A Brilliant Character, A Beautiful Life
Larry Bock: Our inimitable friend, partner, mentor, comrade, venture partner, lover of silly and campy movies, teller of tall tales (all true), prankster extraordinaire, business sage, admirable model husband and father to incomparable wife Diane, amazingly talented and thoughtful daughters Quincy and Tasha, generous philanthropist, founder of the world’s largest science festival and creator, founder or early funder of unbelievably more than 40 companies, hiring thousands of talented scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, creating new niches in new industries and new products that have touched millions has — after a tough 13 month fight against pancreatic cancer — as his wife said with enviable poise and beautiful strength and grace: “decided to head on out — he set sail yesterday afternoon”.
His bio (a word of life) is here. A recent commencement speech he gave is here (Part 1, Part 2). But his life vigorously jumps off the page.
I think he did “it” right. Living. And dying. We got to celebrate him live a year ago at a pool party at his house which had at his wife Diane’s direction no mention of cancer or death or dying. It was instead to be and was a smart celebration of life.
We all thought it would be an imminent goodbye soon after then. With the time he had in totality, he spent it — by any measure — extraordinarily well. His is a lesson for anyone looking to define and live a good life.
He was a model father and husband and friend, self deprecating. People called him a “mensch on a mission”. He was good and did good. He is a creator of companies and stories and products that gave so many other people careers and purpose. He used to say with a company he founded like Illumina, even though he created it that he wouldn’t want to know what genetic thing he might have if it couldn’t be cured — which is like Woody Allen’s joke that he wasn’t afraid of dying he just didn’t want to be there when it happened. The irony is that the impact of so many of his efforts is so incredibly high and has and will helped so many other lives.
He taught me about starting companies and venture investing, with a funny phrase that 1) the tech had to work but 2) it was always about the people: the funny phrase he loved to describe the people we invested with: “two legged mammals”.
His belief is that as a culture we get what we celebrate and he is a creator of mass celebrations of science and inspirations for young people who are inventing the future. The tireless work and time and energy and life he put into creating and birthing and building dozens of companies and the science festivals and taking risk and pulling in talented people and promising technology all with tremendous purpose is like an endless wave rippling out touching so many other lives.
I remember being on a business trip in a waiting area with a cool kinetic sculpture on the wall and he saw me staring at it and I was trying to figure out how it kept moving without power from just motion and balance. He leaned over to me and said “you know there is no such thing as perpetual motion right?” But he was wrong. He was always in perpetual motion. He took failures in stride, held his fair share of grudges too but only and always righteously and at injustices and usually with prankster humor. We are all so lucky to have him as part of our own lives and our own stories.
I was thinking that when we describe real people who have actually existed we describe them in a past tense. We say so and so “was”. But when we describe fictional characters who never existed we say “is”. They live on in our minds with their lessons. Larry’s life story IS an amazing one full of character and charm, achievement and love and he is and will be part of so many other stories known and unknown to him who he helped who are writing their own stories now. He has and IS an incomparable and amazing character…
