[jeffiel]

I’ll share my favorite Om story.

It was 2010 and we were launching Twilio SMS. I went over to his office to pitch him the story, hoping we would cover the launch. He listened for 10 minutes while I walked through it, then said

“Yeah yeah I’ll write about it. But I want to talk about your health. Are you taking care of yourself? You could lose some weight…”

He wanted everybody to learn from his health journey. While mostly I wanted him to cover our news, and it was terribly awkward… walking home, I realized it was nice to be seen as a person not just a founder, a startup or a tech story.

[TheMagicHorsey]

Ha! I had a similar story, Om saw me and a group of other engineers that our boss briefly introduced as he was walking through our offices, and Om remarked: "You are working these guys too hard ... they look like they don't get enough sleep." Which was true ... we were pulling all nighters to get our release in shape for demos. It was nice to see a visitor acknowledge our health sacrifices for the company ... a whole bunch of other journalists came through too ... and nobody else commented on our appearance/health.

[kevmo]

That's an incredibly nice story.

Are you taking better care of yourself?

[simonebrunozzi]

Thanks for sharing this one, Jeff. I was a big fan of Twilio since launch, and I think I remember that article (I was at AWS back then, in a Tech Evangelist role, so most "new" startups on the block passed in front of me one way or another).

I'm sure there are thousands of stories about Om, and only some of them are here in this thread.

I briefly met him in 2012 or 2013, but didn't really interact with him much. But I kind of liked him a lot, and kept following his writings.

RIP.

[iwontberude]

lmao welp