My name is Sep Kamvar, and I knew Rajeev in several different contexts. When I was a graduate student, he was my professor. When I was an entrepreneur, he was my angel investor and closest advisor. And when I came back to Stanford as consulting faculty, he was my senior colleague and research collaborator. But above all, Rajeev was always my teacher and my dear friend.
Rajeev and I first met in the same way that many people have met Rajeev over the course of his life -- I stopped by his office to ask him for help on an algorithm.
Those of us who have met Rajeev in this way would not be surprised at how helpful he was – many people have spoken eloquently about Rajeev’s open door and brilliant mind. But while it was his brilliant mind that struck me at first, it was his heart that I remember most.
Rajeev had a playful heart.
And it shone through in his trademark mischievous smile and twinkle in his eye. He had so much fun with life, when you were with him you couldn’t help but to have fun right alongside him.
Once, I stopped by Rajeev’s office with a research question, and he greeted me by saying “I was thinking about you. I have some good ideas for you.” And then he paused and smiled, and with a twinkle in his eye, he said “of course, I always think my ideas are good ideas.”
Later, when he was investing in my company, I had an inflated sense of what my company was worth. This is not surprising -- entrepreneurs often overvalue their own companies. Rajeev gently coaxed me down to a more appropriate valuation, but not before making me the playful promise that if everything works out, he would invest in my next company at whatever valuation I chose. When I reminded him of that conversation several years later, he laughed and he said “Remind me not to have conversations like that with you.”
And Rajeev had a selfless heart.
At one point early on in our company, I had a conversation with somebody who told me he thought our company wouldn’t succeed. Upset, I called Rajeev the next day, met up with him at the University Cafe, and told him about this conversation.
After he listened to me rant for half an hour about how I was going to prove this guy wrong, he smiled and simply said: “Yes, you will. That’s why you’re an entrepreneur. Now your challenge is to use that energy to do something good for the world.”
And coming from a man who had devoted his life to his students and his mentees and his family, so selflessly and without ostentation, those words had immeasurable power.
You see, I always regarded Rajeev as a teacher, but what I thought he taught evolved over the years that I knew him. When we first met I thought he was teaching me about computer science. Later on, I thought he was teaching me about entrepreneurship. But it was not until much later that I realized what Rajeev knew the whole time, that he was really teaching me about life and how to live it.
And Rajeev did not teach me by lecturing me, or by telling me how to do things. He did so by being a great man, and inspiring me to follow in his example.
The Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh once said the following about his mother’s passing:
‘The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, ‘A serious misfortune in my life has arrived.’ I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.”
And when I think about how, almost 10 years after Rajeev first helped me with that algorithm, I still try to emulate his playfulness, his selflessness, and his thoughtfulness, and when I think about how I still try to make him proud of me, I know that Rajeev is still alive in me, as he is in all of us.
He is in the twinkle in the eye of the excited entrepreneurs whom he mentored and the in the bright-eyed curiosity of the graduate students whom he taught. He is in the gentle smile of the mentors who learned from his example and in the thoughtfulness of the professors who took him as a role model. And he is in the love and generosity of his family, his friends, and everybody who he had touched.
And I know that he is smiling.