Bill Campbell, the talented but modest business coach who advised many Silicon Valley stars including Apple’s Steve Jobs, died of cancer Monday. He was 75.
His death was confirmed in a brief statement from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, whose chairman, John Doerr, was a close friend.
In a personal statement, Doerr wrote: “Silicon Valley lost a giant as Coach Bill Campbell passed away this morning. Bill was our SuperCoach — colorful confidante and mentor for leaders and whole teams — from Intuit to Apple, Amazon, Go, Google and more.”
In between stints at Apple, Campbell was CEO of Go, which developed an operating system for early tablets. Over the years he advised many of Silicon Valley’s elite, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and Intuit’s Scott Cook. He served as CEO of Intuit from 1994 to 1998, retiring as Intuit’s chairman in January.
More than a coach, he formed personal bonds with the executives he advised. The news was greeted with sad comments on Twitter from some of those he counseled during an epic career in Silicon Valley.
“A man with a huge heart, who hugged everyone he met with, was more than a mentor,” Schmidt said in a Facebook post. “He helped us build Google and in countless ways made our success possible.”
Dick Costolo, the former chief of Twitter, tweeted, “Just hearing the news about Bill Campbell. Horrible. Called me on my last day at Twitter & had both the funniest & most insightful comments.”
“Without Bill we would not be who we are today,” said Intuit founder Cook. “I don’t think anyone had an impact as important and far-reaching on Silicon Valley’s leaders and culture. He made us all better. The world just dimmed.”
Campbell was a football coach for five years, worked for ad agency J. Walter Thompson and Kodak, and was brought to Silicon Valley by then-Apple CEO John Sculley in 1983 as vice president of marketing. He left Apple but returned in 1997 when Jobs, returning from exile upon Sculley’s departure, asked Campbell to serve on Apple’s board.
He and Jobs lived near each other in Palo Alto, and Jobs would often walk to Campbell’s house for long discussions.
One day in 1997 Jobs came by and asked him to join Apple’s board. “The only time I had a rush like that was when I was asked to be a trustee of Columbia University,” Campbell told Forbes in a 2014 interview when he stepped down after 17 years as an Apple board member. “I said, without hesitation, ‘For sure.’ “
Campbell was from Homestead, Pennsylvania. His father worked in a mill at nights and taught high school and coached basketball by day. Campbell played football in high school and continued to play at Columbia University.
With bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia, he coached the Columbia football team from 1974-79 before coming to Silicon Valley. He memorably told The New York Times that his transition to tech was mildly bumpy. “You know, when they hear you’ve been a football coach,” he said, “they think you’re going to swing into the room on a vine.” But, he said, he just wanted to be a businessman.
As good at coaching athletes as he was coaching tech executives, Campbell served on the board of the National Football Foundation, was a 2004 Gold Medal recipient and namesake of the organization’s Campbell Trophy.
“He embodied the term leadership, and he used his experiences as a player and coach at Columbia to build one of the most successful business careers in the Silicon Valley as a confidant to generations of our country’s most influential business leaders,” foundation President and CEO Steve Hatchell said in a statement. “Nobody had a bigger heart or gave back more to the game.”
Campbell also served as an adviser to the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute, a project on media innovation run jointly by Columbia and Stanford universities.
Asked why he got involved, Campbell told this newspaper, “You’ve got to be scared to death that journalism is going away. People without either capability or credibility are becoming the purveyors of information. It’s distressing, but that’s the kind of thing that’s occurring.”
Campbell is survived by his son, Jim Campbell; daughter, Margaret Campbell; his wife, Eileen Bocci Campbell; and his three stepchildren, Kevin, Matthew and Kate Bocci, and his former wife, Roberta.
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419. Follow him at Twitter.com/petecarey.
