I can still remember the first time I met Martin (Lazerzubb) Schaedel, it was at a WebMasterWorld Pubcon in London, he came up to me and said “YO, you a mod or any one important?” . When I said no he walked off. The next time I met him was a year later and I was a Mod then and apparently I was now someone of importance to him to track me down. Our friendship just got stronger over the years, we both worked in the very competitive affiliate industries and always found us stepping on each other toes.. he loved to have his photo taken in those days 
Over the years, Martin would just turn up out of the blue at various shows. I remember him coming up to me at a show and saying how happy he was to find me and what was my room number and could he dump his bags and did I have a twin beds ?… before I could even say HI !
He then moved out of search and into venture capital working and introducing me to Morten Lund and Soren Kenner two of the smartest people I know outside of search. I then worked with him for a year on the FareCompare project which made sense, he loved travelling and planes.
and now today I wake up to find out that you died in a plane crash, You’ll be missed, Martin.
DaveN
20 Comments
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Wow, must admit I didn’t expect that ending to your post coming. Didn’t know the bloke but my thoughts are with his friends and family.
Reading about him here, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/friends-believe.html he seemed like an amazing guy.
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@chris he was – 110% type of person scared the crap out of me and boser in Copenhagen
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So sad, so sad. Looking at the pics you posted Dave, all the good old memories came back. I do remember the first Pubcon gatherings and how we talked about “that kid” that just asked questions and talked to everyone as if he’d met them before. He was a kid a that point, but man what a sharp one. I remember being very impressed with him and how he always showed out the blue at any conference we went to.
I’m from Denmark and him being from Sweden just across the pond, we had our fair share of errmm arguments about who was the best breed in Scandinavia. I remember him for the perfectly ironed white shirts and the greased up mafia hair style.
Martin, you will be missed.
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I was at that same pubcon meeting and he was the centre of attention for quite a period I do recall
great personality and a sad loss
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I met him a few times at Pubcons in London – always said hi and stopped to talk but then I think he talked to most people at every Pubcon he went to
Such a shame to hear what happened.
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Ya, the first time I saw him at PubCon, I asked Oilman, “Who brought their kid?”. It wasn’t 10 mins later we were discussing with Martin whether anchor text was as important as everyone thought it was. He was one of the few SEO’s I have ever met, that pulled out spreadsheet showing me his results of a A-B split testing on a million page affiliate site.
A little later, Martin told me to “tell me your seo secrets”. We thought it quite naive of him to put it that way. So a little later when me and Oil were talking and accidentally dropped some tid bit about the algo that we knew wasn’t common knowledge, Martin said thanks, smiled and walked away with his “secret”. I can only imagine he did something similar at every pub meet and conference he went too.
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Martin was one of those people who could hold centre stage, talk technical and still be entertaining.
He will be missed.
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I’ll never forget meeting “the kid” for the first time. All of a sudden, Seth Wilde looked like an old man.
The first impression was always, “this kid must be full of shit” because it just wasn’t conceivable that someone so young could really have the level of knowledge and experience that came out of his mouth.But after awhile, it became obvious that he truly was an old soul who had done an experienced more in his short time on this planet than most could accomplish in 3 lifetimes. Martin lived life about as full throttle as you can get. I’m truly going to miss that energy.
RIP Martin.
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@brett lol, he was to the point all right, makes you realign your priorities
might even buy you a beer at PubCon Europe – London England – Networking Event, July 4th, 2009
DaveN
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Martin was like a whirlwind. He’d turn up and be gone in no time. But it was a whirlwind you’d look forward to seeing next time round.
He always had something positive to say, and we had some excellent tech discussions, and some long and ongoing discussions about cars.
I’ll miss him.
RIP Martin
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Hopefully I’ll be making the trip from Cape Town to London for the Pubcon this year.
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> Seth Wilde looked like an old man
I had that exact thought last night. I had dinner with Seth and eWhisper and had the duty to give him them news about martin.
> beer
It will be soon. I’m on a couple of panels at ses london.
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It’s always sad to lose a brilliant mind. Farewell Martin.
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he was a top bloke, he told me once that I “was in mordor” because I was doing some work for someone he did not like heheh. He just said what he wanted, which was great. People used to think he was laying it on, but those that knew him a little realised that these crazy stories were indeed true.
Sad that he is gone.
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@brett lets talk it’s been to long time
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Thanks for the picture Dave – it’s been a long time since I saw him – that’s how I’d like to remember him.
Yo Martin
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Way way too sad. (And yeah, he did love having his photo taken back then didn’t he? lol http://tinyurl.com/d59eo3)
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The baby faced assassin I always rememeber drank more coke than anyone I have ever met, was always immaculately dressed, rarely sat on chairs, if he did it was on the arm of the chair and I am sure that everyone that met him did the genius/bullshitter take and I don’t think I ever met anyone that didn’t think genius. But very unassuming.
At 17 you think it’s going to be kid talk but never was, always talked about stuff he had read in the FT, valuations of companies etc.
I’m going to find it hard (if not impossible) to delete his record from my address book and will find it eerie that his Twitter feed (which btw was started in 2006) will be there for eternity. Reading through his 400 posts they mostly revolve around travelling.
Some highlights – he was playing around with Spotify in 2007, the same time he got an iphone, made the front page of Digg in 2007, talked about running his private jet in 2007 and the price of oil at $80 a barrel, was playing around on hulu in 2007.
How prophetic that on 24th November 2007 his twitter status was :
http://twitter.com/martin/status/440468992
I’m leaving on a jet plane, I don’t know when I’ll be back again.
All of us that spent time with him are richer for the experience.
He’s still doing his thing, just in a different place.
Miss you man.
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Just as a footnote, I just saw the weirdest tweet.
http://twitter.com/PlaneCrash/statuses/1162942131
Someone has set up a Twitter account called PlaneCrash and the tweet (you have go read for yourself) says :
PlaneCrashBETA: Site of @Martin who died in a plane crash is feeding in news about his own death via feed tracking ‘FareCo..
That could only be Martin feeding in news about his own death.
Dave, all those old memories suddenly came flooding back last night after I heard the news