Thank you, Blake Krikorian

The shock felt by the loss of Blake Krikorian has not really settled in for those who knew him and the perhaps millions whose lives he made better.  If you did know him, every meeting was distinct.  His tireless energy, brilliant and innovative mind, and a near artistic capability to make unobvious connections among widely diverse things and ideas was infectious.  He could easily lose any of us laymen in the pace of it all, but he loved to explain.  And he took as much joy in our epiphanies as his own.

There was nothing like having him give you a tour of something he was working on.  He'd pigeon-hole you at some gathering, pull you into a quiet room and just go to town explaining one of the remarkable projects he was building or supporting.  "Come here, I've got to show you this..." may be the most repeated refrain I recall in thinking about him.

A tour of his beautiful, warm and family-oriented home was also like visiting Willy Wonka's laboratory.  Walking in his back yard, lovely music with stellar acoustics would unexpectedly appear seemingly coming from the trees themselves and change as you strolled further down the path.  I asked him where he had heard of this effect, and he noted with a smile, “I invented it.”

He built a wonderful, modest home theatre designed as if by a kid who was in wonder for the adventure of great entertainment for the first time.  He'd describe a revolutionary sound system he had created, and when he got it just right, the minute the first musical chord was struck and I was blown away by it, he'd break out in his marvelous belly laugh: "Dude can you believe it?  Just wait..."  And then he’d show other ideas he was tinkering with.  When something would go wrong, he’d open up a piece of a wall and just start pulling out what seemed to be 100 massive wires and cables and somehow fix the issue.  Offering me a bag of popcorn he had just popped on the spot he'd smile, "you need these" and gave me some enormous goggles adding under his breath, "just wait, man, just wait."  It was some mind blow visual 3D experience.  I'd say "Wow,” and he'd burst into that wonderful laugh again.

He was a great tinkerer in the way I've always assumed other American legendary entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison were.  He was a first class engineer, utterly comfortable with software and hardware, loved to get his hands dirty and understand his passions in detail.  When drones started coming out to the public, he called me, "Do I have the guy for you!"  He hooked me up with some expert who not only sold me our first drone but spent hours teaching me all the ins and outs of the mechanics of what was then and coming.

I am not mechanical at all, but Blake made me want to understand everything.  His enthusiasm was inspiring and his standards made you want to consistently up your game.  But while confident in an idea he had discovered and believed in once he believed it, he was strikingly (and in Silicon Valley, impossibly) self-deprecating.

He had no tolerance for bull shit.  He joined one board once where he was advised to keep a low profile for six months or a year and take it all in.  In the first meeting, apparently, he was shocked by people touting things he knew to be nonsense.  He immediately spoke his mind.  When someone shot him a look to effectively say, "Go slow," he turned to him and said, "Why do you think I'm here?" 

In a wonderful tribute, Kara Swisher noted how he'd be the first to call her to go over a piece and let her know what she missed.  This was him:  let's talk about it, let me tell you what I know, let's keep the market place of ideas flowing -- always with this twinkle in his eye, humor and laugh that in combination was highly disarming.

"Why do you think I am here?"  What a question.  There are so many reasons we are blessed that he was here.  But if you pushed me to reduce it to one word -- in all he built, all he contributed, to whom all he touched -- it would be "family."  He just adored, worshiped his family, his brothers but profoundly Cathy and the girls.  It all anchored him and gave him support and energy.  I think they all knew it.  I know they all adored every second of him.

There was not one time I was with him I didn't leave more excited by the world than when I came in.  Not a time I learned more.  Not a time I laughed more.

What a loss.  He was a blessing.