Ilya Zhitomirsky, The Diasporafather

Ilya Zhitomirsky was a cofounder of the freedom-championing social network Diaspora and a dear friend of ours at Primer Labs. If you want to see this succeed and to take up the cause Ilya championed, check out Diaspora and join the team to help!

He will be missed and remembered and championed as the ideas he cared about so passionately need our support now more than ever that freedom and choice should not perish from the earth.

His loss is a reminder to all of us that no code hero is immortal and youth is no guarantee of survival. Startup founders go through the worst ups and downs of the rollercoaster between being on the cusp of taking over the world and plunging to the depths of feeling hopeless and doomed.

We must take the greatest care to be there for each other and to ask each other how we really are to break through all the hiding we do to tell ourselves and our friends that everything is okay. Sometimes things are not okay and we need someone to talk to so we can get through the lows.

Beyond every challenge and crisis is the next idea or the next pivot or the next startup opportunity because all of us have a few more tricks up our sleeve or lucky turnarounds or world-changing ideas in us no matter what happens with the ones we're working on now.