

The First Digg Developer Dispels the Myths Surrounding Digg & Startups in General - NewWorldOrder
http://blog.mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-of-how-business-really-works-owen-byrne-digg/

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jonny_noog
_Owen said: It’s a bit of a myth that it’s all young coders. There actually
lots of people in their late 30s and their 40s. I’ve been a programmer for 25
years and I’ve actually worked hard to keep up with new technology._

That's quite encouraging. Sometimes I think one could be forgiven for getting
the impression that if you're over 25 and you haven't made it in start-up
land, then you may as well quit.

~~~
ojbyrne
As I believe I said in the interview, the second developer we hired at digg
was older than me (I was 45 at the time we hired him).

~~~
edwardog
I was really happy to hear you say that when we met at your TravelPod
presentation; I wish there was more focus on older hackers – sure gives me
something to look forward to.

-Edward from Shopify (around the corner from you guys)

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breck
I had assumed that Owen was in his 20's. Whoops. Very cool.

~~~
ojbyrne
If you can figure out a way to make me be in my twenties, you can have all my
digg shares. ;-)

~~~
by
Just consider it as hexadecimal.

~~~
ojbyrne
Unfortunately as of my last birthday that wouldn't work either. 0x30 :-(

~~~
eugenejen
Then we just adopt base 24 numeral system. Will you give me your digg share?

~~~
ojbyrne
Just get the world to accept base 24 for common use.

~~~
benmathes
You'll die a little after 30, though.

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newy
Great hearing directly from you Owen, too bad the interview style was kind of
distracting. The interviewer seemed to want to tell the story more than
letting you narrate and kept beating the dead horse on certain points :)

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nickb
Excellent interview! Congrats Owen.

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delano
That's a very candid interview Owen, thanks (I'm assuming you'll be reading
the comments!).

~~~
ojbyrne
Of course. Wondering if there will be a backlash. I tried not to take more
credit than was really due me and also tried to avoid coming off bitter
despite the bait waived in front of me. I'm clearly better off because of
digg, even if not comparatively to some others involved. An argument could be
made that I'm better off than a couple of different people involved early on,
but if I had my way, they would also have seen more.

~~~
terpua
You'll now have to change your HN profile from the "built digg for $10/hour"
to "$20/hour + equity" :)

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ojbyrne
The impact of this story amazes me, and reinforces one point rather well.

I lived in San Francisco for 2+ years, and would tell the exact same story to
anyone who would listen. Nobody ever bothered to listen.

It took someone from Southern California to actually get the story out there,
because the PR culture in Norcal is so busy sucking up to power that they
neglect to ever look for anything resembling the truth. Silicon Valley would
be much better off if Techcrunch, Mashable, PaidContent, and every other PR
blog there went out of business tomorrow.

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iamelgringo
Glad to hear that your story is getting a little more press, Owen. You deserve
it.

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kyro
Owen, a quick question. Who is Eli? I recall several times Kevin saying that
he hired a guy named Eli from elance to do some personal web stuff for him,
and then hired him to do Digg.

~~~
ojbyrne
Eli White was the 3rd developer we hired. Kevin must have been confused
because I'm pretty sure Eli never participated in elance.

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known
Somebody please create Wikipedia entry for Owen.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Owen+Byrn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Owen+Byrne&sourceid=Mozilla-
search)

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abl
Owen,

It would be very educational to hear you go into the details of the
liquidation deal that you would prefer and recommend to people joining a new
startup. Or, if you could recommend some reading material on the subject?

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Technophilis
This description <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/owen-byrne> doesn't sound
like the real story =)

~~~
AndrewWarner
I edited that after our interview. I guess they didn't accept my edits.
Strange. They usually take my post-interview edits. Maybe they need more time
to a approve it.

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vaksel
good interview, but I don't recommend watching it, just listen. The audio is
horribly out of sync.

The "your ip" website idea, just goes to show you, that digg was a fluke.

~~~
ojbyrne
Fluke isn't really fair. Yes there was luck, but once that initial luck
happened there was a lot of hard work by Kevin, me, and all the early
employees to build upon it.

~~~
scotth
But hard work very often results in nothing. I'm sure many on this site can
attest to that.

That considered, you're more likely to get lucky if you work hard.

