Start there. Everything else is commentary.

The rest of it, the part that keeps tugging at me, came just before. A few weeks before he died, John subscribed to my paid newsletter. No message. No pitch. No expectation of reciprocity. Just a quiet gesture of support, made without witnesses. The kind of thing that doesn't circulate on LinkedIn or show up in anyone's quarterly deck, but tells you exactly who someone is.

I've known OpenX since the beginning, back when this industry still thought of itself as builders instead of operators. When the arguments were about structure and trust, not leverage and dominance. John came from that era. He carried himself like someone who understood that markets are built by people first, and only later by incentives.

Now feels like the wrong time to tally differences. Wrong time to relitigate competition, positioning, disagreements, deals won or lost, narratives sharpened for advantage. All of that is dust. The business will keep moving, loudly, without noticing it lost someone steady.

What matters now is the man.

John Gentry died this month, but not before writing his own farewell - a LinkedIn post scheduled to appear after his death like some kind of reverse spam campaign, except instead of pitching programmatic yield optimization, it was pitching gratitude.

"If you are reading this, it means that I'm no longer around and lost my fight with cancer."

What followed wasn't the usual corporate obituary nonsense. This was specific. "I outlived myself by 28 years, thanks to a kidney transplant and modern medicine," he wrote. Twenty-eight borrowed years, and he knew it. That kind of accounting changes everything.

He thanked colleagues for "the fun, for sharing the struggle, for helping me learn along the way." Then he ended with a dad joke about his kids: "And if you come across Jack Gentry or Grace Gentry tell them to work harder!"

Even dead, the man couldn't help himself.

What happened next shouldn't have been remarkable, but it was. LinkedIn is usually where sincerity goes to die, murdered by personal brand optimization and engagement metrics. The algorithm prefers controversy or inspiration porn, not actual grief. But John's post broke something open - hundreds of people suddenly unable to perform the usual professional distance.

Brian Chisholm, 25 years of working together: "I never once had a call with you that didn't end with you asking about how the family was doing. Literally not a single time."

Read that again. Twenty-five years. Every single call - the ones about quarterly numbers, the ones about firing people, the ones about fighting off competitors. All of them ended the same way. "How's the family?"

You can't fake that. You don't have the energy to fake that for 25 years. That's who someone actually is when the cameras are off and the performance is over.

Rebecca Bonell Woolcott counted the days: "3,593 days wasn't enough. I texted you yesterday, so much gossip I had to catch you up on! I think I'm going to keep texting you."

She's texting a dead man. Not because she forgot he's gone. Because some relationships don't know how to stop just because someone stopped breathing. Because John was the kind of person who made space in his dying for other people's gossip, who cared about the small stupid daily things that make up a life.

Mitchell Greenway: "You were like a father to me... when I get down I'll remind myself of how hard you taught me to work, and how balance in life is more important than anything."

Work hard. Balance matters more. Most leaders pick one of these things and build a TED talk around it. John apparently taught both, simultaneously, without the contradiction destroying him or turning into LinkedIn thought leadership drivel.

Drew Houston: John taught him how to lead as a CEO with disabilities "through your actions." Not through words. Not through some carefully crafted narrative about adversity. Through showing up, day after day, while dying, and refusing to let cancer turn him into anyone other than who he'd always been.

Stacy Bohrer: "You always made me feel safe unlike anyone else."

Safe. In ad tech. An industry built on anxiety and FOMO and the gnawing fear you're about to be disrupted by someone younger and cheaper. John made people feel safe.

The tributes have a pattern. Not the generic stuff - "visionary leader," "industry pioneer" - but specifics that stick in your throat.

John Williams: John let him crash on his couch sophomore year at UCSB. That's how Williams met his wife. That's how he built his entire life. One couch, sophomore year, a small kindness that changed everything.

Brian Murphy: John sent him ducks from his hunting trips. Actual ducks. Because apparently John hunted and believed in sharing the spoils, even the weird ones.

Tim Sims, Chief Commercial Officer at The Trade Desk - which means he works for a competitor, for those keeping score: "Knowing you changed my life."

That's what you say about someone who actually mattered. Not someone who had impressive quarterly earnings or a three-year roadmap that made the board happy. Someone who saw something in you that you couldn't see in yourself and refused to let you settle for less.

Andrew Goode: "Rest now and let us take it from here."

That's the deal John made. He built it. He showed them how. Now it's theirs to carry. He trusted them enough to let go.

John's career reads like the history of an industry that mostly doesn't exist anymore - back when digital advertising was being invented by people who didn't yet know they were supposed to perform disruption for venture capital.

Overture, 1999-2003. Senior VP during the years when paid search advertising was being invented. The foundational technology that would reshape the internet and mint Google's fortune and turn "search" into a verb and a business model. Most people were still arguing about whether the internet was a fad. John was already monetizing it.

Then OpenX for 14 years. Started as an advisor in 2012. Became President. Then CEO in 2020, just in time to spend six years leading a company while dying of cancer. Six years of board meetings and strategic pivots and competitive threats, all while knowing the clock was running down. Still building. Still asking about people's families on every call.

That subscription, though. It won't leave me alone.

A few weeks before he died, John subscribed to my newsletter. He didn't announce it. Didn't ask for anything. Didn't need me to know it was him or thank him or feel obligated. He just... did it. Because he believed in supporting work that mattered, even when - especially when - no one would ever know.

It wasn't a grand gesture. That's the point. It was small and private and completely unnecessary. The kind of integrity that doesn't need an audience.

John didn't need witnesses. Didn't need his values to be visible to count. Didn't need credit for doing the right thing.

He just did the thing.

And then there's Matt Sattel.

I need to tell you about Matt because I've known him since he was practically a kid in this industry. Watched him grow up, make mistakes, learn the business, become the kind of leader people actually want to work for instead of just tolerating. So when Matt writes something, I know what it costs him. I know he doesn't waste words.

"JG was more than a leader to me. He was an advocate, a mentor, but more than anything a friend."

More than anything, a friend. That's the hierarchy. Not boss. Not the guy who made his career possible. Friend.

"He personally prepared me for tough moments for the last 4 years, though nothing can truly prepare you for a loss like that."

Four years. John spent four years of his dying deliberately preparing Matt to lead without him. Four years of conversations about scenarios Matt would face after John was gone. About decisions Matt would have to make alone. About how to hold it together when the person who believed in you more than you believed in yourself isn't there anymore.

What must those conversations have been like?

How do you teach someone you've mentored from the beginning - someone you've watched grow up professionally - how to carry on without you? How do you prepare someone for your own absence when you've been the steady presence in their career for years?

Apparently you do it the way John did everything else: you show up, you tell the truth about what's coming, and you refuse to pretend it isn't hard.

"JG's belief in me changed my life, my career. He believed that doing the right thing and building a strong business could go hand in hand, and showed us that it was possible to lead with both strength and humanity, even in the most demanding moments."

Strength and humanity. Not one or the other. Both. Always. Even while dying. Especially while dying.

So let's put the rest down.

The rivalries. The grudges. The professional distance we convince ourselves is permanent and necessary. The competitive positioning and deal flow and narrative warfare that makes this industry feel important when it's mostly just loud people talking about advertising.

None of it survives contact with death. None of it matters when measured against a man who spent 25 years asking about people's families. Who made people feel safe in an industry built on anxiety. Who sent ducks from hunting trips and let kids crash on his couch and subscribed to newsletters without needing credit.

There are words Jews like myself say when something real is taken from the world and there's no way to soften it, no way to make it easier, no way to pretend it's anything other than what it is:

Baruch Dayan HaEmet.

Blessed is the True Judge.

Not because it explains anything. Not because it makes the loss acceptable or finds meaning in suffering or offers comfort.

Because it refuses to lie.

May his memory be a blessing.

And may we remember the person before the business, the human before the market, and the quiet acts of integrity that never needed applause.

Rest well, JG. You earned it.

And Matt - I've watched you grow up in this industry. John spent four years preparing you for moments you can't prepare for. He believed you could carry this forward. He was right about people. Trust that he was right about you.

Don't waste it trying to be him. Be who he saw when he looked at you.

-PL