Dave Goldberg honored as the great connector
Tech leaders, Obama remember lost friend
Long after the crowd gathered for Dave Goldberg ’s memorial service had left the auditorium at Stanford University on Tuesday, one friend of the Survey-Monkey CEO sat in the shade of a pine tree trying to make sense of things.
Goldberg ’s passing Friday due to an accident while exercising in Mexico left his wife, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and two children without a husband and father and cast a shadow on this perpetually sunny landscape.
But it was more than that for Chris Tsakalakis, who met his pal “Goldie” in 1989 when they were new consultants in the Boston offices of Bain & Company. One of the greatest losses of Goldberg ’s death was the impact his absence will have on Silicon Valley decades down the road.
“Twenty years from now, the deficit we will have in our community at large as compared to if he had been here will be noticeable,” says Tsakalakis, who until last December was president of eBay-owned ticket broker StubHub. “He was simply one of the best people I knew, someone who helped me at every turn in very real ways. And I bet you many people inside that memorial today were helped by him in just the same way.”
Tsakalakis looks down. “I look back now and think how blessed I was to know him,” he says. “And perhaps I also feel a little bit guilty that I never gave as much as I got from him.”
Such sentiments square with the various online reminiscences and tributes to Goldberg, whose death Friday while vacationing in Punta Mita, Mexico, seems as improbable as it is stunning.
Goldberg died as a result of an accident on a treadmill at a vacation retreat near Puerto Vallarta. The prosecutors’ office in Nayarit state told USA TODAY that Goldberg appeared to have lost his grip on the equipment’s railings, fallen backward and hit his head.
The hastily arranged memorial drew a full house in the 1,700seat auditorium on the palm-studded Stanford campus.
President Obama posted a heartfelt tribute. “David Goldberg embodied the definition of a real leader — someone who was always looking for ways to empower others,” read the post on the White House’s Facebook account. “His skills as an entrepreneur created opportunity for many; his love for his family was a joy to behold, and his example as a husband and father was something we could all learn from.”
Also on Tuesday, Sandberg added a post to her Facebook page: “Dave was my rock.”
Goldberg was known for his friendliness, mentoring and his advocacy for women. After Tsakalakis took leave of StubHub late last year, he looked for guidance from a range of friends — but none more so than Goldberg.
“I looked around that auditorium today, and all I could see were people that I knew because of Goldie,” he says softly. “Like someone inside said, ‘ He was a mensch.’ Truly.”
“His love for his family was a joy to behold, and his example as a husband and father was something we could all learn from.”
President Obama