他永远地走了，他创办的公司还在

    就在圣诞节前几天，巴文•帕瑞克收到了一封他终生难忘的电子邮件。那天，他正在赶赴马萨诸塞州一个家庭晚宴的途中，智能手机收件箱突然蹦出一则消息。发件人是身在加州伯克利的好友和事业伙伴汉苏•李。

    他们两人刚刚从加州大学伯克利分校哈斯商学院(Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley)获得MBA学位，一起创办了一家叫Magoosh的在线备考公司。

    “巴文，”李写道。“我被查出患有一种罕见的肺癌。”

    这些看似轻描淡写的话语犹如晴天霹雳，帕瑞克的整个世界轰然倒塌。他做梦也不敢想象，像李这样的人会罹患重病。这位33岁的事业搭档很少抽烟，身体很棒，喜欢运动，充满活力。他们都是哈斯商学院2008级学生，初次见面时，李就给他留下了深刻的印象。帕瑞克眼里的李是一位非常聪明，极具魄力，雄心勃勃，一心想开创一番事业的小伙子。

    李在他们创建的那家羽翼未丰的互联网公司中是一位性格外向的领导者，一位总是从大处着眼的梦想家。相比之下，帕瑞克非常安静，好沉思，是一位保守主义者，有时候不愿主动参与，说起话来总是轻声细语。用他自己的话说，他经常被“硬拽着，踢动着，大吼着”完成李推动的、更具雄心的发展目标。

    等到帕瑞克返回西海岸的时候，李已经被迫放弃了他在公司担当的积极角色，而身为好朋友的帕瑞克不得不肩负起更多的领导职责。李被确诊那一刻，帕瑞克非常担心公司的长期生存能力。Magoosh的现金流连续多月呈现负值，公司的现金储备眼看着就要燃烧殆尽。

    现在，帕瑞克正在迅速地失去一位当初说服他一起创业的朋友和事业伙伴。往昔的日常工作交流骤然减少，先是每周在伯克利附近散散步，随后是每月打一次电话，到了后来，只是偶尔发一封电子邮件。大约15个月后，李最终还是因为肺癌第四阶段的并发症离开了人世，那天是2013年3月4日。

    如果今天李还活着，他肯定会为自己的合作伙伴和他们一起创建的公司感到骄傲和自豪。他也将非常兴奋地获悉，他的朋友依然能够听到自己告诫他鼓足勇气快马扬鞭的声音，这种声音有助于抵消帕瑞克更注重安稳经营的自然倾向。

    两人第一次见面是在2008年加州大学伯克利分校哈斯商学院举办的一个周末招生咨询会上。时年30岁的李正打算辞去他在沃尔玛公司(Wal-Mart)担任的物流、战略和规划事务高级经理一职，去攻读一个MBA学位。李出生在佛罗里达州一个韩裔家庭，毕业于阿默斯特学院(Amherst )。他当时已经成为一家互联网初创公司的首位员工，而且很清楚自己想开创自己的事业。26岁的帕瑞克从杜克大学(Duke University)毕业后在德勤公司(Deloitte )干了5年的资深咨询师。帕瑞克在费城长大，并不确定毕业后的工作去向，但他非常喜欢德勤费城分公司的工作。

    It was just a few days before Christmas in 2011 when Bhavin Parikh got the email he will never forget. He was on his way to a family dinner in Massachusetts when the message popped into the inbox on his smartphone. It was from his good friend and business partner Hansoo Lee in Berkeley, Calif.

    The two were recent MBA graduates from the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley who together founded Magoosh, an online test prep company.

    "Hey Bhavin," wrote Lee, "I've been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer..."

    With those simple yet startling words, Parikh's whole world came crashing down. Lee was the last person he could ever imagine falling ill. His 33-year-old partner rarely smoked. He was fit, active, and full of life. From the very first time they met at Haas as incoming MBA students in 2008, Lee impressed him as a bright and daring young man with a driving ambition and a relentless focus on wanting to become an entrepreneur.

    In their fledgling Internet business, Lee was the extroverted leader, an expansive visionary who was always thinking big. By contrast, Parikh was the quiet, contemplative one, the sometimes reluctant, always soft-spoken conservative who often had to be, in his own words, "dragged, kicking and screaming" through the more ambitious objectives pushed by Lee.

    By the time Parikh returned to the West Coast, his friend would be forced to give up his active role at their company, and Parikh would be stretched as a leader and as a friend. When Lee was diagnosed, Parikh was deeply concerned about the long-term viability of their business. Magoosh was burning through cash, with month after month of negative cash flow.

    And now Parikh was fast losing the friend and partner who convinced him to launch the startup in the first place. The day-to-day interactions that defined their working relationship would devolve into weekly strolls around Berkeley, then monthly phone calls, and finally an occasional email. Some 15 months later, on March 4, 2013, Lee passed away, a victim of complications from Stage IV lung cancer.

    If Lee were alive today, he would be proud of his partner and the business they created together. He would also be thrilled to know that his friend can still hear his voice, exhorting him to move faster and bolder, to offset his more natural tendency to play it safe.

    The pair first met in 2008 at an admit weekend at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Lee, then 30, was about to leave Wal-Mart (WMT), where he was a senior manager of logistics, strategy, and planning, to get his MBA degree. An Amherst grad born to Korean parents and raised in Florida, Lee had already been the first employee at an Internet startup and knew he wanted to create his own business. Parikh, then 26, had spent five years as a senior consultant at Deloitte after graduating from Duke University. Parikh, raised in Pittsburgh, wasn't sure what he would do with his MBA but loved working for Deloitte in Philadelphia.