Zander Lurie, a longtime friend and executive at the sports camera company GoPro, has stood in as temporary executive chairman. Donald E. Graham, the former owner of The Washington Post and a friend of Mr. Goldberg, spoke to the staff for two hours about managing loss and his mother’s experience taking over the newspaper after her husband’s suicide.

“I told them how proud he was of them, of the team,” Mr. Graham said, referring to Mr. Goldberg. “My mom’s story is unique, but I talked about making success out of tragedy. It was two hours of people who were very emotional, but knew they had a hell of a business.”

Eighteen other executives, including the top leaders of GoPro, LinkedIn and Twitter, agreed to be matched with senior SurveyMonkey employees for a few hours of mentoring. A week of companywide volunteering has been planned for late August, followed by a final celebration of Mr. Goldberg. And there have been regular staff surveys to see how people are coping.

SurveyMonkey’s top executives have had to avoid “strategic paralysis from a culture of mourning, and emotional revolt from telling people ‘get over it,’ ” said Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management. “There is a way to take a loss and make it into strength.”

SurveyMonkey was started in 1999 and remained small for a decade, offering online and email surveys on various topics. In 2009, private equity investors acquired it, and Mr. Goldberg, who had sold a small music company to Yahoo for $12 million in 2001, was brought in soon after to run the company. Starting with just 14 employees, Mr. Goldberg began his recruiting.

“My first reaction was the same as everybody else: ‘Surveys? You’re kidding, right?’ ” said Selina Tobaccowala, SurveyMonkey’s president and chief technical officer, who in 2009 oversaw technology for Ticketmaster in London. “He talked about ways this kind of information could be used by parents to evaluate education, or hospitals to manage patient care. It would be a way to understand data.”