10 years ago the world lost Dave Goldberg

The business leader who put kindness over profits

This is an article I wrote just after I left SurveyMonkey. Since it has now been ten years since his untimely passing, I am reposting it so more people can know who Dave Goldberg really was. If the world only had more leaders like Dave Goldberg, it would be a much better place.

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I dedicated one of the most critical projects in my career, my book Product-Led SEO, to do my part in ensuring that the contribution Dave Goldberg made to improve this world is never forgotten. 

He was not my direct manager, as the CEO, he wasn’t even my manager’s manager. I wasn’t related to him. I was never invited to his legendary poker games.

Yet, despite this seeming lack of close connection, he changed my career and the course of my life. 

Allow me to explain. 

Work to live - not live to work

While I was interviewing at SurveyMonkey, I was introduced to Dave’s unique outlook on how work ties into life through a Bloomberg Businessweek article, in which Dave wrote about managing family time.

I leave at 5:30 to get home for dinner. When Sheryl [who recently revealed that she, too, leaves work at 5:30] said that, it was a big deal. I don’t think anyone’s going to care that I leave at the same time. We’ve always done it. Sheryl didn’t feel comfortable talking about it publicly. Nobody asks me about it publicly, so I didn’t have to worry about that. People know I have a wife with a big job.

When I read this article, I didn’t believe it, but within a few months of working at SurveyMonkey,  the consistency and authenticity of this pattern were obvious. By 5:30, the entire office was nearly empty because Dave set that kind of tone. I was impressed. 

He really cared about people

For the next couple of years at SurveyMonkey, I had occasional interactions with Dave that made it evident what a fantastic person he was. 

• In meetings, Dave never brought a computer and rarely ever looked at his phone. When he did look at his phone, he always apologized with an explanation about why he needed to break from his norm.

• When asking a question in a meeting, he reminded the presenter that they were the expert on the subject, not him. His questions were never accusatory, but always began with a soft approach.

• If he emailed late at night, he said, 'Please respond in the morning,' knowing that a CEO's email would cause a panicked employee to work late.

However unique these characteristics were, I didn’t get to discover what a true treasure of a human being he was until a few months before his passing.

It is this experience that had such a profound impact on me.

After a couple of years leading SEO at SurveyMonkey, I believed that my next career move should be in another country. After spending time with family researching ideas, we landed on Singapore as the place we wanted to move to and began the process of finding a way to get there. Knowing that SurveyMonkey had no office in Singapore and no plans to open one, I interviewed for new roles there. 

Eventually, I found a role and prepared to move. Everything was going according to plan until Dave found out from my manager that I was leaving the company for this move. Within twenty minutes of my sharing the news with my direct manager, I was sitting across from Dave in his conference room.

At first, he was offended that I hadn't shared my desire to move overseas with him before. I was baffled at this response. Why would the CEO expect me to inform him that I wanted to move to a new country?

Immediately, Dave agreed with me that it was a fantastic idea to move overseas, and it would be a great experience. However, he wanted me to stay with SurveyMonkey. That also confused me because SurveyMonkey had no business in Southeast Asia, and then everything fell into place. 

Dave put others first

What I hadn't realized was that during this conversation, Dave had stopped being the CEO of the company and had become a friend and a mentor.

I was having the CEO/employee conversation that he had never even started. 

Every objection I raised was met with, “We can make it work.”

And he did.

Without even asking me to agree, Dave contacted a SurveyMonkey board member who had an office in Singapore and asked if he could use a desk in their office on a permanent basis. 

He insisted that I remain a full-time employee so my stock vesting would not be interrupted. When he was told that, legally, I had to work for a Singapore-based company to be employed in Singapore, he instructed the legal and HR team to set up a SurveyMonkey subsidiary in Singapore for just one employee: me.  

The legal fees for that effort alone dwarfed my salary, which Dave also instructed to be increased so I could meet the required minimums to be a director of the new subsidiary.  Nothing at all stood in Dave’s way to make this, my dream, not his, happen. 

He didn’t only offer me a position at the new SurveyMonkey Singapore subsidiary; he asked me to write the description and title for my dream job, and that's what I did. 

Even after I arrived in Singapore, there were challenges with visas and health insurance that required even more investment by the company. I was told that this was a Dave project, and nothing would get in the way. 

Dave didn’t just facilitate the technical details of fulfilling my dream; he made it his dream too. He told me that this was going to be OUR project, and he wanted me to report directly to him on the progress. He said he wanted to learn about the region, too, and I was going to be his conduit for learning. He told me he expected me to copy him on emails, ask for his help with introductions, advice, and, more importantly, insisted that I meet with him regularly to give him updates. 

I will never know how much he truly cared about what I was accomplishing in Asia, but when I met with him to share an update a few days before his untimely passing, he had the same enthusiasm for “our” project that he did when he came up with the idea of me going to Asia on his behalf. 

I am certain that the financial investment in moving me to Singapore was never going to be remotely profitable for SurveyMonkey, but he did it anyway. 

Dave changed my career

To say that Dave changed my life is a gross understatement. My life will never be the same after Dave’s selfless investment in my career. My ability to even step into the role Dave allowed me to create for myself in Singapore only came about as a result of Dave’s confidence in me. If he thought I could go from being an SEO manager working behind a computer to now representing the company in a new market, then I could. 

Dave’s belief in me inspired me to do things in my life that I would have felt undeserving of attempting or exploring. I don’t know why Dave took an interest in me, but I feel obligated to make that gift ROI positive in the ways he would have wanted. He believed I could do big things, and even if he’s not here to see it, I want to make his belief a reality.

I decided to dedicate my book to Dave’s memory even before I knew what chapters I planned to write. Without Dave’s investment in me, there would have been no book. Writing a book dedication was the least I could do to make sure his legacy is never forgotten. Knowing that I had to complete the book to share that dedication drove me to finish the project when it felt like I would never finish it. 

As special as I felt from Dave’s kindness, after Dave’s untimely passing, I learned that I wasn’t unique at all. The first time I wrote this story publicly, many people reached out with their own Dave experiences.  He did this to everyone who came into his personal orbit.

I heard stories about Dave accelerating the vesting of SurveyMonkey employees who were let go before their equity cliff. I heard from people that Dave wrote personal checks to invest in their projects, not because of the business idea, but because he wanted to bet on the person. I even had the privilege of talking to Dave’s mom, the late Paula Goldberg, who shared about how he lived his entire life like this. 

Pay it forward

To cope with the loss at the office, SurveyMonkey came up with a hashtag to remember Dave by “#makedaveproud”. I thought it was kind of a silly way to remember a great person by doing good work at the company he led. After hearing all these stories about the lasting effect Dave had on so many people’s lives, I had a completely new understanding of how to make Dave proud. Dave’s legacy will never be forgotten if the people he impacted carry on his mission of improving the lives of everyone they meet. 

I can never personally thank Dave for the kindness he showed to me, but I can do exactly what he would have wanted me to do. He would have insisted that he didn’t do anything at all, but if I want, I can just be kind and help others. And that’s exactly what I try to do. If I can ever help you find a job, connect to a partner, or anything at all, let me know. I am just paying it forward. 

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