Kevin Rose

Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV.[2]

Kevin Rose
Born (1977-02-21) February 21, 1977
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas
EmployerDigg (2004–2011)
GV (2009–2015)
Known forCo-host of The Screen Savers
Co-founder of Digg, Revision3 and Pownce
Spouse(s)
Darya Pino
(m. 2013)
Children2
Websitekevinrose.com

Career

Television

Rose was hired as a production assistant for The Screen Savers. He began appearing on-air in the "Dark Tip" segments and on Unscrewed with Martin Sargent, where he provided information on developing computing activities.[3] He became a regular co-host when Leo Laporte left TechTV on March 31, 2004. On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV, which resulted in a round of layoffs. Rose moved to Los Angeles to stay with G4. On May 22, 2005, Rose reached an agreement with G4 that released him from his contract and went on to create Systm and later, Revision3, where he co-hosted Diggnation alongside Alex Albrecht for 6 years.

Guest appearances

Kevin Rose appeared on the first episode of R&D TV alongside Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht.[4] On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show at NewTeeVee Live.[5] On March 11, 2009, April 16, 2010, and November 28, 2011, Rose was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, along with fellow Diggnation host Alex Albrecht.[6][7][8]

Podcasting

Rose began podcasting on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken[9] while he was still working on The Screen Savers at TechTV. Rose founded Revision3 in Los Angeles, California with Jay Adelson and David Prager in April 2005. On July 1, 2005, Rose and Alex Albrecht started the weekly podcast, Diggnation, which summarizes top stories submitted by Digg users. On October 3, 2011, Alex and Kevin announced that they would be retiring the weekly Diggnation show at the end of the year. The final show was taped on December 30, 2011 at The Music Box in Los Angeles, California.[10][11]

In November 2008, Rose was forced to apologize after making a crude joke about cutting off women’s breasts on a video podcast. He said:

…there is only one time you can strike [a woman ] if she kicks you in the balls, you have the ability and the right, to punch her in the teat…it's just like that…it's kinda like tit for tat. It hurts them, it does too…or take a scissors to the teat [Rose then made a cutting action with his hand][12]

Starting in 2009, Rose started an intermittent podcast called The Random Show with friend Tim Ferriss. As of March 2015, the show has a total of 27 episodes.[13]

Startups

In 2004, Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson formed Digg, a technology link website. The website was publicly launched on December 5, 2004.[14][15] In 2007, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[16] On September 1, 2010, Rose was replaced as CEO[17] by Matt Williams, a former general manager of consumer payments at Amazon. On March 18, 2011, Rose resigned from his position at Digg.[18][19] Digg was acquired by Betaworks for $500,000 in 2012.[20]

On June 27, 2007, Rose launched a micro-blogging site called Pownce,[21] which was acquired on December 1, 2008 and shut down on December 15, 2008 by blogging company Six Apart. In April 2011, the technology blog TechCrunch reported on the founding of "Milk".[22] The company is focused on creating mobile applications. The first application to be released was Oink, a tool for ranking real-world items.[23] In March 2012, Milk, Inc. announced that it would be shutting down its only product, Oink.[24]

Kevin also hosts a video series called Foundation in which he interviews many startup founders and successful entrepreneurs.[25]

Google

On March 16, 2012, Rose announced that he, along with the four others of the Milk team (Daniel Burka, Chris Hutchins and Joshua Lane), were hired by Google after shutting down Milk and laying off the remaining members.[26] Kevin Rose started his first day as a senior product manager for Google on March 19, 2012.[27] On May 30, AllThingsD reported that Rose had moved off the Google+ team to become a venture partner at GV.[2] In January 2015, Rose announced he would leave GV to focus on his new app development lab - North.[28]

Venture capitalist

Rose invested in Gowalla, Twitter, Foursquare, Dailybooth, ngmoco, SimpleGeo, 3crowd, OMGPOP, Square, Facebook, Chomp and Formspring.[29][30][31][32]

Watchville/Hodinkee

After leaving Google, Rose started Watchville, a news aggregation app focused on wristwatches. In July 2015, after Watchville merged with another watch-enthusiast site called Hodinkee, Rose moved to New York City to become the chief executive of Hodinkee.[33]

In April 2017, Rose stepped down from his role as Hodinkee CEO to become a partner in a start-up venture firm, True Ventures.[34]

Personal life

Rose was born in Redding, California[1] and lived in Oregon before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he spent most of his childhood. He became an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America.[35] Rose transferred to Southeast Career Technical Academy for high school (formerly known as Vo-Tech High School) in Las Vegas in 1992. He then attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas, majored in computer science but dropped out in 1998.[14] He worked for two dot-com startups through CMGI.[1] In 2013, he married Darya Pino.[36]

Controversies

Protest at Rose's house

On April 6, 2014, protestors demonstrated in front of Rose's home in San Francisco. The protesters held up a banner calling Rose a "parasite" and distributed a pamphlet accusing Rose of directing "the flow of capital from Google into the tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco." One banner read "I'ma Snip Snip Yr Ballz," an allusion to Rose's 2008 video podcast on Diggnation in which he joked about cutting off women’s breasts.[37]

Portland home demolition controversy

On February 28, 2014, Rose and his wife Darya Pino purchased an 1892 house at 1627 Northwest 32nd Avenue in the Willamette Heights area of Portland, Oregon. They removed the historic designation of the 122-year-old home and filed plans to demolish it.[38] On June 24, it was reported that the Roses had accepted an offer from long-time neighborhood residents to buy the house, although the deal hadn't been finalized.[39]

References

  1. G4's Focus On: Kevin Rose
  2. "Kevin Rose's Next Move: Partner at Google Ventures - Liz Gannes - News". AllThingsD. 2012-05-30. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  3. Drew Olanoff (12 July 2012). "Memories: Kevin Rose introduces a "new site" called Digg on December 13th, 2004". thenextweb. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  4. "R&DTV : Episode 3 - BBC Backstage". Ftp.kw.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  5. "Help Our Game Show; Win a Nano".
  6. "Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht Go On Jimmy Fallon, Plug Twitter". mashable.com. 2009-03-12. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  7. Bahareth, Mohammad (2012). Kings of the Internet: What You Don't Know About Them?. iUniverse. p. 117. ISBN 9781469798424.
  8. Jimmy Fallon [@jimmyfallon] (2011-11-28). "Diggnation's @alexalbrecht and @kevinrose are back on the show tonight!! & of course Betty White, Jack Houston and Jimmy Cliff" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  9. "thebroken podcast".
  10. Helft, Miguel (September 25, 2006). "Young Internet Producers, Bankrolled, Are Seeking Act II". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
  11. Stelter, Brian (2011-10-03). "'Diggnation,' Popular Web Talk Show, to End in December". The New York Times.
  12. Editors (November 8, 2008) “Kevin Rose Apologizes for Sexist Joke on Diggnation.” Read/Write. (Retrieved 4-6-2014.)
  13. "Tim Ferris' YouTube Video Uploads".
  14. "Valley Boys". BusinessWeek. 2006-08-14. Archived from the original on 2011-08-01. Retrieved 2006-12-22.
  15. MacManus, Richard (2006-02-01). "Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, Part 1". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2006-07-15. Retrieved 2006-07-15.
  16. "2007 Young Innovators Under 35: Kevin Rose, 30". Technology Review. 2007. Retrieved August 14, 2011.
  17. Nguyen, Anh. "Kevin Rose quits CEO role at Digg". ComputerWorld UK. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
  18. "Report: Digg co-founder Kevin Rose leaving Digg".
  19. "Kevin Rose Resigns from Digg [CONFIRMED]". Mashable. March 18, 2011.
  20. "The Inside Story On Why Kevin Rose Never Had A Big Hit". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
  21. "Kevin 'Digg' Rose goes for 3rd startup". GigaOM. 2007-05-09. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  22. "Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed with Valley Names". TechCrunch. 2011-04-26. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  23. "First look at Oink, Kevin Rose's app for rating stuff — Apple News, Tips and Reviews". Gigaom.com. 2011-11-03. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  24. Gannes, Liz. "Exclusive: Kevin Rose Will Join Google". Allthingsd. Retrieved 7 February 2013.
  25. Foundation website
  26. Rose, Kevin. "Google+". Kevin Rose. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
  27. Rose, Kevin. "Google+". Kevin Rose. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
  28. Kokalitcheva, Kia (14 January 2015). "Milk 2.0? Kevin Rose raises $5M for his app lab North Technologies, steps away from Google Ventures". VentureBeat.
  29. "Kevin, did you buy form spring?". Formspring. Archived from the original on 2012-07-31. Retrieved 2010-09-12.
  30. "Kevin Rose". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2010-09-12.
  31. "How To Make a Killing While Your Startup Burns". VALLEYWAG. Archived from the original on 2010-09-10. Retrieved 2010-09-12.
  32. "Kevin Rose". Quora. Retrieved 2010-09-12.
  33. Isaac, Mike (June 11, 2015) "Kevin Rose Moves On From Silicon Valley to Watches." New York Times. (Retrieved 10-10-2016.)
  34. "Kevin Rose is going back to Cali — and joining True Ventures as a venture partner – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
  35. Rose, Kevin (2007-04-19). Diggnation episode 94 (Vidcast). Event occurs at 11:10. Archived from the original on 2007-05-21. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
  36. "Foodist: My first book coming May 2013". Darya Pino. 2013-03-26. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  37. Edwards, Jim (April 6, 2014) "Anarchists Picket Digg Founder's House And Demand $3 Billion For Anti-Capitalist Housing." Business Insider. (Retrieved 4-6-2014.)
  38. Njus, Elliot (June 19, 2014) "Google executive Kevin Rose buys, plans to demolish 1892 house in NW Portland." The Oregonian Live. (Retrieved 6-20-2014.)
  39. Duin, Steve (June 24, 2014). "Google Exec Kevin Rose Reportedly Changes Mind, Agrees to Sell Willamette Heights Property". The Oregonian. Retrieved June 28, 2014.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.