Nick Friend was born in early 1980 and grew up in Orange County, California. He is now married and has three young daughters.

He graduated from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California in 2001, with an emphasis in Finance and Investments. In 1998, his sophomore year in college, he founded his first company –a surf/skate clothing line called Schematics.

He has been an entrepreneur ever since.  

Overall, he has been the founder of a handful of startups – some of which went on to do well into 8 figures of revenue annually. Nick’s companies, in aggregate, have sold close to a half billion dollars in products and services.

He was nominated twice for Excellence in Entrepreneurship awards in 2007 and 2008. He is also an angel investor, and has been coaching entrepreneurs of all ages and from all industries for many years.  

As for his direct industry experience. In 2003, he was the sole founder of Breathing Color.  

Today, after 16 years in business, Breathing Color is the largest manufacturer of the finest quality canvas, fine art paper, and other print media in the United States and potentially worldwide. The company sells to over 40,000 fine art printing companies, photo labs, self-publishing artists and photographers, and is represented in over 40 countries.

During his time as CEO of Breathing Color, he had a unique vantage point that gave him special knowledge about the trajectory of the photography and art markets. He got to see which companies were selling the most art because he was selling them the material to print on.

Today, Nick is an owner of Art Storefronts and a success mentor to its members.