The tech community has lost an icon. Ben Rosen was my friend and mentor since Altos Computer went public in 1982. He was a star tech analyst at Morgan Stanley, and we became fast friends. Ben went on to become a venture capitalist at Seven Rosen Partners. When Ben retired from Seven Rosen Partners, I had just left Altos Computer, and we decided to angel invest together. Ben was in New York pursuing angel investments on the East Coast, and I was covering the West Coast. Sure enough, Ben found our first “hit” investment on the West Coast, the Ask Jeeves search engine. Ask Jeeves gave me my knowledge of the search space to pursue our investment in Google a few years later! More important than investing together was our friendship, our mentoring, and love of founders. Ben was kind, gentle, humble, and smarter than everyone else in the room, but never said so. I am so thankful to him for our friendship and for launching my investing career, which led to the founding SV Angel where we have invested in close to 1,000 companies. Ben was the foundation of it all. I send deepest condolences to Ben's dedicated wife, Donna, and sons, Eric and Jeff. God Bless Ben!