SAN FRANCISCO — Dave Goldberg, the chief executive of SurveyMonkey and husband of Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, died of head trauma Friday night after he collapsed at the gym at a private resort in Mexico, according to a Mexican government official.
Mr. Goldberg, 47, was on vacation with family and friends at the Four Seasons Resort near Punta Mita, close to Puerto Vallarta in southwest Mexico, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Nayarit State. Mr. Goldberg left his room around 4 p.m. on Friday, collapsed while exercising and died of head trauma and blood loss, said the spokesman. His brother, Robert Goldberg, found him on the floor of the gym at the resort at around 7 p.m., with blood around him. The spokesman said it appears “he fell off the treadmill and cracked his head open.”
Mr. Goldberg was transported to Hospital San Javier in Nuevo Vallarta, with weak vital signs, and died there, said the spokesman, who added that the incident appeared to be an accident. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook and a friend of the family, had said the death occurred while Mr. Goldberg was on vacation with Ms. Sandberg.
Mr. Goldberg’s death was announced by his brother and by SurveyMonkey on Saturday, but no cause or details of where it occurred were disclosed at that time. The lack of information prompted a wave of speculation about what happened to Mr. Goldberg, who was well regarded as an entrepreneur and mentor and was the less famous half of one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent power couples.
Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, has made no public statements about her husband’s death.
The family is planning an invitation-only celebration of Mr. Goldberg’s life on Tuesday at Stanford Memorial Auditorium. Men planning to attend were urged not to wear ties “in keeping with Dave’s lifelong hatred of ties,” according to an emailed invitation sent to friends of the couple. The invitation added, “Out of respect for the family, please do not take pictures or post to social media” from the event.
The Walt Disney Company said it would move the time of its second-quarter earnings release on Tuesday so executives could attend the funeral. Ms. Sandberg is a Disney board member.
Mr. Goldberg, who had worked at Yahoo and at a venture capital firm before running SurveyMonkey, lived with Ms. Sandberg in Menlo Park, Calif. They have two children. He is also survived by his mother, Paula Goldberg.
SurveyMonkey, a start-up that makes web survey technology, has not yet named an interim successor to Mr. Goldberg. Selina Tobaccowala is the company’s president, and Tim Maly is its chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
Vindu Goel reported from San Francisco and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City. Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City and Jodi Kantor contributed reporting from New York.
Correction: May 4, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the Mexican state represented by a prosecutor’s office spokesman who gave details of Mr. Goldberg’s death. It is Nayarit, not Jalisco.
Vindu Goel reported from San Francisco and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City. Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City and Jodi Kantor contributed reporting from New York.