For other people named Kevin Rose, see Kevin Rose (disambiguation).

Kevin Rose
Rose in 2007
Born
California, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas
Employer(s)Digg (2004–2011)
GV (2009–2015)
Known forCo-host of The Screen Savers
Co-founder of Digg, Revision3 and Pownce
Spouse
Darya Pino
​
(m. 2013)​
Children2
Websitewww.kevinrose.com Edit this at Wikidata

Kevin Rose 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.[1]

Early life and education

Rose was born in Redding, California[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]

Career

Rose worked for two dot-com startups through CMGI.[2]

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.[5] 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.[6] On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show on Gigaom's NewTeeVee Live.[7] 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.[8][9][10]

Podcasting

Rose began his career in web video (or IPTV) on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken[11] 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.[citation needed] 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.[12][13]

Starting in 2009, Rose started an intermittent podcast called The Random Show with friend Tim Ferriss.[14]

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.[4][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] In 2006, Fox InteractiveMedia Group offered $60 million (equivalent to $90.7 million in 2023) for Digg, which the Digg board turned down given how quickly the brand was continuing to grow.[17] Over the next four years, CEO Rose lost interest in helping the site continue its growth, focusing on a series of non-Digg outside projects;[17] the board eventually replaced him as CEO, on September 1, 2010.[18] Rose continued on at Digg until March 18, 2011, when he resigned from all operational activities, only keeping a presence on the board of directors;[19][20] Digg was acquired by Betaworks, in 2012, for $0.5 million (equivalent to $0.7 million in 2023).[17]

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]

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.[25] Kevin Rose started his first day as a senior product manager for Google on March 19, 2012.[26] On May 30, AllThingsD reported that Rose had moved off the Google+ team to become a venture partner at GV.[1] In January 2015, Rose announced he would leave GV to focus on his new app development lab - North.[27]

Venture capitalist

Rose invested in Gowalla, Twitter, Foursquare, Dailybooth, ngmoco, SimpleGeo, 3crowd, OMGPOP, Square, Facebook, Chomp and Formspring.[28][29][30]

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.[31]

In April 2017, Rose stepped down from his role as Hodinkee CEO to become a partner in a start-up venture firm, True Ventures.[32]

Proof Collective

Rose co-founded the Proof Collective, a group of NFT collectors, alongside Justin Mezzell. Members of the group include artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, and investor Gary Vaynerchuk. The collective released a collaboration called Moonbirds, a collection of 10,000 pixelated-bird non-fungible tokens which had $281 million in sales as of April 2022. Rose said Proof would use the proceeds to “build a new media company.”[33]

Other appearances

Rose has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' 2016 book, Tools of Titans.

Personal life

In 2013, he married Darya Pino.[34]

Controversies

Protest at Rose's house

On April 6, 2014, protestors demonstrated in front of Rose's home in San Francisco.[35] The protesters held up a banner calling Rose a "parasite"[36] and distributed a pamphlet accusing Rose of directing "the flow of capital from Google into the tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco."[37] 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.[38]

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.[39] On June 24, 2014, it was reported that the Roses had accepted an offer from long-time neighborhood residents to buy the house,[40] with the deal closing for $1.375 million USD.[41]

References

  1. ^ a b Gannes, Liz (May 30, 2012). "Kevin Rose's Next Move: Partner at Google Ventures". All Things Digital. Archived from the original on July 8, 2012. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
  2. ^ a b "Focus On: Kevin Rose". G4 Media, Inc. March 1, 2002. Archived from the original on March 8, 2005.
  3. ^ Rose, Kevin (April 19, 2007). Diggnation episode 94 (Vidcast). Event occurs at 11:10. Archived from the original on May 21, 2007. Retrieved April 25, 2007.
  4. ^ a b Lacy, Sarah; Hempel, Jessi (August 14, 2006). "Valley Boys". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on July 23, 2012. Retrieved December 22, 2006.
  5. ^ Olanoff, Drew (July 12, 2012). "Memories: Kevin Rose introduces a "new site" called Digg on December 13th, 2004". TNW. Retrieved September 18, 2012.
  6. ^ "R&DTV : Episode 3 - BBC Backstage". Ftp.kw.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on May 22, 2012. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
  7. ^ Gannes, Liz (November 8, 2007). "Help Our Game Show; Win a Nano". Gigaom. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  8. ^ "Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht Go On Jimmy Fallon, Plug Twitter". mashable.com. March 12, 2009. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
  9. ^ Bahareth, Mohammad (2012). Kings of the Internet: What You Don't Know About Them?. iUniverse. p. 117. ISBN 9781469798424.
  10. ^ Jimmy Fallon [@jimmyfallon] (November 28, 2011). "Diggnation's @alexalbrecht and @kevinrose are back on the show tonight!! & of course Betty White, Jack Houston and Jimmy Cliff" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  11. ^ "thebroken podcast". 2003.
  12. ^ Helft, Miguel (September 25, 2006). "Young Internet Producers, Bankrolled, Are Seeking Act II". The New York Times. Retrieved February 5, 2008.
  13. ^ Stelter, Brian (October 3, 2011). "'Diggnation,' Popular Web Talk Show, to End in December". The New York Times.
  14. ^ Rose, Kevin; Ferriss, Tim. "The Random Show w/Tim Ferriss". Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  15. ^ MacManus, Richard (February 1, 2006). "Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, Part 1". ZDNet. Archived from the original on July 15, 2006. Retrieved July 15, 2006.
  16. ^ Pontin, Jason (2007). "2007 Young Innovators Under 35: Kevin Rose, 30". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on October 22, 2011. Retrieved August 14, 2011.
  17. ^ a b c Lynley, Matt (July 17, 2012). "The Inside Story On Why Kevin Rose Never Had A Big Hit". Business Insider. Archived from the original on January 28, 2017. Retrieved May 9, 2018.
  18. ^ Nguyen, Anh (September 1, 2010). "Kevin Rose quits CEO role at Digg". Computerworld UK. Archived from the original on July 24, 2012. Retrieved September 1, 2010.
  19. ^ Lowensohn, Josh (March 18, 2011). "Report: Digg co-founder Kevin Rose leaving Digg". CNET. Archived from the original on August 8, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  20. ^ Warren, Christina (March 18, 2011). "Digg co-founder Kevin Rose scales back Digg duties". Mashable. Archived from the original on September 6, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  21. ^ Malik, Om (May 9, 2007). "Kevin 'Digg' Rose goes for 3rd startup". Gigaom. Archived from the original on May 12, 2007. Retrieved May 11, 2007.
  22. ^ Lacy, Sarah (April 26, 2011). "Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed with Valley Names". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on August 29, 2012. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
  23. ^ Etherington, Darrell (November 3, 2011). "First look at Oink, Kevin Rose's app for rating stuff". Gigaom. Archived from the original on August 14, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  24. ^ Gannes, Liz (March 15, 2012). "Exclusive: Kevin Rose Will Join Google". All Things Digital. Archived from the original on February 23, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  25. ^ Rose, Kevin (March 16, 2012). "Google+ (generic)". Kevin Rose. Archived from the original on December 17, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2012.
  26. ^ Rose, Kevin (March 19, 2012). "Google+ (generic)". Kevin Rose. Archived from the original on December 17, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2012.
  27. ^ Kokalitcheva, Kia (January 14, 2015). "Milk 2.0? Kevin Rose raises $5M for his app lab North Technologies, steps away from Google Ventures". VentureBeat.
  28. ^ "Kevin, did you buy form spring?". Formspring. Archived from the original on July 31, 2012. Retrieved September 12, 2010.
  29. ^ Tate, Ryan (September 9, 2010). "How To Make a Killing While Your Startup Burns". Valleywag. Archived from the original on September 10, 2010. Retrieved September 12, 2010.
  30. ^ "Kevin Rose". Quora. Retrieved September 12, 2010.
  31. ^ Isaac, Mike (June 11, 2015). "Kevin Rose Moves On From Silicon Valley to Watches". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved October 10, 2016.
  32. ^ Loizos, Connie (April 3, 2017). "Kevin Rose is going back to Cali — and joining True Ventures as a venture partner". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 9, 2018.
  33. ^ Locke, Taylor (April 18, 2022). "NFT collectors are clamoring for Moonbirds, digital owls with $281 million in sales. Here's why they're obsessed". Fortune. Archived from the original on December 7, 2022. Retrieved December 7, 2022.
  34. ^ "Foodist: My first book coming May 2013". daryapino.com. March 26, 2013. Archived from the original on June 13, 2013. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
  35. ^ Ha, Anthony (April 6, 2014). "Anti-Tech Protesters Are Telling Kevin Rose's Neighbors That He's A "Parasite"". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  36. ^ Ha, Anthony (April 6, 2014). "Anti-Tech Protesters Are Telling Kevin Rose's Neighbors That He's A "Parasite"". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  37. ^ Ha, Anthony (April 6, 2014). "Anti-Tech Protesters Are Telling Kevin Rose's Neighbors That He's A "Parasite"". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  38. ^ Edwards, Jim (April 6, 2014) "Anarchists Picket Digg Founder's House And Demand $3 Billion For Anti-Capitalist Housing." Business Insider. (Retrieved 2014-04-06)
  39. ^ Njus, Elliot (June 19, 2014) "Google executive Kevin Rose buys, plans to demolish 1892 house in NW Portland." The Oregonian Live. (Retrieved 2014-06-20.)
  40. ^ Duin, Steve (June 24, 2014). "Google Exec Kevin Rose Reportedly Changes Mind, Agrees to Sell Willamette Heights Property". The Oregonian. Retrieved June 28, 2014.
  41. ^ Njus, Elliot (June 27, 2014). "Kevin Rose sells NW Portland house he planned to demolish; new owner considering options". OregonLive. Retrieved December 7, 2022.

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