David Goldberg: Online entrepreneur who sold Launch Media to Yahoo then founded the successful internet firm SurveyMonkey

Goldberg died after falling off a treadmill while on holiday in Mexico

Goldberg: ‘he was an amazing person and I’m glad I got to know him,’ said Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (EPA)

David Goldberg was chief executive officer of SurveyMonkey, an online survey service, and husband of Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook. Goldberg sold his first start-up, Launch Media, to Yahoo and joined SurveyMonkey in 2009. He and Sandberg met in 1996 while they were both working in Los Angeles.

Sandberg, author of the best-selling book Lean In, frequently wrote and talked about how Goldberg was a crucial partner in her career, supporting her in small ways, like doing the laundry, and large, such as persuading her to join Facebook even though they had a six-month-old daughter at the time.

"I wrote in Lean In that the most important decision a woman makes is if she has a life partner and who that life partner will be. The best decision I ever made was to marry Dave," Sandberg wrote in March.

David Bruce Goldberg was born in 1967, in Minneapolis to Mel and Paula Goldberg. His mother is co-founder and executive director of the Pacer Center, a Minnesota non-profit company that helps parents of disabled children and young adults. His father was an associate dean and professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St Paul, Minnesota.

Goldberg graduated from Harvard in 1989 and lived with Sandberg and their children in Menlo Park, California. "Dave Goldberg was an amazing person and I am glad I got to know him," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. Earlier in his career, Goldberg worked as a director of business development at Capitol Records in Los Angeles. He founded Launch Media, which delivered music and music-related content online, in 1994, and sold it to Yahoo amid the dotcom bust of 2001. Billboard magazine named him one of the top "power players" in digital music in 2006.

SurveyMonkey, an online questionnaire service, raised $250m in venture capital funding in December. The financing was intended to help the company pursue acquisitions and let employees and existing shareholders sell some of their stock. The Palo Alto, California-based company is profitable and has more than 20 million customers.

Goldberg's Facebook page quickly filled up with posts from executives and entrepreneurs including David Golden, a veteran Silicon Valley banker and managing partner at Revolution Ventures, and Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Co. "Dave was a class act," Iger wrote. "Everything he did was done with enthusiasm, commitment, and a warm and humble touch that we all loved and we will all remember."

Goldberg died of head injuries after falling off a treadmill while on holiday in Mexico.

GABRIELLE COPPOLA AND SARAH FRIER

David Bruce Goldberg, businessman: born Minneapolis 2 October 1967; married 2004 Sheryl Sandberg (one daughter, one son); died Punta Mita, Mexico 1 May 2015.

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