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Should Kevin Rose have sold digg.com to Jason Calacanis? Yes, he would be a millionaire and would have made more money on it than he has by holding on to it.
The founder of MySpace, Tom, was very wise to sell MySpace to NewsCorp while it was still popular. Now MySpace is strongly for survival!
For better or for worse, people have short attention spans (especially online) and fads come and go. Remember when AOL and Yahoo were popular? Dare I say, remember when Microsoft was the industry giant? Now that torch has been passed on to Google.
If Jason owned digg, would he have taken it to unparalleled heights and brought it to profit in 2 years? I'm not sure what Jason (or anyone) could have done to bring Digg to "unparalleled heights." Though I think the digg.com homepage could be made a lot more attractive and easier.
Ultimately, I think Digg is in big trouble because people are sharing and spreading information now via Twitter and YouTube.
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However, I do know two things:
1)
Jason is a savvy investor. He has "early adoption dna" meaning that he has the ability to spot trends and has enough money and kahunas to take risks.
2)
Rose is a smart dude. I don't say this lightly. He's wicked smart in a bunch of different areas, he knows how to apply his talents and when he doesn't have the skills to complete a task, he asks for help.
Based on these things, I think that Rose did make the correct decision. I have seen my fair share of "funky" deals and sometimes the first funky deal is the best. Sometimes however, your intuition tells you not to take a deal and sometimes that works out. Rose has done well with Digg since Jason's offer and rejecting it has played a part in making Digg what it is today.
Would Digg be better under Jason's control? There is no way to tell. Jason's success is attributed to the people that work with him. He would have attracted different people to that project and those people along with Jason's direction could have either made better or worse decisions.
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M$3.45
November 11, 2009 02:42 AM
Should Kevin Rose have sold digg.com to Jason Calacanis?
Did Kevin Rose make the cliched "business mistake of his life" by not selling digg.com to Jason Calacanis in its early days? According to Rose, Jason sent an offer with "funky" terms that would have technically made Rose a millionaire. Unfortunately, the terms were too thick for Kevin's blood, and rather than ask Jason to raise the ante to say 2.5 million, he flatly declined his offer. If Jason owned digg, would he have taken it to unparalleled heights and brought it to profit in 2 years? Would digg be "better" if it was in Jason's hands right now?
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| November 11, 2009 07:23 AM |
The founder of MySpace, Tom, was very wise to sell MySpace to NewsCorp while it was still popular. Now MySpace is strongly for survival!
For better or for worse, people have short attention spans (especially online) and fads come and go. Remember when AOL and Yahoo were popular? Dare I say, remember when Microsoft was the industry giant? Now that torch has been passed on to Google.
If Jason owned digg, would he have taken it to unparalleled heights and brought it to profit in 2 years? I'm not sure what Jason (or anyone) could have done to bring Digg to "unparalleled heights." Though I think the digg.com homepage could be made a lot more attractive and easier.
Ultimately, I think Digg is in big trouble because people are sharing and spreading information now via Twitter and YouTube.
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November 11, 2009 02:32 PM
I don't know the details of the early offer. However, I do know two things:
1)
Jason is a savvy investor. He has "early adoption dna" meaning that he has the ability to spot trends and has enough money and kahunas to take risks.
2)
Rose is a smart dude. I don't say this lightly. He's wicked smart in a bunch of different areas, he knows how to apply his talents and when he doesn't have the skills to complete a task, he asks for help.
Based on these things, I think that Rose did make the correct decision. I have seen my fair share of "funky" deals and sometimes the first funky deal is the best. Sometimes however, your intuition tells you not to take a deal and sometimes that works out. Rose has done well with Digg since Jason's offer and rejecting it has played a part in making Digg what it is today.
Would Digg be better under Jason's control? There is no way to tell. Jason's success is attributed to the people that work with him. He would have attracted different people to that project and those people along with Jason's direction could have either made better or worse decisions.
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Helpful: opher, tchachra, lynxlee, doubleminaz, christhomson
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Typo in my answer, it should be "Now MySpace is struggling* for survival!"
Kevin was a kid at the time with no real concept of how the site was going to make money other than an incorrect belief that lots of pageviews automatically equals profit. He might claim to enjoy trying to dig digg out of its hole right now, but if I had started the site, I would have just gotten rid of the thing in its very early days and counted my money from my 2 paydays. AOL would presumably own digg right now if this sale to Jason had gone through, and it would probably be on its last legs.
I'm really curious to know what these so-called "funky" terms were. Enough time has passed since Jason offered to buy it from Kevin. Can this term sheet be made public, please, Kevin and Jason? Techcrunch would love that, and the final goal in everyone's life should be to please Techcrunch.