Kevin Rose Can't Help Himself From Relaunching Failed Startup Idea
What happened to just letting a shitty idea die? For Kevin Rose, giving up the dream of owning a thriving app incubator is something he can't let go of. The former television personality's last company, Milk, released one app before the entire company shut down. Now after two years of investing, Rose is rehashing his old doomed business plan with a new company.
The Digg co-founder's new company, North, is going to be modeled off Milk, a "mobile app incubator" that was effectively firesold to Google and killed off. Like Milk, North will be "building a series of mobile and social products," according to TechCrunch, hoping that one maybe takes off:
In an interview with Rose, he told me the plan is to start with a small team of about three and to create a new product each quarter. And if one of those products becomes a hit, Rose says he'll recruit a team and try to build a company around it.
Rose is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Maybe this mobile incubator will be different. And maybe it will be, despite the fact that 47 percent of app developers earn next to nothing.
Gambling on a series of startups is an inherently risky move—especially when considering Rose's only real success as an entrepreneur came from Revision3, which sold to Discovery Networks for $35 million after seven years in business. As TechCrunch noted, Rose is better known for being "a highly successful investor," and he just spent a little over two years as a partner at Google Ventures.
However, Re/code's Kara Swisher reports Rose just had get back into the startup game:
He said he missed creating companies. "It's different to be an investor and sit on the sidelines, when you are having coffee with entrepreneurs and hearing all their ideas," said Rose. "It's not the same as being on the field."
He had, he added, to "scratch that itch as an entrepreneur."
Clearly, he was very itchy.
An insane itch he can't stop scratching. Maybe Rose has some sort of startup STD.
Photo: Getty