The Friday Interview: David Baron discusses building a business and why he’s still in college

David Baron is creating a couch. “It’s going to be 100 percent biodegradable — technically sustainable, in a way that furniture, when it’s called sustainable, is not actually,” he tells me proudly.

As usual for Baron, he’s setting his sights high: he’s developing a mushroom-based cushion (all-natural, nontoxic and feels like polyurethane, he assures me).

But he’s not going to sell it based on the ethics behind it.

“It has to compete with other couches on the market,” he says. “The customers’ experience with this couch is going to be the best experience for them.

“My personal agenda is what I tie indistinguishably into that product, into the business process, but the consumer doesn’t have to know about that.”

Baron is somewhat of a poster child for innovation at UNC.

In January, the first residents for the Campus Y’s social innovation incubator were picked. Twenty teams applied, and four were chosen, including two founded by Baron. In 2008, he started HOPE Gardens, an urban farm and transitional employment program for the homeless. Last year, he founded SEA Brand, an apparel company best known for hats linked with philanthropic causes.

He’ll be working on SEA full-time after graduation, which makes him the only senior I’ve met who’s created his own job. Not that he faults those off to corporate America: “I was very close to [applying to consulting jobs],” he confesses.

“But when the time would come I would find reasons, like I’m not only less excited about that, but I’m so excited about something else!”

At a time of rising college costs and an uncertain economy, there’s a national debate raging about the value of a degree.

Some, like Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, argue that students like Baron shouldn’t even be in college. I showed him one article telling talented young people that they “don’t have to go” to college, and that “some ideas just can’t wait.”

Baron is not convinced: “As risky as I am — or as some people think I am — everything doesn’t always work out, and I’m not trying to be living in my parents’ basement when I’m 30.
“And I’ve promised my mom I’m going to graduate, and that’s the highest promise I can make… the degree is for my mom,” he laughs.
“But at the same time, the resources, the knowledge and people and institutional bit that UNC connects you with while you’re here are just invaluable.”
He clarifies: “even though I learn better outside the classroom — I always say, outside of the classroom is my classroom — it’s really not the classroom that it is, if it wasn’t for me being able to take my experiences back into the university, into my class work and conversations with professors.”
Baron is a biology major who knew early on he “likely wasn’t going to pursue the stuff [he] was studying,” and he’s a strong advocate for a liberal arts education.
“I look at a lot of things as tools, different classes and departments as different perspectives,” he says.
“I’m not an expert on any one thing, but the experts are here, and I can learn from all of them, and it lets me think about things differently.”
Of course, it helps if more folk on campus understand students who take time off as Baron did to develop SEA and HOPE Gardens.
“Some thought I was dropping out of school. Not a lot of people understood that I was doing it to work hard on something, pursue something that I was not only heavily involved with and excited about, but [also] learning a lot from,” he says, though he’s quick to note faculty who helped him.
Gently modest, Baron contends that his success “is more a function of excitement over intelligence.
“If a student pursues what they’re interested in, I’d like to think things will fall into place.”