Jay Patel, GM of Cisco Webex, passed away last week. I knew Jay for many years, first as the founder and CEO of IMI Mobile, a company that he not only founded but also took public and then later sold to Cisco for $730M.
As one does in our industry, we had a habit of running into each other at one of the many industry conferences. We had also built a rapport where we could pick up where we left off from the last conference.
Jay was endlessly curious, wanting to know why someone thought the way they did. He was generous with his time and candid with his advice. And the advice was rock solid. His My Best Advice remains one of the more popular profiles on my blog.
Everyone who knew Jay will certainly miss him. I know I’ll miss running into him at conferences, picking up mid-sentence like no time had passed.