IN MEMORIAM - MAMA KOBOLD - 1955-2020

Kobold mourns the loss of a great visionary - the one person who made the company's founding possible thanks to sage advice, endless encouragement and boundless love. A loving mother and successful serial entrepreneur, Mama Kobold adhered to an unwritten set of rules that made her perhaps the most kick-ass mom in the world. The First Unwritten Rule of Mama Kobold was to always maximize having fun, no matter the nature of the activity. Second: To selflessly support those in need, regardless of creed, color, and religion. In her lifetime, Mama Kobold would support an endless stream of children and young adults in ways ranging from offering moral support or a comfortable place to live, to covering their school and university tuition payments. Only "idiots" needed not to apply for Mama Kobold's charity. The Autobahn, she taught my brother and me at tender ages during countless drives, was, in her mind, a place littered with "idiots". In hindsight, Mama Kobold was probably right, because presumably only a mentally incapacitated person would not rapidly clear the left lane when a diminutive woman with two children came barreling down at speeds higher than those required to make a Boeing 747 airborne. This leads us to the Third Unwritten Rule of Mama Kobold: To embrace adventure - all while causing general mischief whenever possible. Nobody in our family can remember exactly why our mother married our father, but it seems plausible that she might have done so at least in part to take the name Kobold, which in German literally means "mischievous little gremlin."