollar comes out the bottom, then it’s time to find a big bucket of money to dump in the top while you turn the crank as hard and fast as you can. That’s the tipping point, and that’s when the nature of the business changes.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Invented My Product” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Don’t be afraid to compete with companies that are bigger than you. Just because they are bigger doesn’t mean they are the best at everything. This has proven to be very true with Wasabi when it comes to competing against hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure.
2. Take others advice with a grain of salt. Over the course of the six companies I have founded/co-founded, with every new venture I received many warnings from people who turned out to be wrong. For example, “You can’t compete with IBM.” “Nobody will give you money for that idea!” “Microsoft will do the same thing.” It’s important to listen to others’ advice, but also don’t believe everything you hear and take everything with a grain of salt.
3. Trust your gut when it comes to your ideas. Along the same lines, when others try to instill doubt in you, trust your gut. Over the years I’ve learned to trust my experience and instincts and it’s gotten me very far.
4. You don’t have to be the first to market if you have a great business plan. No matter what there will be competition for a good idea. It’s all about how you execute on it and differenative your company and product.
5. Embrace your distribution channels. Most companies tend to go to market with a direct sales model and underestimate the power of their distribution channel when they’re first starting out. For many tech companies a channel strategy can help them grow much faster and reach more customers.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Before you invest too much time and money, do your research and try and gauge if anybody is going to care about your product. Start small and ask someone, “If I could sell you X, would you buy it for this price?” If yes, how many other people are out there who also say “yes?” There are already too many solutions out there looking for problems. My advice is to do your market research before you write your first line of code. Ask and listen.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I’m unfamiliar with invention development consultants, but do know that if you have a marketing idea, for example, but not the technical expertise to back it up, it may be helpful to have a consultant to tell you if it’s possible to build the product. Other than that, I don’t see much value in how a consultant would help with the process of innovating.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
While I admire people who can bootstrap a business, it’s not for me. My success has come from using capital as a weapon in the marketplace. The better track record you have at gainfully deploying capital, the more capital you can raise in the future. Generally speaking, you can use capital as a tool to hinder your competition. And in the end, I’d rather have a small slice of a big pie than a big slice of a small pie. I prefer my companies to have an impact.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I have used my success to support other passions of mine such as the David Friend concert hall at Berklee College of Music, and the David Friend Hall of Gems and Minerals at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. I’m also the proud principal benefactor of Boston Baroque, the first period-instrument orchestra in the US with 7 Grammy nominations and over 25 CDs. My foundation supports many arts organizations in Boston. I am also a long-time trustee of the Brookings Institution, where I help to promote public policies based on science and scholarly research.
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would love to see the arts restored to a position of prominence in public education. I believe humans need music and art, and that art makes us human. The need for music and art cuts across race, religion, national origin, and politics, and is a uniting force.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Yo-Yo Ma, the world’s greatest cellist. We’d never run out of things to talk about.