John James Katsaros died with his wife and one of his sons by his side at Coterie, a senior living facility, in San Francisco, CA, at 72.

Born in Astoria, NY to Gus and Mary Katsaros, the family later moved to Massapequa Park, NY on Long Island. But the real family locus growing up was always Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where John and his brother Arthur, as well as their cousins - Marilyn, Hope, Donna, Carol, to name a few - spent countless summers, playing cards (Canasta) in the sun at the Trotting Park Beach in West Dennis or perfecting their soft serve cones while working summer jobs at the Kream ‘N Kone.

John graduated from Lehigh University with a BS and Masters in Electrical Engineering, which gave him the itch to move to California, together with a job offer at Fairchild Semiconductors. A fresh face in the Bay Area, he and his fraternity brother, Steve Cox, met lifelong friends like Jim Willenborg. In 1993, John and his business partner and dear friend Larry Gordon, founded the Internet Research Group, a security and infrastructure research agency, which was later bought by Jupiter Communications in 2000. He got an MBA from Santa Clara University, and authored two books: Selling High-Tech: High Ticket (1993) and Getting It Right the First Time (2005).

But most important to John during this time: he met his wife, Robin, and they started a family together. While many couples have romantic stories of their first meeting, John and Robin liked to joke their “meet cute” was…less cute: they met at a bar. Specifically, The British Bankers Club in Menlo Park, California. John would later joke that was the most expensive drink of his life. They wed in 1984 at St. Helena Catholic Church, with a reception at Meadowood in Napa Valley; three days before their wedding, ominously, the resort burnt down, leading radio DJ Don Bleu of “Don Bleu in the Morning” to dedicate an entire morning of his show for people to call in with suggestions to help John and Robin find a new venue. Luckily this wasn’t a foreshadowing of their marriage: Sunday, May 26 will be John and Robin’s 40th wedding anniversary. And we consulted with the umpire, who is calling this slide into home plate for John “Safe!” in celebrating the milestone (John loved baseball).

John and Robin have two sons, Christopher and Matthew, and raised their family in Los Altos Hills, California, where they lived for over 40 years. John kept his offices in downtown Los Altos so that he could see his family as much as possible; the children would always stop by after school for a snack and a “hello!” to their Dad. John liked to joke that his commute doubled if he got a red light at Foothill Expressway; perhaps you remember him driving in his convertible—top down, even when it was entirely too cold for that. John and his other Dad friends - Milt McColl, John Burr - loved coaching their childrens’ baseball teams. In Los Altos’ “highly competitive” 10-12 year old baseball landscape, their teams were famous for losing, because they always put an emphasis on having fun with friends and team bonding over winning.

John was fortunate enough to see both of his children partner off (to Matthew Sargenti and Jen Maples, respectively), and even got to meet his first grandchild, Lenny John, born in 2020—whom he and Robin adore.

But let’s not ignore the end of the story. John was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 57, but he probably had it much earlier (he lost his sense of smell at 40, which is an early indicator for the disease). Parkinson’s is a tough, slow disease. He died from Parkinson’s, but like all Parkinson’s patients, it was actually from complications due to Parkinson’s; in his case, a fall that he wasn’t able to bounce back from. He hated falling, not because of the physical pain, but that it made him feel like a burden. But he was never a burden: even in those darker moments, the only thing we ever saw was his quick wit and strong sense of humor.

But we’re glad he won’t have to fall again.

The family is planning memorials in both Cape Cod and San Francisco in July, to coincide with John’s 73rd birthday. We will share more details on both memorials on this site at a later date; you can subscribe to be updated. 

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