I was shocked and saddened earlier this week to find out that Bill David, a long-time colleague and friend of mine and many others in eDiscovery, passed away this past weekend.

Bill was the Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of CloudNine and a co-worker of mine for ten years.  Bill was the chief architect of much of CloudNine’s tech stack, including the CloudNine review platform.  Bill used to say that “we have to zig when they zag”, which was his way of saying that we had to do something different from our competitors to stand out in the industry.  To that end, he managed the implementation of CloudNine Review on a private cloud environment instead of the public cloud environment that many other review platforms are built on, and that had particular appeal to many of the customers that used CloudNine.

As a result, Bill had a visionary approach to developing technology and wasn’t afraid to think outside the box with regard to creating technology solutions.  When Bill would approach any of us and say, “I have a prototype I’ve been working on that I want you to take a look at”, it was always impressive and exciting, and many of those prototype ideas became technology that was used by CloudNine’s customers.

Bill David had a developer’s mentality.  He worked at home mostly (well before most of us started doing it during the pandemic) and when he came into the office, he was usually wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals (unless he had an important meeting).  Several times, he refused to shave until a product release was out the door, which for some lengthy development cycles meant he grew a pretty long beard!

Bill David also had a salesperson’s personality.  Unlike a lot of developer types, Bill was outgoing and gregarious and friendly to all.  He could relate equally well to developers talking technology and investors talking business, and he did both very well.  Bill also cracked jokes regularly, laughed heartily and could “hold court” telling very interesting or funny stories in a way that was always entertaining, never overbearing.  You were never bored when you were together with Bill!

Brad Jenkins, the other co-founder of CloudNine who also worked with Bill for years before that, said this about Bill: “I was proud to be Bill’s business partner, but most importantly I was honored to be his friend. Bill was constantly extending himself to others without expecting anything in return. While I admire Bill’s loyalty the most, it is his sense of humor and our laughs together that I will miss every day.”

Bill’s biggest passion was his family – his wife Kristie and his son Tanner.  He worked hard and managed to juggle a lot of responsibilities as CTO of the company, but always put his family first. My condolences, thoughts and prayers are with them.

CloudNine has a release announcement about Bill here and is establishing a scholarship fund to assist students with their educational goals to honor his legacy.

Rest in Peace, Bill David.  Heaven just became a whole lot livelier with you in it.

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