Why the World will Miss Dave Goldberg

There are people in this world who are smart, hard working and successful and then there are people who are all that plus they have a kind heart and everybody loves them. 

Dave Goldberg had the kindest of hearts. He loved helping entrepreneurs and giving back to the startup community. That was basically the whole mission of his company SurveyMonkey, where he was a CEO: to help people make better decisions with data. Let us celebrate Dave Goldberg and his life's work.



He was smart and used his intellect to make the world a better place.


Not many people are lucky to study at Harvard University. He did. Business? Not really. He decided to study history and government. Still, business pulled him back and he worked as a consultant at Bain & Co. on both US coasts and even in Sydney, Australia. Working abroad helped him better understand the world.

People want to make better decisions with data. Asking the questions right is the key part of getting the data right.

Dave had not only academic smarts, he was smart like only a true entrepreneur can be. After his consulting journey at Bain he got involved with the music industry at Capital Records. Even though he had no musical talent, he loved music and owned a vast music CD collection. Capital Records hired him to come up with new ways to sell music. And he did discover new paths: from video games to selling CDs at Starbucks.

When disc-based games came out, I had licensed our ('Capital Records') music to video game companies like Virgin Games.

Dave was one of the few who understood the underlying principles of why Silicon Valley is so successful and how to use those forces when developing startup eco-systems elsewhere. He was right to observe how much people underestimated the institutional knowledge that is contained in the support organisations in Silicon Valley. Lawyers, accountants, PR professionals, investors, those are the people that have seen hundreds of startups and seen what has worked and what did not. This knowledge base gets passed along down the line, but unfortunately not so much in other countries. Yet, Dave was optimistic about the next generation of entrepreneurs coming out of other countries and travelled extensively to share his knowledge.


He was a visionary. A true visionary.  


The music industry had a big growth potential and Dave had a vision. When he joined Capital Records he started discovering all this great music he never heard of before. He made it his mission to change the way people discovered music.


In 1994 he decided to start Launch Media that started as an ad-supported electronic music magazine, distributed by CD ROM. It was later acquired by Yahoo in 2001 and Dave became general manager of Yahoo Music. He realised his vision by turning it into the world's largest music website. In retrospect, his visionary genius paved the way for companies like Spotify or Shazam.

Plan for failure and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen.

Dave's intuition worked well with SurveyMonkey. What many people don't realize, he was not the founder. The company was around for a while, but when Dave laid eyes on it, he saw a tremendous potential. He bought control from the founder, who by the way still sits on the board.


As a CEO he proved his visionary talent several times. SurveyMonkey was a cloud company, before anyone used the phrase cloud-computingThey had a fremium business model before it became wildly popular. There is no surprise Dave built SurveyMonkey from 15 people to 500 in the last six years.

There is a tremendous opportunity in consumerisation of the enterprise. We are still at the early stages of that. People sign up for SurveyMonkey as consumers, but use it for work.

It was his ability to understand customers and predict consumer behaviour that made him special. SurveyMonkey was often more accurate to predict election results than traditional pollsters. Impressive achievement for a company that wasn't even built for that. The power of big data was the reason why he built his company to such scale.


He inspired female entrepreneurs and his best mentor was his soulmate.



It is true that media didn't forget to mention that Dave and his wife Sheryl Sandberg, who happens to be the COO of Facebook, were the most powerful couple in Silicon Valley. What they failed to realise was that Dave had in Sheryl an incredible mentor.


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18uDutylDa4?wmode=transparent]


Anybody who has seen Sheryl's legendary TED talk about women leaders, will agree that Dave was blessed with the fortune of having his soul mate as the best mentor. Interestingly, while they met in 1996, they didn't start dating until 2002.


He understood that family comes first.


While both Dave and his wife Sheryl were running billion dollar companies, they understood the true value of a family and importance of work-life balance. He was a new breed of a CEO. He wasn't the kind of father that his two children would only see on weekends.


Dave spent quality time with his kids in the evenings until they went to bed. Because he knew that nothing is more important than a family. He was then working again until late and often joked that his colleagues would get plenty of emails from him after 8pm or 9pm.


He loved helping and the world loved him for it.


Dave often described his job as easy and a lot of fun. Like all great CEOs he was convinced that his job was to make sure the overall strategy is set correctly, the right people are hiredteams are motivated and most of all he loved helping other people to do their jobs.


At Startup Grind we came across many extremely successful and interesting entrepreneurs, but Dave was one of a kind. He had the biggest heart! He loved helping entrepreneurs, giving back and sharing with startups like only a few did. The startup world learned from Dave's insights and loved him for his kind heart.


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTtnSgQL-Bg?wmode=transparent]


We were blessed to host a fireside chat with Dave twice at Startup GrindDerek Andersen interviewed him in 2014 at SurveyMonkey's office in Palo Alto and in Feb 2015 Dave talked to Wall Street Journal's Vanessa O'Connell. In both talks he highlighted his passion to help and give back.


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBJgfFdlaQw?wmode=transparent]


This is why the world will miss you, Dave Goldberg. The memory of you will be kept in the hearts of those, you helped and inspired. Rest in peace!


PS: When Dave spoke at Startup Grind 2015, our directors from all over the world signed a 'Thank you' card for him.