Matt Bencke passed away yesterday. We put the above photo and note up on the Foundry Group site yesterday but I was still processing it and wasn’t ready to blog about it until this morning. His partner and co-founder at Might AI – Daryn Nakhuda – wrote some beautiful words about Matt at In our hearts, always.
You may remember Matt from his incredible article in Wired Magazine titled The Day I Found Out My Life Was Hanging From A Thread. I added on to this in It Can All Change In A Day.
Matt found out about his cancer on July 28th. The day before he, and everyone else in his world, thought he was in the peak of health. My post was on August 24th. It’s October 20th. I’m struggling to process this time frame.
I measure the closeness of my friendships with a few specific markers. The one that shifts things into another level of intimacy is to spend a few days together with me and Amy. Matt and I had been planning to have him and his wife Amy (who I only know from a distance) come out to Aspen in September and spend a long weekend with us. That obviously didn’t happen and will be a hole that I always have in my life.
Matt – you were awesome and will always be in our hearts and memories.