The BBC reports that the news was announced last night by Goldberg’s brother, Robert. Writing on Facebook, he wrote: “It’s with incredible shock and sadness that I’m letting our friends and family know that my amazing brother, Dave Goldberg, beloved husband of Sheryl Sandberg, father of two wonderful children, and son of Paula Goldberg, passed away suddenly last night.”
Goldberg has worked at several Silicon Valley companies during the course of his career. Most recently, he has acted as CEO for SurveyMonkey where he has grown the company to over 25 million customers.
He has been repetitively praised for his work, described as an “amazing boss” who took SurveyMonkey to over 450 employees from just a handful at its launch.
Goldberg’s work in Silicon Valley began when he created online music company Launch Media. This startup was then sold to Yahoo in 2001, which Goldberg later joined. He began running Yahoo Music and founded other startups before becoming CEO of SurveyMonkey for the past six years.
He married Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and knew Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally. Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post “Dave Goldberg was an amazing person and I am glad I got to know him. My thoughts and prayers are with Sheryl and her family.”
Goldberg was profiled by Business Insider just last month. He told how he got the money to form Launch Media by maxing out credit cards in the 1990s.
Fox News reports that the cause of death is not yet known. News of the tragic occurrence travelled through the technology world with remarkable speed and was soon trending on Twitter with over 28,000 messages from well-wishers to his family. Many said that Silicon Valley had lost a true hero.
