121–130 of 275 posts
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I would guess that they just paid off the investors. It was only $1.7m and Google Ventures was one of the investors anyway.
Well they would still need to have seen the returns they expected (or were happy with) since the money did not come out of the funds just to get "Put back" without any upside. Speculation: 3-4 million payoff Google "we don't need the company just shut it down and come to work"
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I don't want to be some sort of Kevin Rose defender in this thread, but I don't think it's fair to say that he just "had an idea". He had an idea and spent years working on it, iterating and improving until Digg finally hit the big time. I think he deserves credit for that. As a developer, I agree that some "ideas guys" suck. But some of them are fantastic, and have a huge talent in taking a core concept and fleshing…
He had an idea and spent years working on it, iterating and improving until Digg finally hit the big time Um he had an idea, paid someone to build it (ojbyrne on HN). Promoted it on air in his role at TechTV and had it take off. Its not like he toiled in his basement for years slaving over it. (Though he did seem to spend a lot of time on it once it became his day job, I don't want to discredit that) You can also say…
So he collected consumer data from OInk and shut it by calling it test app and now joined Google. Google loves data Hope you all got it
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Um he had an idea, paid someone to build it (ojbyrne on HN). Promoted it on air in his role at TechTV and had it take off. Right, so he made it a success. I just find it disheartening sometimes that developers (and I am one) seem to think that good code is all that matters. It isn't. You can have the most functional, highly-tuned web site in the world and have no-one use it. Even if Kevin Rose is nothing but a giant…
developers are a dime a dozen. I can hire ten people from India or China who are better than you (xpose2000). most developers hate successful people who don't have technical skills (Steve Jobs, MBAs, managers, non-technical founders, etc.) because they make the developers look a lot less important.
As a developer who also has an MBA (and who's originally from India), I never understand why most MBA students at my school undermined developers so much ("Just hire ten people from India"). On the other hand, I also don't understand why many developers undermine domain experts and businessmen as "MBA types" or "ideas people".
It should be very easy to understand (for anybody who is smart enough to be a developer or to get an MBA) that the level of expertise you need from a software developer or a sales person or a finance person or a product person depends on your specific case. Not every business can be built by outsourcing all development to India. And not every business can be built (or be successful) without the help of a great domain expert / sales person / product person.
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developers are a dime a dozen. I can hire ten people from India or China who are better than you (xpose2000). most developers hate successful people who don't have technical skills (Steve Jobs, MBAs, managers, non-technical founders, etc.) because they make the developers look a lot less important.
Maybe you've never heard the famous expression "Ideas are like *, everybody's got one".
GREAT ideas? rare.
Great ideas + execution? rarer.
"Rose has also had an impressive run as an angel investor, putting money into companies like Fab, Zynga, ngmoco, Foursquare and Twitter." Does anyone know if Rose was one of the first few to actually invest in these companies, or did he just have the connections and put his money in while they were already "hot" companies? If the latter, I wouldn't consider it that impressive...
Details in CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/kevin-rose Fab (Series A), Zynga (Series B), Twitter (Series B), Foursquare (Angel). Only Foursquare looks like an Angel, the rest look more like he knows the right people and/or has the right name.
Regardless of what I think of the guy, there is a lot of hate on here, and it's easy to look back and say "well of course Twitter did well, he's so lucky he got to invest in it in '08" as if it was common knowledge that it would be this big.
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Um he had an idea, paid someone to build it (ojbyrne on HN). Promoted it on air in his role at TechTV and had it take off. Right, so he made it a success. I just find it disheartening sometimes that developers (and I am one) seem to think that good code is all that matters. It isn't. You can have the most functional, highly-tuned web site in the world and have no-one use it. Even if Kevin Rose is nothing but a giant…
developers are a dime a dozen. I can hire ten people from India or China who are better than you (xpose2000). most developers hate successful people who don't have technical skills (Steve Jobs, MBAs, managers, non-technical founders, etc.) because they make the developers look a lot less important.
Also in my experience ideas and idea people are a dime a dozen. I have notebooks full of hundred ideas I don't have the time, energy or money to execute on. Talent (and availability and interest, etc) is hard to find. That's the bottleneck.
So he collected consumer data from OInk and shut it by calling it test app and now joined Google. Google loves data Hope you all got it
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developers are a dime a dozen. I can hire ten people from India or China who are better than you (xpose2000). most developers hate successful people who don't have technical skills (Steve Jobs, MBAs, managers, non-technical founders, etc.) because they make the developers look a lot less important.
Looks like your post is getting a mixed reaction. I think you're both right and wrong. You can outsource to a lot of cheap, technically talented developers (you can also very easily end up with awful developers, though). But they won't think on their feet or be able to make independent decisions- they are contractors, and they will make exactly what you tell them to. If you're technically minded yourself that might b…
execution is not limited to personal skills. if the "ideas guy" doesn't have the skills to implement his ideas, he can hire/partner with someone who can.
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Details in CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/kevin-rose Fab (Series A), Zynga (Series B), Twitter (Series B), Foursquare (Angel). Only Foursquare looks like an Angel, the rest look more like he knows the right people and/or has the right name.
You do realize that all of those companies grew immensely after their Series A/B rounds of funding, right? Regardless of what I think of the guy, there is a lot of hate on here, and it's easy to look back and say "well of course Twitter did well, he's so lucky he got to invest in it in '08" as if it was common knowledge that it would be this big.