

Milk: Kevin Rose's New Company Aims to Solve Big Problems on the Mobile Web - hornokplease
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-company-aims-to-solve-big-problems-on-the-mobile-web/

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MatthewPhillips
To summarize: Kevin doesn't really have an idea yet (or at least doesn't have
one that he wants to announce), but he did hire some people and he's not going
to stick by any idea that isn't immediately successful.

Oh, and: mobile.

Isn't this a non-story? An announcement of an intent to create something in
the future?

~~~
eoghan
I don't think it's fair to call it a non-story. I think this approach is
refreshing. Get great people together, play on their strengths, find something
that works, grow it. But importantly, I think it's significant since Rose has
clearly demonstrated his creative potential and you'd be foolish to bet
against him doing some interesting stuff with Milk. It might be a non-story if
it was about you or I.

~~~
samtp
This approach is not refreshing. It amounts to: lets get a bunch of people to
brainstorm great ideas! Then we can build them!

Rings kind of hollow to me

~~~
cb33
I think you're downplaying the "pivot" aspect of Milk. It's not just a think
tank, but an agile team that can switch up their tactics (revenue models,
branding, priorities, etc.) at the drop of a hat. I'm excited to see what they
can come up with in the next year.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
It's easy to pivot when you don't have a product that people use. I'm sure
many people on HN (myself included) have pivoted several times in the last
year as well. Assuming one of their projects stick they'll become less agile.
Unless they are just interested in being a flip factor.

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abstractbill
Thinking back to pg's weekend post
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>), this seems like a good
example of the kind of thing that drags down the quality of HN.

The article itself is very nearly content-free, and definitely does not
gratify my intellectual curiosity. Reading it just felt like a waste of my
time.

Most of the comments here are pretty mean and snarky - attacking Kevin Rose,
Digg, Milk, or all three.

Hacker News used to be a lot better than this. I flagged it, fwiw.

~~~
erikpukinskis
As a dreamer who has difficulty taking projects past the proof of concept
stage, I think it's fascinating Rose is starting a skunkworks/experimentation-
style company. I would love to have a business like that where I had a staff
and we would quickly develop ideas to the proof of concept stage and spin off
companies. That's not something you see much in the wild... all you really
hear about are the companies where a team took an idea all the way (to scale,
if not to profitability).

I find this far, far more interesting from a business perspective than most of
the "so-and-so is launching a startup" articles.

And honestly, I think it's far more relevant to hackers than, say, the Path
announcement. Rose is basically starting a company where the business strategy
is hacking. Not customer development or venture-backed growth... just hacking
together cool projects and see what sticks.

So, not flagged.

------
kylelibra
A development lab, not an incubator, but they don't plan on growing the team
beyond ten people for at least a year. What do you all make of this?

My initial reaction is that they have assembled a team of people to work on
crazy ideas to see if any of them catch on and then ideas that catch on will
be spun off into separate companies. Sounds like a good match for Kevin's
product ADD, but I feel like this could quickly spin into Digg again where
people are spread too thin working on products with no future.

~~~
Apocryphon
So, solutions in search of problems, then.

------
alanfalcon
So what happens if Milk quickly stumbles upon the next Twitter? It sounds like
Kevin would expect to still develop new ideas, but wouldn't Twitter have
faltered if Ev continued to try new things instead of deciding to focus on his
success with Twitter?

~~~
aresant
What's funny is that Ev stumbled on Twitter while working on Odeo . . .

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DarrenLehane
I like how they got 'milk' on Twitter and Facebook.

How long until they pick up milk.com? - <http://milk.com/value/>

~~~
cdsanchez
Not really directed to you (unless you have the answer):

Is there any way for regular people (i.e not large corporations or Kevin Rose)
to request a screen name from twitter, assuming that they have a registered
business with the same name? I realize twitter isn't mandated to do so, but it
would be nice if small startups or individuals could request screen names if
the screen name is inactive.

------
enduser
This is brilliant. 10 people really is the limit of organizational size where
everyone can know everybody else and what they are working on. Better to focus
on gathering the best group of 10 people and empowering each to do brilliant
work.

You weren't meant to have a boss: <http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html>

~~~
samtp
What about when those 10 people are working on 5 completely different ideas? 5
- 2 person teams to make 'world-changing' products? I don't think so

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stevederico
Great quote from Rose- “People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if
something isn’t working after four months, we’ll just shoot it in the head and
start again,”

This "Small Team + Many Ideas" format is very exciting, and I look forward to
seeing its agile manner against the traditional format.

~~~
tsuipen
Or: "Small Team + Big Ideas," no? Since the article says, "A year from now, he
expects the company won’t have launched 20 small, cool ideas, but it will have
developed four-to-six big, audacious ones."

~~~
shasta
Yes, big audacious ideas that can be implemented and proven successful by a
couple of guys in four months.

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aresant
A small team building multiple different projects to see which one "catches"
and THEN focus on successes.

My inner shiny-object entrepreneur says this is awesome.

My inner Confucius says he who chases two rabbits catches neither.

As an entrepreneur that, like most, struggles with FOCUS this seems like
letting the inmates run the asylum.

Fun to watch, but not sure a recipe for success.

------
danilocampos
I feel as though, like Digg, this is going to be an astonishingly effective
mechanism for getting Kevin Rose attention.

And probably not much more than that.

What mystifies me is why he doesn't just focus on the thing he's good at:
being in the spotlight. I think Digg made pretty clear the fact that he's just
not the guy you want doing the day to day, tedious, mostly obscure work of
running a company.

 _Which is fine_.

Maybe he could go to acting school. Or do a vlog?

~~~
rokhayakebe
I apologize for the accidental downvote.

 _I feel as though, like Digg, this is going to be an astonishingly effective
mechanism for getting Kevin Rose attention._

I think you are taking away from Kevin. He actually changed the way we consume
news online. It is arguable that he invented the very social-news-voting
system we are using on HN. I can guarantee you a very small percentage of
people who use sites that follow the Digg model know who KR is.

Edit: And I do not mean to be rude, but how does your contribution to the
internet compare to his?

~~~
danilocampos
Reddit was founded without any knowledge of Digg. I'm not sure that removing
Kevin Rose from our timeline has a material impact on how we consume news in
2011, except by dumping Digg's user base into Reddit that much sooner.

> It is arguable that he invented the very social-news-voting system we are
> using on HN.

Given that Reddit was a Y Combinator company, my strong suspicion is that HN
took its inspiration from sources other than Digg.

> Edit: And I do not mean to be rude, but how does your contribution to the
> internet compare to his?

My contribution is immaterial to the discussion. Pointing out that Kevin Rose
does much better work as an internet celebrity than as a business leader would
remain true (or false) whether I'm Danilo Campos or Vinton Cerf.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I just found your original comment to be a bit mean. Sometimes you guys forget
that people read this stuff, and words can hurt.

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daimyoyo
So does the name on the incubator have anything to do with Harvey Milk, or am
I reading too much into it?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk>

~~~
evilduck
I assumed it was because [for all non-human species] something that drinks
milk is usually in its infancy.

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elvirs
Well if he has money to spend, actually this may be the best approach for him
because he is a nice guy but not a tech visionary.

Bringing together a group of smart and talented people and let them experiment
with little apps and see what catches on may be the best way to come up with a
successful product.

Also, lets not forget that we live in a time when the 'coolness' of an app
makes a it a company, not its revenue.

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kssreeram
“People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if something isn’t working
after four months, we’ll just shoot it in the head and start again,”

Early adopters beware. If the idea doesn't work out for them, they'll pull the
product from under you.

------
jonathanwallace
This sounds like the formalization of market forces into one company. I could
see real value in fine-tuning the right team.

It's all about the execution, right? :)

I love the idea of this business model and wish them the best.

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Hominem
So 10 super ninja rockstar pirate devs? They build out awsome ideas, sell them
and move on to somthing else? Never keeping a product long enough for it to
implode?

I guess he was serious about what he learned at Digg.

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evoltix
Let me know when something has actually been created. Ideas and intentions are
worthless until you actually do something with them.

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arepb
How about just solving one problem first and then moving onto the next?

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rokhayakebe
I would like to see more of these types of companies; a dozen of engineers, +
1 business/marketing gal/guy coming together and pushing out 12 products/year.

------
rokhayakebe
Side note: Several people have been saying KR is a non-technical founder, but
you should know that he actually studied computer science.

~~~
cryptoz
> actually studied computer science

...before dropping out in 1998.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose#Early_life>

~~~
keiferski
Not sure if you're implying that KR isn't a technical guy (he may or may not
be, I don't know enough about him), but with your logic, Bill Gates isn't a
technical guy either, seeing that he dropped out of college too (although
before choosing a major).

Majoring in comp sci = having some technical knowledge, whether you graduate
or not.

Not majoring in comp sci != not being a technical guy.

~~~
cryptoz
I wasn't suggesting Kevin is or isn't a technical guy. I merely think that
it's very biased and weird to 'remind' everyone that Kevin studied computer
science as an argument to say he's technical - but not mention that he dropped
out.

I was trying to add relevant facts to a biased post without trying to get
involved in the discussion...guess it's too late for that.

I don't know enough about him either, so I'll stop bringing things up here on
this topic. :)

~~~
keiferski
Yeah, sorry if that came across as hostile. It just seemed like you were
saying "he's not technical because he dropped out."

I do agree with you in that his major doesn't necessarily mean he's technical,
though.

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jawartak
There's already an app for when it fails: Remember the Milk.

~~~
keiferski
A little snarky, no? With all the talk of "save HN", comments like this
_really_ don't seem to add anything worthwhile to the discussion.

~~~
jawartak
A little snarky, yes. Naming a development team 'Milk' is like naming an
iPhone app 'Color'.

~~~
keiferski
Your previous comment had nothing to do with the disadvantages of the name and
everything to do with making a clever, ironic joke, which, by the way, was
negative to begin with ("for when it fails".)

Unless you think that "Milk" is a bad name because a random iPhone app's name
can be used in a roundabout way.

I hate to be so critical, but Reddit-style comments like this _really_ don't
belong here.

~~~
jawartak
O. I forgot to mention that–it was also a test to see how a reddit-comment
would fare. Mixed results–but I'd say HN has fallen, considering only one
person attacked me for it.

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phlux
Frankly, I am surprised it took him this long to come up with the idea of
doing an idea lab. I am also surprised there aren't many more of these in the
valley.

