Look for the full Kevin Rose video soon.
Kevin Rose has made innumerable entrepreneurial leaps in the tech industry throughout the years, first as the founder of Digg and today as a general partner at Google Ventures where he focuses on early-stage and seed investments. Big Omaha emcee Antonio Neves sat down with Rose to chat about meditation, past successes and the tension rising out of Silicon Valley.
There’s been a lot of talk at Big Omaha about meditation. You’ve been doing a 10-day meditation challenge. How’s that going?
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I joined about five days ago via an app. It’s challenging the first few days, but for a lot of entrepreneurs they live with so much stress in their daily lives that finding an outlet that’s not a damaging thing is important.
You’ve built a variety of successful companies. Is it possible to find that space and balance between your work life and personal life?
In the early days it’s extremely difficult because you’re going out there and taking that leap of faith. You’re oftentimes doing with a limited budget. There was so much stress, I had tiny tremors throughout my body, and that stuff intensifies when you’re under that much pressure. With my first startup, I had 10,000 dollars I saved up and I was going out to build Digg, and my girlfriend at the time thought it would go toward a down payment on a house. When I used that money for Digg, it was frustrating for her, and needless to say, we broke up shortly thereafter. I can’t say I’ve always found that balance.
You worked as a production assistant before creating any of your startups. What did you learn from that experience?
I started off computer science in school, then dropped out and moved to San Francisco because I heard about the Dot-com business. I worked for a startup, but shortly thereafter things imploded, so I got a job at a TV station at Tech TV. It helped me stay in the city where I knew something would happen. I was setting up tech demos, and eventually I discovered a Windows vulnerability. My boss wanted me to come on TV and talk about. I did a three-minute segment, and the producer wanted to hear more of them. I started producing more content for TV, which led me to start my first business.
Has being so public become a challenge for you?
Some of that stuff I look back on, and I can’t believe I said that. I was saying some really stupid shit in public. That content lives on. You have to realize that anytime you put yourself out there, it’s not going away.
But I think putting public face and associating it with a product is a very important thing. Being a front person for your business and letting them know you’re not just another company, it makes the business more approachable and gives you a better line of communication with your audience. After shooting Diggnation episodes, I got a lot of feedback from audience and community members, and that helped us iterate and make it better.
Have you always had thick skin and welcomed feedback?
I’ve had protesters show up at my house, and I try to sit down and have a conversation with those people. They have to understanding that the one thing that is beautiful about America is that you really can write your own ticket. You can create a multi-million dollar company.
A lot of your work has involved storytelling. Why has that been important to you?
I like large consumer-focused Internet products. I feel that in coming up with these ideas, I don’t approach it as a story I want to tell. It’s really scratching a personal itch. I look out there and think, “no one else is doing this.” I like things that are disruptive that allow the masses to have control over something that was controlled by a select few, like trending topics on twitter. There aren’t web editors controlling that, users do.
What do you think the role of tech is in the Bay area, and what obligation do you feel to the community that feels threatened by the industry?
It’s challenging, but I feel as though San Francisco angel investor Ron Conway is doing a lot of great work here. Sfcity.org was created and more than 100 tech companies have come together to solve some of these bigger issues going on. San Francisco has so much wealth flowing into it, and because we still have people that don’t have the proper mental healthcare and we have homeless people on the street, clearly coming together and figuring out those problems is important. But what the protesters did is start a conversation, so people are taking this seriously. There are positive things that have come about. I’m hoping that conversation continues.
How important is location, since most of techs are on the Bay area.
I don’t think it is. One of the things that’s nice about being in San Francisco is that you have natural collisions that take place. Everyone is friendly and approachable, and it leads to natural brainstorming. That piece of it is nice. Some of the most interesting companies I’ve seen, from Portland to Boulder, shows that you don’t need to be in the same place. Some of the largest open-source projects are spread all over the world. I will certainly fund a company regardless of where it’s based.
If you hadn’t stepped down as the CEO of Digg, what would you be doing differently?
There’s a lot of mistakes you make as an entrepreneur who is building a company, from how you structure your teams to how quickly you hire. Digg’s peak was when it had 60-some people and Instagram did that with four people. Since leaving Digg, I’ve transitioned to slow growth and taking my time to find the right people. Ensuring you’re building a company of builders is important thing. It’s lessons learned. I’ve had half my startups fail, but it doesn’t matter because every time you move forward. There’s always another level. You can never sit back and think it’s all figured out. There are always things you can learn from.
You’ve grown up through the Web tech culture in the valley. What is the most fun you’ve ever had at work, and what is something you can’t believe you got away with?
Most fun I had definitely had to be the podcast side where we decided to go out and create a new show around our product, Digg. We would have 5000 people come for these shows. We did crowd-surfing at SXSW and I’m pretty sure people grabbed my but. That whole experience of taking that in and connecting with audience was fun.
What we got away with? Media is completely bullshit. People go out and buy expensive ad agencies and they think they’re going to get them on magazine covers and in the press. The secret that no one ever tells you is that they don’t’ really do anything. I mean, those agencies will help you refine your message if you were going to go out and talk to someone. But on the press side, they would say things like, “Clearly you’ve set out to democratize news.” I was sitting there thinking, “What do you mean democratize news?” I didn’t know what I was doing but the press thought it was this big deal and strategy. The secret was that there wasn’t this big plan for world domination, it was building something, launching it to your audience, seeing what they did with it. When you’re going out there and building a product, don’t feel like you have to know you have everything figured out. You can act that way, but ultimately you have to trust your gut and the most important thing is to iterate quickly. Oftentimes the best ideas are the ones where everyone else thinks your crazy.
When people say Kevin Rose, what do you hope they associate it with?
I love the investing side and it’s fun, but most of the time you are the coach and not the player in the game. I feel that for me, I really enjoy the entrepreneur side of things, so I hope that I can go and build a handful of more products people will use. At the end of the day when I die, I want to say that everything that was in my brain, I created. I want people to say, “He tried a lot of crazy shit.”
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