In the most recent episode of my Foundation video series, I sat down with the founder of StyleSeat, Melody McCloskey. Melody shares how her frustration with finding a stylist inspired her to build the platform. She also talks through the challenges of reaching an audience who isn’t in front of a computer all day and how the web helps them grow their business and improve their client… → Read More
The latest episode of my Foundation video series comes to you filmed live from the Google Ventures Founder & CEO Summit last week. I had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Opsware and now General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Enjoy! → Read More
In this edition of my Foundation video series, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad shares his inspiration for reinventing the radio. He reveals how a jailbroken iPhone played a key part in Pandora’s success, and explains why Thanksgiving is the biggest day of the year for the service. He also tells the crazy backstory behind Web 1.0 flameout Pets.com, what it was like to be engineer during the “dark… → Read More
Editor’s note: TechCrunch TV is very pleased to welcome a new show to our lineup, Kevin Rose’s Foundation series. Kevin, a partner at Google Ventures, has been producing high-quality, riveting one-on-one interviews with some of the tech world’s top entrepreneurs.
I’m excited to announce that beginning today, TechCrunch will syndicate my Foundation video series profiling founders and… → Read More
We had the chance to catch up with entrepreneur and investor Kevin Rose during TechCrunch Disrupt, asking him about a multitude of startup zeitgeist topics, including the Y Combinator versus Google Ventures kerfuffle and what today’s high seed stage valuations mean for entrepreneurs. Rose held that high valuations sometimes turns off potential investors, and then brought up how he had passed on… → Read More
Last night, I wrote about Kevin Rose not responding to questions on his AMA on Reddit. Rose was at a birthday party last night but has returned to Reddit today and has posted YouTube responses to five Redditers’ questions.
After all the coverage on Digg’s sale and Rose personally a few weeks ago and now on the launch of new Digg, it’s very interesting to hear Rose’s thoughts. He does a good job… → Read More
Kevin Rose began an AMA on Reddit on Tuesday evening and so far has answered zero questions. To be fair, he said ask me anything. He didn’t promise answers.
Users have posted questions like, “What is your biggest regret with Digg?” → Read More
In one week, the Olympics kick off. When you think about it, they aren’t so different from our startup world. How many pitches have you heard that include the phrase “dream team?”
If you had to compare the startup world to one sports league, what would it be? I’d argue the NBA, where the best players leave school early to start their pro careers and work to join dynasty teams with other… → Read More
Whose tweets lead to more actual sales, Ashton Kutcher’s or Kevin Rose’s? The answer is not immediately obvious. Kutcher boasts 7.3 million Twitter followers to Rose’s 1.3 million, but a recent promotion run by design shopping site Fab.com suggests that raw numbers don’t always translate to more sales.
Both Kutcher and Rose recently tweeted out a link that gave their followers $10 off any… → Read More
Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Tom Anderson, the former President, founder and first friend on MySpace.
What kind of content creator are you? Kevin Rose or Fred Wilson?
Blogging or “self-publishing” in any form was supposed to democratize and revolutionize the media industry. Content creators no longer needed mainstream platforms to get their voices heard. Bloggers weren’t… → Read More
Kevin Rose has completed a hefty $1.5 million angel round for his new mobile development lab, which we first reported in March, Milk. Rose went for the more-is-more approach, pulling in a wide-syndicate of Valley elites, including TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.
Other angels include Ron Conway, Tim Ferriss, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Shervin Pishevar, Joshua Schachter, Anthony… → Read More
Well by Silicon Valley standards, that certainly wasn’t a long “stealth” period. Just weeks after he quit Digg, Kevin Rose is announcing details of his new startup. Knowing Rose, I can tell why he’s so excited to get started. He’s constructed a company that plays perfectly to his strengths in the early days– but will test his weaknesses long term.
It’s called Milk, and it’s going to be a… → Read More
Startups in Silicon Valley are like old generals. They don’t die anymore, buoyed on life-rafts of lingering venture capital and modest revenues. They just fade away, eventually purchased for assets that are a shadow of their former promise. It’s pretty clear that Digg is on that path.
The company isn’t dead, but it’s been fading away for a while, and its soul is all but gone. The company can spin… → Read More
Will the iPad 2 have a fancy new screen? That’s the question clearly on everyone’s mind. Not US/China relations, not American Idol’s dipping ratings. It’s the damn iPad 2. First the Internet stated with plenty of confidence that the next-gen iPad was going to have either a true retina display or at least one with a higher dramatically resolution. Then John Gruber threw a rat in the soup. → Read More
Another year, another set of Kevin Rose predictions, this time about the iPad 2. Apparently Rose has revealed to the subscribers of his foundat.io/n newsletter (and everyone else) that the iPad 2 announcement will be coming in 3-4 weeks, giving the exact date of February 1st as a possibilty. So basically last year’s iPad announcement date, plus a year.
Briefly mentioned is a retina display and… → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose just tweeted out a poll regarding the controversial Digg “Bury” feature, which was taken off the site in the latest Version 4 redesign reportedly due to issues with “Bury Brigades” or people organizing in order to game the site and force certain stories off the homepage.
So far about 1000 people have taken the poll via Twitter (we’re assuming anyone who would take a Kevin… → Read More
There were two surreal moments for me at Disrupt last week. The first was during the SV Angels Party when Hammer was dancing. It wasn’t just because MC-Freaking-Hammer was doing the Hammer dance in a tux and nerd glasses in front of me. It was because the CEO and founder of the media company I work for were on stage looking awkward and white, but dancing none the less. It was because… → Read More
We sat down with Digg co-founder Kevin Rose after TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday to talk about the recent Digg Version 4 launch and the user revolt and media circus that ensued. Rose addressed the lessons he had learned during the tumultuous redesign, including what he would have done differently if given another opportunity.
Rose, who was recently replaced as CEO by Matt Williams, also went in to… → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose cheerfully responds to the mountains of criticism around the newly launched Digg 4. His overall theme is that users need to deal with it.
Rose says that he’s “gotta take risk” with the service in his quest to push it beyond the 30 million or so monthly visitors to the masses. He wants 20,000 – 30,000 diggs on the top stories v. the few hundred diggs that most top stories… → Read More
Comedian Bill Cosby of New Coke and Jello Pudding Pop endorsing fame is totally excited for the new Digg 4, so much so that he can’t wait a few of weeks for its upcoming launch and needs an alpha invite like NOW.
Cosby, who has been in the news recently for some interesting opinions on race, also could use the Digg founder’s help with his new iPhone app, Bill Cosby for the iPhone. → Read More
What if commercials really did talk to you? What if a familiar spokesperson addressed you by name and responded to your thoughts and feelings. In what is definitely one of the more creative social media ad campaigns in a while, Old Spice is doing just that. Its shirtless, muscled spokesman, the Old Spice Man, is shooting YouTube videos in response to people’s Tweets. Many of these are… → Read More
Yesterday, while he was visiting his father and working beside a Colorado stream, Kevin Rose sent out a seemingly bland, lazy Sunday Tweet:
Working on @digg stuff while relaxing with my dad in evergreen, co. Home tomorrow #lifeisgood http://twitpic.com/1ofwqh
But the payload of that Tweet, a link to picture showing a glimpse of Rose’s computer screen, is much more interesting. The laptop is… → Read More
When we first covered real-time photo-blogging service DailyBooth last August, we had noticed how remarkably vibrant the community already was, and how quickly the site was amassing tons of traffic.
The startup was launched in February 2009, received some initial seed funding from Y Combinator over the summer and has now raised an additional $1 million from an all-star team of institutional and… → Read More
There was a lot of action surrounding the first seed round of funding for Foursquare, the location-based social network. From what we’ve heard, there were a number of investors upset that they couldn’t get in on the round, which was relatively small at $1.35 million. But what we didn’t know was everyone who was involved in the round, but more names continue to come out.
While Foursquare… → Read More
I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next… → Read More
I chatted with Kevin Rose backstage in between TechCrunch50 judging. For those who think he’s still the wacky Diggnation party boy, I want to point out he beat most of the TechCrunch staff to the conference this morning.
This video is longer than most of our behind-the-scenes glimpses, but we covered a lot of territory. Rose tells us the single most important product move Digg has made in the… → Read More
The race between actor Ashton Kutcher and CNN to a million Twitter followers at first seemed to be little more than an exercise in online vanity. But then it transformed into a race to help out a cause, Malaria No More, in a meaningful way. But really, why does anyone need a race to do that?
With that in mind, tomorrow, Kutcher, with his nearly 1.4 million followers, and Digg’s Kevin Rose, with… → Read More
During the SXSW taping of Digg Nation, Internet darling Kevin Rose confirmed that cut and paste were coming in 3.0 and that everything the Pre can do, the iPhone will be able to do as well. However, there won’t be any background app action or video recording this go-around. But like Alex said, “something I wanted seven f*cking years ago.” → Read More
The Internet’s wunderkind released what he feels are the top 10 gifts for geeks this year. It’s worth while, to be honest. I didn’t even knew that there was a washer/dryer-safe USB drive but that’s #2. I can vouch for #9; great tool. Check it out. → Read More
iTunes 9 Ideas http://seesmic.com/embeds/wrapper.swf The Internet wunderkind Kevin Rose nailed the last Apple announcement and is now organizing a virtual spitball’n season ’bout what Apple should do with iTunes 9. Who knows if Jobs’ watching, or cares, but so far with all the responses, it’s a wealth of fresh ideas. Best of all, you can add your own by clicking the… → Read More
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