Will Friend, who led online commercial real estate events and news company Bisnow for the past seven years, was killed by a lightning strike over the Fourth of July weekend in North Carolina.
The 33-year-old CEO was struck while out near Masonboro Island outside Wilmington on Sunday afternoon, according to local authorities. New Hanover County Sheriff's deputies and emergency medical personnel tried unsuccessfully to revive Friend, said sheriff spokesman Lt. Jerry Brewer.
Brewer said it's unclear whether Friend was struck "on a boat or on the island."
Bisnow founder Mark Bisnow, who sold the company in 2016, said Friend's death has left him "heartbroken and devastated," adding in a text message to CoStar News, "We knew Will when he was still in high school and watched him grow. So proud of what he did, and so sorry beyond words for his family and friends."
Friend started his career at Bisnow recruiting staff in 2010. He became CEO in 2015, the year before Mark Bisnow sold the company to The Wicks Group, a New York City-based private equity firm.
Executives at Bisnow and Wicks did not respond to email and telephone messages seeking a comment. The publication confirmed his death in an article.
Friend had been married to Bevin Prince, a SoulCycle instructor and an actress on the 2000s television series "One Tree Hill," since 2016, according to the Bisnow article on his death. It added that the couple moved to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, during the pandemic to be near Prince's family.
Born in the United Kingdom, Friend left his family in Harrow in Greater London at 15 to attend St. Albans School, a private all-boys day and boarding school in Washington, according to an earlier Bisnow article.
After graduating from St. Albans in 2006, Friend attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business and marketing, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In 2016, the year after Friend replaced Ryan Begelman as Bisnow CEO, Begelman took to Friend's LinkedIn profile to tell of the role he played in expanding Bisnow.
Begelman said in his LinkedIn post that Friend helped expand the company and “eventually helped lead the sale of the company to private equity firm Wicks Group for over $50M. He built Bisnow's human resources and recruiting department from scratch, ran our events and sales arms, helped evolve our accounting capabilities, scaled and improved our operations, and rose to replace me as CEO."
Founded in 2005 in Washington, Bisnow operates in 50 markets across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Ireland.