Dan was a curious, brilliant, gentle giant. He will be missed. In 2001, he wanted the VC firm he was a young partner at to invest in my way-early & misposition

Dan was a curious, brilliant, gentle giant. He will be missed. In 2001, he wanted the VC firm he was a young partner at to invest in my way-early & mispositioned P2P startup, Bitzi. His partners gave good feedback, but passed, probably for the right reasons. Dan wrote a personal check, no paperwork, that helped keep the servers on for another year or so. During the 2001-2003 dotcom winter, I put Dan in touch with the founders of both Friendster & Tribe, which he also angel-invested in. Still no financial return, as far as I know – and maybe some investor acrimony in those early social-networking rivalries? But he expressed his deep appreciation to me for those adventures for other reasons. There's still a Fitbit on my wrist, after hearing his early raves about them a decade ago. He really loved lower Manhattan, & it was a vicarious thrill to observe Dan raising his children there. (As someone whose parents fled 1970s Manhattan with young me, there's still a deep limbic "You can do that?!" wonder when people pull that off.) Thanks, Dan. My heart goes out to his family.