From the New York Times:
Mr. Goldberg, 47, was on vacation with family and friends at the Four Seasons Resort near Punta Mita, close to Puerto Vallarta in southwest Mexico, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Nayarit State. Mr. Goldberg left his room around 4 p.m. on Friday, collapsed while exercising and died of head trauma and blood loss, said the spokesman. His brother, Robert Goldberg, found him on the floor of the gym at the resort at around 7 p.m., with blood around him. The spokesman said it appears “he fell off the treadmill and cracked his head open.”
Mr. Goldberg was transported to Hospital San Javier in Nuevo Vallarta, with weak vital signs, and died there, said the spokesman, who added that the incident appeared to be an accident.
The Associated Press, quoting an anonymous "Mexican state official" on Monday, offered an account nearly identical to what the Times reported. But later this afternoon, USA Today published a story that contradicts one key detail. The paper quotes John O'Sullivan, general manager of the Four Seasons resort in Punta Mita, as denying that Goldberg and his family were staying there.
Robert Goldberg announced his brother's death over the weekend in a Facebook post that did not mention a cause or location of death.
As noted by Fortune columnist Adam Lashinsky and others, the absence of details led to speculation about how Goldberg, 47, had died.
Original post: David Goldberg, the SurveyMonkey CEO and husband of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, collapsed and died Friday while exercising at a private resort in Mexico, sources have told several news organizations.
Goldberg's brother, Robert Goldberg, reported the death of the popular Silicon Valley executive over the weekend in a Facebook post that did not mention a cause or location of death.
As noted by Fortune columnist Adam Lashinsky and others, the absence of details led to speculation about how Goldberg, 47, had died:
The reason for the delay, say sources close to Goldberg’s family, including his wife, Sheryl Sandberg, is that they don’t yet know.
“Dave Goldberg was on vacation with family and friends in Mexico,” these sources said in a statement Monday morning. “He collapsed while exercising in the gym. Efforts to revive him at the gym and at a local hospital were unsuccessful.”
A source close to the family says it plans to release more information when it is available. The source didn’t say where in Mexico Goldberg died.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and other outlets all published similar, and similarly sourced, reports.
Goldberg, who by all accounts was an extremely popular, able and innovative company leader, married Sandberg in 2004.
Sandberg's 2011 book, "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," highlighted the challenges and stresses of women striving to attain the highest levels of responsibility in private enterprise. The book repeatedly returns to descriptions of the adjustments she and Goldberg made in the course of raising their two children:
Our division of household chores is actually pretty traditional. Dave pays bills, handles our finances, provides tech support. I schedule the kids' activities, make sure there is food in the fridge, plan the birthday parties. Sometimes I'm bothered by this classic gender divsion of labor. Am I perpetuating stereotypes by falling into these patterns? But I would rather plan a Dora the Explorer party than pay an insurance bill, and since Dave feels the exact opposite, this arrangement works for us. It takes continual communication, honesty, and a lot of forgiveness to maintain a rickety balance. We are never at fifty-fifty at any given moment -- perfect equality is hard to define or sustain -- but we allow the pendulum to swing back and forth between us.
In the coming years, our balancing act may get harder. Our children are still young and go to sleep early, which gives me plenty of time ot work at night and even to watch what Dave considers to be truly bad TV. As the kids get older, we will have to adjust. Many of my friends have told me that teenage children require more time from their parents. Every stage of life has its challenges. Fortunately, I have Dave to figure it out with me. He's the best partner I could imagine -- even though he's wrong about my TV shows being bad.
In an article Sunday, the New York Times described Goldberg as a lifelong advocate for women and "perhaps the signature male feminist of his era":
Even as a high school student, Dave Goldberg was urging female classmates to speak up. As a young dot-com executive, he had one girlfriend after another, but fell hard for a driven friend named Sheryl Sandberg, pining after her for years. After they wed, Mr. Goldberg pushed her to negotiate hard for high compensation and arranged his schedule so that he could be home with their children when she was traveling for work.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Goldberg recounted his path from Harvard, where he majored in history and government, to Hollywood, where he founded pioneering online music site Launch Music, to Yahoo! and finally to SurveyMonkey.
A key juncture in his career, he recalled, came just before he was to continue his formal education:
... Two weeks before he was set to start law school, "I came to the realization that I didn’t really want to be a lawyer," he said. "Sometimes the things you decide not to do are actually the biggest things to do in your career."
He had no idea what to do. He thought about going into the tech business.
"I looked at Microsoft but it was really hard to imagine moving to Seattle and the rain when you were used to living in San Francisco and Sydney. When you are 24, that does make a difference," he says.
