PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Tech industry luminaries and friends gathered Tuesday for a memorial service honoring David Goldberg, a popular business leader whose marriage to Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg made them one of Silicon Valley's most prominent couples. U2 vocalist Bono sang before an audience that included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, film director George Lucas and a host of tech company founders, executives and financiers. Afterward, mourners emerged teary-eyed from Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, many wearing Minnesota Vikings paraphernalia to commemorate the NFL team loved by Goldberg, a Minneapolis native. The 47-year-old Goldberg died Friday while on a family vacation at a villa near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He slipped while exercising on a treadmill in the villa's gym and struck his head, Mexican officials said.
"Dave was my rock," Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday drawn from remarks she gave at the memorial. "We had 11 truly joyful years of the deepest love, happiest marriage, and truest partnership that I could imagine." President Barack Obama extended his sympathies in an earlier post. "His skills as an entrepreneur created opportunity for many; his love for his family was a joy to behold, and his example as a husband and father was something we could all learn from," Obama wrote on the White House Facebook page.
Goldberg was staying in Mexico with family at an independently owned villa called Palmasola, where a villa spokeswoman said the accident occurred. Villa guests have privileges at the nearby Four Seasons resort at Punta Mita, about 30 miles from Puerto Vallarta, but the villa is not owned or managed by the hotel chain. Authorities in the Mexican state of Nayarit, where the villa is located, said an autopsy had ruled out foul play in Goldberg's death.
Goldberg was CEO of SurveyMonkey, a commercial service for conducting online polls, and is credited with overseeing its growth to a current valuation of $2 billion. Among those at Tuesday's memorial were Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, prominent tech investor Reid Hoffman, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.
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