When Death Comes: The Extraordinary Tale Of Two Berkeley Entrepreneurs

LEE WRITES: TREATMENT HAD ‘TESTED ME  PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, AND EMOTIONALLY MORE THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED’ 

Things only seemed to go downhill from there. By mid-April, his doctors assigned him to a more traditional regimen of chemo in addition to the Tarceva. Two months later, after a third round of chemotherapy, Lee wrote on his Facebook page that the treatment had “tested me physically, mentally and emotionally more than anything I’ve ever encountered…The constant reminders of my disease are difficult to avoid. Bring a vigilant patient versus being all consumed by my disease is a balancing act that is taxing on the psyche.”

Increasingly, Parikh found himself alone. “At first, it was hard,” he says. “We always talked about how he and I had a good tension. Knowing that he wasn’t around, I had to keep myself in check. It was his influence on me that made me push against my natural tendencies. I had to be the one who was selling Magoosh and talking about the future of the company. He knew it was a bit of a challenge for me. He would talk to me about it and tried to share his optimism and almost infect me with his optimism. He helped me grow as a person and grow as a leader.”

LEE TOOK 20 PILLS A DAY TO COMBAT THE CHEMO’S SIDE EFFECTS 

Parikh led Magoosh to a cash flow positive state by May of 2012 and also raised $250,000 of additional funding on his own. “At that point, I started to gain a lot of confidence that we can do something special here,” says Parikh, whose only contact with his partner became an occasional email exchange.

In July, Lee posted a photo of himself propped up with pillows in a hospital bed. He was bare-chested in the photo, his green hospital gown pulled down to his waist. There is an oxygen tube in his nose and his legs are wrapped in white bandages. A month later, on August 8, Lee had completed his fifth chemo cycle, an eight-hour procedure at the infusion center at UCSF. He was taking 20 pills a day just to combat the side effects of the chemo.

Then, nothing. Lee fell silent. It was less than eight months since his diagnosis. But there were no more Facebook posts, no more emails. “I remember thinking I hadn’t heard from him in awhile,” says Parikh. “I started getting nervous but didn’t want to. I would email periodically and say, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of you. Hope things are getting better.’ He didn’t need to respond because I didn’t want him to feel any obligation.”

A FINAL CONVERSATION 

The Christmas holiday passed, and on Jan. 30, while at a dinner with the Magoosh team, Parikh received an email from Lee saying he was returning from the hospital and things were looking better. The Magoosh team filmed a celebratory video for Lee’s 35th birthday on February 21 and posted it on Facebook. But Lee fell too ill to ever acknowledge it.

In Parikh’s last conversation with Lee, two weeks before he slipped away on March 4, 2013, Parikh was on the phone for a full hour. “He sounded very coherent. He asked me how the team was doing. It was a very good, positive conservation. He told me two things: He wanted to make sure I would stay focused on the right aspects of the business, and he wanted me not to think too small. I never expected anything to happen over the next two weeks.”

After Lee’s death, Parikh would work closely with Lee’s fiancée, Wendy Lim, and Pour-Moezzi, to create the Hansoo Lee fellowship to honor their friend. The fellowship provides a stipend and mentorship to help Berkeley-Haas MBA students pursue their entrepreneurial ventures full-time during what would otherwise be a internship–just as Lee and Parikh did during the summer of 2009.

LEE’S LEGACY CONTINUES TO GROW 

Meantime, Magoosh continues to thrive under Parikh. Today, there are now more employees who never met Lee than who had worked with him. Magoosh remains cash flow positive. The company has grown from a team of five people to 13 full-time staffers, and it is making a big dent in the GRE space and starting to make a bigger impact in the GMAT space. The platform has more than 200 lesson videos and over 1,000 explanation videos, one for every test question. Magoosh boasts customers from more than 150 countries, with 70% of the users based in the U.S.

What remains of Lee are the memories and a legacy carried out by a friend. “I miss him every day,” confides Parikh. “I think about what he would say to me personally. I can see his mannerisms and sometimes hear his voice. There are some things he said that stick with me and I use them as fuel to just continue growing the business. I knew that what he wanted for me was to push forward. It didn’t feel like there was another option, really. Hopefully, he is looking down and saying this is what I wanted.”

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