The Difference Engine | B2B Category Design | Private Equity | Venture Capital
Apr 8, 2026 · 35 min · 10 segments
We’re joined by David Friend, co-founder and CEO of Wasabi, for a deep dive into building category-defining tech companies. A six-time founder alongside Jeff Flowers, David’s journey spans pioneering…
Jonathan SimnettHost
Paul MaherHost
One of the things, you know, you talk about orchestration and, you know, being the least, I love that, the least unpresentable one of the crew.
So you basically ended up running the firm, you know, this one man publicity machine, getting that stuff sold.
And there came a point where you thought maybe we should get some external investment in this.
Well, the challenge in ARP was, you know, finding bands to endorse your products before they got so famous that, you know, you couldn't afford to get their endorsements anymore.
And so, you know, I would sit there poring over record sales and airplay statistics and things like that.
Basically, I had my assistant fill in all this data, and then it allowed me to use data visualization to figure out who was likely to be the next band that people were going to be listening to.
One day, I had a venture capitalist in my office to try to raise some money for ARP.
And he wasn't interested in that, but he was very interested in this piece of software that I had developed for the Apple II computer because at that time, there weren't very many CEOs around who had a PC on their desk.
I showed him how I could compare record sales for 100 top bands in California versus 100 top bands in New York City and that sort of thing.
And he said, look, why don't you get out of this synthesizer business And I'll give you a million dollars to seed a company to commercialize that software.
and you know i dismissed it at first but the long story short is uh six months later we sold our to cbs musical instruments and uh and i launched a company called computer pictures with that guy's uh million dollars
i have to say that is what bc's you know historically allegedly think that they do like you know they see something that other people don't you don't hear stories like that very often you don't hear them much anymore i have to say So that was the beginning of my
I've been there ever since and thankful for it, in fact, because the music industry was fun when I was in my 20s.
One of the things, you know, you talk about orchestration and, you know, being the least, I love that, the least unpresentable one of the crew.
So you basically ended up running the firm, you know, this one man publicity machine, getting that stuff sold.
And there came a point where you thought maybe we should get some external investment in this.
Well, the challenge in ARP was, you know, finding bands to endorse your products before they got so famous that, you know, you couldn't afford to get their endorsements anymore.
And so, you know, I would sit there poring over record sales and airplay statistics and things like that.
Basically, I had my assistant fill in all this data, and then it allowed me to use data visualization to figure out who was likely to be the next band that people were going to be listening to.
One day, I had a venture capitalist in my office to try to raise some money for ARP.
And he wasn't interested in that, but he was very interested in this piece of software that I had developed for the Apple II computer because at that time, there weren't very many CEOs around who had a PC on their desk.
I showed him how I could compare record sales for 100 top bands in California versus 100 top bands in New York City and that sort of thing.
And he said, look, why don't you get out of this synthesizer business And I'll give you a million dollars to seed a company to commercialize that software.
and you know i dismissed it at first but the long story short is uh six months later we sold our to cbs musical instruments and uh and i launched a company called computer pictures with that guy's uh million dollars
i have to say that is what bc's you know historically allegedly think that they do like you know they see something that other people don't you don't hear stories like that very often you don't hear them much anymore i have to say So that was the beginning of my
I've been there ever since and thankful for it, in fact, because the music industry was fun when I was in my 20s.
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