In this talk, Brian Friedman recounts his unconventional path from aspiring semi‑professional snowboarder to tech entrepreneur. After a childhood focused on snowboarding, a pivotal conversation with his coach led him to pursue product creation, prompting him to study engineering at Lehigh University. There he circumvented restrictive club rules to launch a technical entrepreneurship club, gaining hands‑on experience with laser cutters, 3D printers, and CNC machines. Through a family connection he learned about Draper University and attended the program in 2013, where he conceived the BuddyBand—a wristband that exchanges digital contact information via physical gestures, aiming to replace business cards. After the program, Tim Draper offered funding and space at Draper University, prompting Friedman to quit college and negotiate a quarterly milestone contract with his father to stay accountable. Over the next three years, BuddyBand evolved into Loopd, a platform for event‑focused wearable technology, culminating in a launch at South by Southwest. Throughout, Friedman shares lessons on leveraging community, iterating from zero to one, and the importance of structured milestones in early‑stage ventures.
Chapters
You could be the guy who is a semi-professional snowboarder. Maybe by age 27 you finish your career. At that point, you don't have a college degree. Maybe you didn't finish high school. However, you have a great community. Or you can be the guy who makes the snowboards. You can make the company that pushes the sport forward. So I decided kind of from that moment I wanted to make products, and I started getting into engineering. Yeah, so I'm super excited to be back here. Yeah, I'm good. I haven't actually been to Draper University probably in maybe 1 to 2 years now. Probably more like 2 years. However, I feel like I was here yesterday. Before, everything was kind of set up this way. So it's definitely, it's moved. Now we have, you know, these lights here, the cameras. It's really nice to be back. So, kind of today, I want to do 2 different things. So first, I'm going to share my story. Then I'm going to kind of talk about my book. And all of you have the book, so I'm not going to read it for you. I'm on basically like a reading series right now where I've been going to different cities and doing different launch events where I basically speak about it. But I feel like after 20 minutes, like I have ADD. I'm like, all right, boring. So I want to make sure that you really get the content. And I was in your shoes in 2012, 2013. I didn't really know what I was doing. A lot of you may have already started businesses. You may be trying to figure out what's next. You may already have a business that you're trying to grow. And for myself, at least, I captured a lot of advice while I was out here, really all because of Draper University. So I'll kind of share how I found out about DU in 2013, how DU helped me, how I got to where I am now, and kind of my next steps going forward. So I'll take a step back. When I was 13, 14, I thought I'd be a professional snowboarder. That was pretty much my trajectory. So my last year of middle school, my parents told me there's this school you can go to in New Hampshire where you can snowboard, and they basically have a place on their varsity team. I'm like, wait, there's varsity snowboarding? That's a thing? I had never heard of that. However, they had a tutor that essentially traveled with me across the U.S. as I went to snowboard contests. After 3 to 4 years of doing that, I broke a bone every single year. Cool. And while my other friends were doing all these, like, double backflips and double front flips, I really, I hit a peak in my game where I could do good tricks for a 13, 14-year-old, but the second I hit 15, 16, 17, I couldn't take it to the next level. So my coach sat me down and he said, you could be the guy who is a semi-professional snowboarder. Maybe by age 27 you finish your career. At that point, you don't have a college degree. Maybe you didn't finish high school. However, you have a great community. Or you can be the guy who makes the snowboards. You can make the company that pushes the sport forward. So I decided kind of from that moment I wanted to make products. And I started getting into engineering. So I went to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. And one of the reasons I went there— well, I was looking for actually the best school that had nanotechnology, rock design and partying. That was a really weird combination. And the reason I say partying is because I went to boarding school, so I didn't really have the high school experience. We had about 250 students. And I've had a lot of friends who've gone from middle school to starting a company, and they've kind of missed this point of adolescence. I think it's really important to grow as an individual, and you need to go through each stage of your life. So at Lehigh University, they have these amazing machine shops. And the first day of class I went in, I wanted to use the laser cutter, I wanted to use the 3D printers, I wanted to use the CNC machine. They said, sorry, you can't do that. And I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, when you're a junior you can use these machines. You have to go through all these hours of training. I'm like, that makes sense. They don't want me to cut my fingers or like let's say even get my foot stuck in something. So I asked them, well, okay, as a freshman how can I get access? And they said, well, you can start a club. However, freshmen, they're not allowed to start clubs. So I said, all right, that's not going to stop me. So I went ahead and we essentially passed a new rule for clubs that freshmen could start clubs. And we started the technical entrepreneurship class. And the idea was we had these different classes as part of our club where we teach other individuals, you know, how to make physical products. So take it really from zero to one rather than just having the idea. You know, how do we use a Raspberry Pi? or an Intel Edison and start making products. So, at Lehigh University, I was in a fraternity, and one of my best friend's fathers was a big entrepreneur and venture capitalist in the East Coast. He'd been working with this guy, Ron Conway, from SV Angels and MC Hammer, which probably many of you have heard of. And through him, I was at dinner, and he said, I got this email from Ron Conway. About this new program called Draper University. And at the time I looked it up, you know, the website was minimal. Now the website's fantastic. You guys have a TV channel. It's really gone leaps and bounds beyond the initial landing page. However, I said, you know what, I'm going to come out here. I'm going to see how I can get that connection within Silicon Valley. If it works for me, great. If it doesn't, I can always go back to my daily life. This was my junior year. Of Lehigh. So I was planning only to come out here for really a month and a half. I wasn't planning to stay out here for 5 years. And that was kind of a big surprise. So many of you, I'm not sure if you still do this in the program, but halfway through we had Biz World. And, you know, we basically had a contest where we had to create a wristband. And the night before, I was reading a blog post about this product called the Buddy Cup. And the Buddy Cup were these beer glasses that when you click them together, you'd exchange Facebook information. And I thought this was super cool because this is still a problem, but all my friends, when I was socializing with them, they'd always be looking at their phone. So either they're messaging someone else, I wouldn't get their full attention, and I always kind of had this in my mind, how do I take some technology and make sure that data physically still gets up there so we can have a great conversation, however all that context is still recorded in the digital world? So I came up with the concept for BuddyBand, and the idea was that you could naturally exchange information. So we wanted to delete the business card. We do that by you shake a hand, you could change LinkedIn on your application. If you bump fists, you could change Instagram. Let's say you're at a music festival, you do a high five, you exchange Spotify accounts. And it was really more, I would say, of a gimmicky idea at first. However, we were really excited about the data behind it. So after the program was completed, Basically, every other student got an offer to stay at Draper University. And myself and my 2 friends, Sambhav and Alan, who became my co-founders, there was silence. And we're like, what's going on? And before we were about to leave, I think Sambhav was actually going to fly back in about an hour afterwards, Tim came to us and said, you know what? I want to give you some funding and the ability to basically be here at Draper University. So I called my parents up. I said, I'm not going back to college. I said, I'm basically going to do this. I can't say what if. And my parents were completely against it. So I negotiated, and I made a contract with my dad, which actually I've pretty much done for 3 months, or every 3 months for the last 7 years of my life, where I say, I'm going to do XYZ. And if I do so, then I can continue going on. So every 3 months, I'd say, OK, we're going to create a prototype. We're going to make sure it's functional. We're going to get our first customer. We're going to get a patent. We're going to get an office. We're going to make sure we have a head of sales. And with my father, I'd basically create these milestones, and we'd go forward. So fast forward 3 years. We basically start Looped as this wristband concept. We then turned it into technology for events. And we launched at South by Southwest. So, Tim, you're a very good storyteller.
