Kevin Rose has been in the spotlight since the co-founding of the first social news aggregation site Digg in late 2004. An awesome kid who became a serial entrepreneur, he has since also become known for launching a large number of products elegantly designed, some of them outside of its Milk startup incubator (later acquired by Google) and North, an incubator that will later take it to a site for watch lovers called Hodinkee At New York.
Along the way, Rose has invested, sometimes as an angel, for several years as a partner of Google Ventures (now GV), and on behalf of True Ventures, who invited Rose to join her as a venture capital partner three years ago – and where Rose recently started writing checks as a full-time general partner.
How long it will last is a guess no one given Rose's penchant for chasing the next one But we were able to catch up with him at his home in Portland, Oregon earlier this week to talk about who runs his new apps, why he is still optimistic about cryptography and what advice he has to give to founders who might be struggling. now. Our cat has been modified for the duration.
TC: There has been some fascination over the years with your moves from west to east. Now you're back on the west coast of Portland.
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I moved to Oregon a few years ago. We returned to the west coast of New York. We were going to have our first child, so we knew we wanted to be close to the family, and my family is all here in Portland. The plan was just to come back and then bounce back in the bay area if necessary. It's an hour and 20 minute flight, so it's really easy to get back there. and there is so much to love in Portland.
I have to make a joke here to find out if there are so many raccoons up there. I'll never forget to see pictures of you throw a raccoon out of your dog years ago. We had a raccoon in San Francisco who was very determined to scratch our dog's eyes.
It's not a joke that there are actually a lot of dogs that are blind because they fight with raccoons, and raccoons go immediately for the eyes. It was a really scary night.
How do you manage COVID-19?
I feel very lucky because my daily work is intact and I am still able to support the entrepreneurs and to take these meetings. So this is a very fortunate position to be. But, you know, it's a scary time. We have two little girls and we have a nanny, and today our nanny fell with a fever, and we sent her away early (because) fevers are no joke these days, even mild fever. It's just a little disturbing.
How has the on-site shelter affected the way you invest with True?
There are a lot of great people right now who have free time to think of new ideas. While I would have thought that on the investment side there would be a slowdown, I continue to meet great entrepreneurs who are coming up with their next big idea, and they now have time to stop and additional cycles to have this goal of really taking time to build prototypes. I would say if something (the rate at which I see companies) stays the same or is even a little higher.
So far, we have made a few deals where we have never met the founders face to face, which is a first for us. But everything is doable. I think you spend more time on Zoom getting to know the people behind the camera before you make a deal.
Have you received comments from your LPs saying, "Why don't you take a break while we find out how our portfolio is setting up?"
No, we have not received any of these comments. I think they are looking at the instructions and the support we provide to our entrepreneurs.
One of the things we care a lot about is how we can help. We have over 300 different founders that we want to set up support systems and groups to help them get through this – not just financially but, you know, figuring out, for example, how to re-open responsibly. Like, how do you do that? What is the new standard? What does it look like? What are the best practices that companies are implementing? So we really doubled our education component and created these weekly gatherings where dozens of founders get together via Zoom and communicate how and what they do.
When it comes to returning to the office, what do you hear from True startups?
We have entrepreneurs who have storefronts – like real physical storefronts. We have other people who have divided the teams by default, so for them it works as usual, except to understand (how to manage) family life (at the same time). So it's everywhere, but I would say that most of the people I have had a conversation with are more careful. They prefer to sit down and wait a bit.
You have rebounded between the roles of founder and investor. You recently founded the fasting app Zero and meditation app Oak. What's going on with both?
I had a friend of mine, Mike Maser, with whom I had previously worked – we worked together to Digg – and he actually created a (fitness coaching app) called Fitstar that he sold to Fitbit, so he was really into health and fitness. Then Mike was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma just over five years ago, and as part of his chemotherapy treatment, was prescribed an intermittent fast; they are now fasting together with chemo to help the results.
Mike was able to beat cancer. He is now five years old without cancer, which is incredible. And he is a fantastic CEO and he was the perfect person to undertake the project and bring it to fruition, because he really started to grow so fast. Zero is now adding 25,000 new users per day with zero paid acquisition. Millions of people use it per month. And that came to a point where someone needed to be able to focus full-time on her and build a team around her.
Mike created (a holding company called) Big Sky Health with this app with Oak, my meditation app, and he also launched a third app called Less it's all about tracking your alcohol intake and being more attentive to the number of drinks you consume week after week and month after month.
This seems timely, given the fact that many people are apparently struggling to develop alcohol problems at this strange time.
It’s a real thing. For anyone who likes to drink casually and socially, be cramped indoors and most of all with all the stress around the things going on in the world and your savings and savings accounts. your family and friends. . . unfortunately, this can be a trigger for people to consume more alcohol.
I also wanted to talk to you about cryptocurrency, which is coming back now in traditional trading conversation, with Andreessen Horowitz who just closed his second cryptography fund and this Bitcoin half event. Is this something that you always follow closely?
Yes, it is something where I have a personal passion. . . I think it is still extremely difficult and not common enough to be used as currency.
That said, I believe there is no doubt that the future of money is digital. If you were to create a whole new country today, you wouldn't go out and start buying printing presses to create your currency; you will send something digitally. So there will be something born which is expendable and easy to understand and which is based on some type of blockchain technology. Like, there is no doubt that this will be the case. The problem is that 99% of the projects out there and a lot of the people who support them are there just for pure financial gain. And there is a lot of garbage there. And it is unfortunate because it really hampers high quality projects, and it blurs the space a bit.
As a partner in Google’s risk industry, you’ve made an investment in Ripple, which became controversial, in part because the co-founder sold part of its shares and because CEO Brad Garlinghouse has sold part of its shares. It is also not used as intended by the company. What do you think of what XRP has become and its usefulness in the future?
When I invested in Ripple, it was seven years ago, something like this. But Brad did not run the business. There was a different CEO. The original founders were still in place. There was a very different world when Ripple took off for the first time. And the excitement that I had around Ripple was that the cryptocurrency was so raw; there was no way for the company to adopt it in any way.
Early Ripple reminded me of a company that could enter, set standards, have these availability guarantees and work with commercial banks and create a blockchain-based backbone. So it was very exciting. I have never really seen the case of using Ripple as a currency. I understand that this was going to be used as a way to manage the settlement in some way. It has been several years since I have been working with Google Ventures and I have not followed it closely, but many years ago, the excitement was to create something that commercial banks could understand and with which they felt comfortable, because random blockchain technology created by anonymous founders.
Do you think the number of cryptocurrencies needs to decrease before cryptocurrency can be more widely accepted, or is it possible that all of these cryptocurrencies survive to infinity?
This is the start. I think it will be a space that will continue to mature over the next two decades. Chances are you don't even know you are using cryptocurrency. I could see something like a Square Cash moving towards a stable coin type under the covers, where we still use it today, and it is connected to our bank accounts, and everything suddenly, all settlements happen on the blockchain. Such things will most likely happen in a really simple and easy to use interface by a very reliable brand.
I noticed that you tweeted the other day about the next iteration of the Epic Game game engine, which will support VR. Talk about technologies that got a lot of attention but are further apart than expected a year or two ago. . .
Yes, it will be in the new PlayStation and the new Xbox. It’s beautiful.
Does VR interest you from now on as an investor?
I received a lot of criticism from people because I wrote a blog about five years ago, saying that I thought VR was a joke and (I was) basically disdainful, and I avoided it completely.
I don't want to piss people off (but) It reminds me of when we all bought the Nintendo Wii and we had so much fun spinning around the controllers and playing virtual tennis with each other. And then, after a few weeks, the controllers found themselves in the drawer. You put on a VR headset, you say to yourself, "Whoa, this is crazy." And then you get a little nausea or a little sweat, and all of a sudden you say to yourself, "I'm just kind of pantyhose and no one else can see what I was doing, and i look a little awkward.
I don't think we should give it up completely. I'm not a hater, but look what happened: we got into a direct lockdown. It was the best possible time for RV sales to go through the roof. And what happened? The Nintendo Switch is sold out.
Any advice for founders given that you have experienced extreme ups and downs in your own career?
If there is anything that I have learned as an entrepreneur, it would be, first, to seek out mentors and people so that you can have an open and honest conversation – and I & # 39; 39; hope that this should also be your investors.
Some of my biggest mistakes (related to) don't admit that I didn't know something. I was scared, I thought it was weakness, like, "My God, they put me businessweek cover; I should know how to do X, Y or Z. "
But we all learn constantly, and it should never end. I’m a big advocate for lifelong learning and admission when you’re wrong. Admit that you don't know that something is growing.
There is no shame either in stopping something. Some people will not get by and will have to start something new. You know, I've had many bankrupt companies, I've tried a lot of crazy stuff, but if you turn things around a bit, it's the excitement of it all. We have this life to live and we will soon die. Why not try a bunch of crazy ideas, and then (if that doesn't work), sometimes it's possible to cut the bait and say, "I'm done" and move on to the next thing