This is heartbreaking. My condolences go out to Christian's family and friends. This post is really a testament to just how intimate co-founder relationships are. I loved this passage:
> A cofounder relationship can be a competitive one. The question of who is more “formidable” comes up a lot. Who will be the point of contact with investors? Who will represent the company to the outside world? Who will have the final say at an impasse? Navigating these questions can easily lay waste to your ego. The only reason he and I avoided this pitfall was because we addressed our insecurities to each other directly, rather than let them simmer beneath the surface. I soon came to learn that one of the most valuable opportunities of an experience like this was that your cofounder’s strengths could become your own.
Wow Matthew, I had no idea. Lee's story struck a personal chord - I lost an uncle to frontotemporal dementia when he was in his 40s and he lived with my family as the disease progressed. It's an incredibly painful experience for everyone involved, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. My condolences.
This is incredibly sad to hear about, my condolences to Christian's family and friends. Christian and I had a phone call back in 2017 about a potential internship at Audm. While it didn't work out, we really enjoyed talking to each other over the phone and have followed each other on Twitter ever since. We'd catch up occasionally, and engage with each others tweets and have some good conversations.
What stood out to me was how open and kind he was. He was willing to take a call with me as a student in college and offered to help me out with my projects – won't forget that. Wild to think how fleeting life is. Rest in peace, Christian.
I feel deeply sad for his child(ren) and wife.
We often think the urgency is to succeed and grow our startup.
It is.
But the Tik tok of the clock is there to remind us that we are not just founders but also humains, humains living a short life in the big timeline of history of innovation.
History will forget us, but our close relative will always have this page open at this tragic day.
It's a story about a human relationship. I think that co-worker relationships can get complicated (and deep), with co-founder relationships being a lot more intense.
To be fair, there are a lot of other working scenarios, where you can have similar types of relationships, like military duty, police, firefighters, etc.
In the US, men can be discouraged from talking about these kinds of relationships, but we have them. They are deep and wide. We often mask them behind bravado.
I have a number of friends that are/were in the police and fire service in New York. I also had an employee whose sister was killed in the towers during 9/11.
The firefighters were hit the hardest. Many of them continue to have deep depressions, even this many years later, in August and September.
I remember reading this when it was published. It's so terrifying and sad. At least he had money to afford near constant care towards the end, but how many folks have illnesses like these and are hung out to dry due to poor finances?
This is such an alien concept as a non-American. Lack of money should not mean lack of medical care in any developed nation, let alone the “richest and greatest”
What kind of programs do non-US countries have to take care of people with mental illness? The actual medical care would be easier to get for sure, but the type of care described in the article ("She bought a 5,000-square-foot house on an acre of California's Central Coast, a spot they chose in the hope that his father, Rendon, could walk with him along the shore. She worked with a landscape architect to tailor the outdoor space to Lee's needs...") seems like it would be hard to get in any country.
Medical care is one thing, but having an estate that's tailored to your comfort is available only to the wealthy anywhere and that's what I was referring to primarily.
It's very expensive to support dementia patients. They need as much care as a baby, but have adult weight and capabilities. You might be in trouble even in a country with a great support system. You need to have someone there every single day for most of the waking hours.
It is interesting to read about co-founder relations, reading it made me think of Paul Allen and Bill Gates.
If anyone hasn't read Paul Allen's Idea Man, please do! One of the best biographies I have ever read, such a loving read.
Reading this article reminded me how Paul Allen described the early days of coding with Bill when there were just two of them..
They would spend the entire day coding, then at evening eat pizza and then watch whatever was on in theaters that day...
Reading that story and seeing how Paul Allen fondly looked back on it made me truly respect them.
> Christian P. Brink was driving a 2003 Toyota Camry southbound on Route 83 and approaching Route 44 around 4:15 p.m. He made a left turn to continue eastbound on Route 44 and struck a 2008 Peterbilt sanitation truck, state police said.
I've been through this. It's heartbreaking. It completely redefines how you see success and meaning (or did for me). My condolences to Ryan and everyone else in Christian's life.
Very very sorry to hear this. I spoke to him twice and exchanged a few WhatsApp messages with him in August. I was in the S20 batch and he was interested in angel investing in my startup.
He told me about how his life had changed with his recent baby. We discovered that my brother and his wife had worked at the same law firm. He was a genuinely nice guy.
This is sad to hear. This is huge loss for the family, the co-founder and also for the startup.
Not to be insensitive but had to raise this topic because this is very rare situation, Anyone knows how the stock of the co-founder handled in this situation in early stage startup, at least in US?
I believe standard co-founder agreements have a "without cause" termination or "resign for Good Reason" agreement which accelerates the co-founder's vesting cycle in event of death or disability. The transfer of shares by will or intestacy to immediate family members may or may not be subject to a repurchase option by the Company.
Tl;dr it depends entirely on the specific wordings of stock purchase the agreement.
Regarding your article, the title as well as the term "gone" left me wondering if he had died or (probably more common in startups?) ghosted you/your company until the fifth paragraph.
It's not a technical document. It's a story. Intentionally writing ambiguity into your API documentation would be insane, but building on ambiguity to later resolve it is a powerful way to add meaning and emphasis to a story.
If you want to read "descriptions of events", read the coroners report, not personal Medium posts.
BTW, this is a personal take. Everyone is allowed to write in their own style. No judgement on that.
The point is that one certainly can write in a way that is readable. The Lord of the ring is quite mystic, but it's written in a way that let readers follow along and enjoy. That'd be the style I appreciate and mimic.
The Lord Of The Rings did not open with "One does not simply walk into Modor". Blade Runner didn't open with "Yes, Rachel is a replicant".
You were confused after 5 seconds _because_ of the way he chose to write his story. It's proof that it was "readable" and well written because you reacted like that. Like you, I spent the first 2/3rds of the post wondering what "gone" meant. When I got to the bit where he came out and said "dead", the whole of the previous ambiguity and confusion resolved in a quite powerful way, almost as though I'd been internally hoping "gone" just meant "they drifted apart after stopping working so closely together". It hit me like a slap when the truth was revealed, which made the feeling of compassion for Ryan's loss and sorry even more bittersweet. I totally appreciated this style. _My_ "personal take" is that your personal take is based on a misunderstanding of the medium you're reading and the authors intentions. (Perhaps not a totally unexpected misunderstanding, given the site we're on and the more usual type of articles HN links to. But I doubt you have too much difficulty getting your head into "API documentation" or "political opinion" mode in the first few sentences if an article, I just don't quite understand why you (and a few other comments) didn't work out "Oh, a personal story piece" and either read it in that mindset or click back if they're not your thing.)
I'm guessing you've never read many murder mysteries? Or watched many crime or medical tv series? Or played Cluedo(/Clue)? Do you think each round of that game should open with "So Professor Plumb did it in the library with the candlestick. Right, you start." Should CSI open with "So we convicted him on DNA evidence found in the back seat of the Uber we linked to his credit card"?
Dont know why this is being downvoted. Google pays an engineers salary to their kids should the engineer die, until the kids reach 18 - or something along those lines.
I was wondering if YC does that for its alum, I mean its one of the most successful funds around....
This should open by stating the fact of death of Christian Brink, and the author's nominal relationship to him (cofounder). The piece refects on the author's sense of loss, as expressed through the experience of their relationship. I sympathize. But, editorially, the first thing we should know is that Christian Brink, his cofounder at Audm, died on day X.
Providing a shallow drive-by "critique" of the writing style or information delivery, especially with such an emotional topic, does not contribute to the conversation in any way.
If the topic is that someone has died, this is impossible to criticize, and therefore does not belong here. If the topic is the article itself, it should be open to criticism. Which is it?
> A cofounder relationship can be a competitive one. The question of who is more “formidable” comes up a lot. Who will be the point of contact with investors? Who will represent the company to the outside world? Who will have the final say at an impasse? Navigating these questions can easily lay waste to your ego. The only reason he and I avoided this pitfall was because we addressed our insecurities to each other directly, rather than let them simmer beneath the surface. I soon came to learn that one of the most valuable opportunities of an experience like this was that your cofounder’s strengths could become your own.