The Silicon Valley suddenly lost a legend this weekend. Survey Monkey CEO David Goldberg passed away suddenly Friday night, May 1, 2015. The cause is not yet known. David Goldberg was only 47 years old.
David Goldberg’s death was announced on Facebook Friday night by his brother Robert. David Goldberg was the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The couple raised two children together. Goldberg will be remembered as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and one of the most likable. Mr. Goldberg was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went on to Harvard. He graduated from Harvard in 1989 in history and government. In the years that followed, he worked for Bain & Company, then Capitol Records. In the early 1990s, he started his entrepreneurial career when he and a friend from high school started Launch Media, a digital magazine company. ?In 2001, Yahoo bought Launch Media. He went on to serve as head of Yahoo Music. Around this time, he began dating, and eventually married Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg eventually became one of the most powerful women in the world. In 2007, Goldberg left his lucrative position at Yahoo and became entrepreneur in chief at Benchmark Capital. In 2009, he became the CEO of Survey Monkey. There, he turned a struggling online survey company into a successful $2 billion dollar powerhouse.
But what made David Goldberg so likable was the way he treated others, and the dedicated family man he was. No matter how busy he and his wife were, they always made time for their kids. They were both home between 6-8 pm, and nobody was going to interfere in that. In a world where most insist on success and perfection, he believed in giving employees opportunity to fail and let them learn from failure. When most looked for the most experienced, Goldberg took chances on many fresh out of business school. In an era of conglomerate merger and takeover, Goldberg embraced a small business environment. In just a few years, that formula took a struggling company with 14 employees to a successful one with 500 employees, creating over 25 million surveys. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Goldberg’s family, friends, colleagues, and employees during this difficult time. We here at Computer Geeks invite you to chime in and tell us what lessons can we learn from Mr. Goldberg’s legacy?