Steve Kirsch’s Tough Battle
by Kara Swisher
Posted on September 7, 2007 at 12:45 AM PT
For those who might not know, longtime Internet and tech figure Steve Kirsch (pictured here) wrote a blog a few weeks ago about a recent and tragic diagnosis for him: incurable blood cancer. This is terrible news, especially given that he and his wife have three young daughters.
Kirsch wrote in a post on his Web site on Aug. 11:
On Aug. 10, I inquired as to the result of the bone marrow biopsy test and they faxed me all my test results. The biopsy confirmed Coutre’s diagnosis with a 10% involvement of lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma. In other words, I’m going to die soon. Today, [Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia] is basically an incurable death sentence. According to the medical literature, which is somewhat dated, half the people die within five or six years from first diagnosis. 80% are dead within 10 years. It is very serious stuff.”
I covered Kirsch closely for a long time during the last dot-com boom, when he founded the Infoseek Web portal, which was sold to Disney. The always colorful tech entrepreneur and inventor had a strong personality and opinions that never failed to be interesting. I have not been in touch for a while, as Kirsch has been actively involved in climate-change issues.
He has another focus now:
Statistically, it is possible that I’ll be unable to see my youngest daughter graduate from high school. It’s possible that I won’t even be around even to see her graduate from elementary school. This is a great disappointment for me. But what really hits home for me is thinking that my youngest daughter may not have a dad who is around long enough to see her graduate from elementary school and that my second youngest daughter will have a father who might be dead before her high school graduation. And that I will be leaving my wonderful wife Michele with a family of three kids to raise solo. All those wonderful plans we had about how we were going to spend the rest of our lives together…those plans have…well, shall we say…changed.”
(Update: Another figure from that time, former Netscape exec Mike Homer, also still struggles to battle his severe illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which I posted on here.)
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Comments
I worked with Steve back in the early days of Infoseek. He is a remarkable man. At a time when other search sites were morphing into ever-complex “portals”, he was advocating stripping down Infoseek back to its roots as a smarter search engine. His voice was drowned out because it was counter to the conventional wisdom at the time, but Google’s success a few years later proved he had been on to something.
Steve is also one of the most generous men in the Valley. He was one of the first entrepreneurs of his generation to commit serious money to philanthropy. I remember wanting to publicize the extent of his philanthropy and being told it wasn’t his style to “brag” about his giving.
So sad to hear the news…
Posted by Marivi Lerdo de Tejada at September 7th, 2007 at 5:05 pmI used to be Chairman of Infoseek Japan and also remember Steve trying to keep it focused on search while everyone else was running to make a portal.
This is indeed sad news…
Posted by Joi Ito at September 7th, 2007 at 9:35 pmI worked with Steve at Infoseek. What I love about Steve is how quickly he will trust someone. At his core, he sees the good in everyone. He values a strong mind and free spirit. I am very sad by his news and he will be in my thoughts and prayers.
Posted by Christine Ofori at September 15th, 2007 at 4:38 pm