

Ex-Digg CEO Jay Adelson is Starting an Incubator - rsingel
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/jay-adelson-post-digg/?dog

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ojbyrne
So, here's how I see what Jay brought to the table at Digg:

\- Lots of contacts to close the series A (a plus).

\- Did not move to SF when the company's office was established there (a
minus).

\- Brought in a large group of people he worked with before at high salaries
to be the "management" group (a minus).

\- Used Digg to subsidize the establishment of Revision3, a company that he
had a much larger ownership share in (including having full-time employees
working for Revision 3, but paid by Digg, as well as Revision3 using Digg
facilities and intellectual property). (A huge minus).

\- Failed in the one thing that a parachuted-in CEO is supposed to do, secure
an exit (another huge minus).

So you're going to let him incubate your company? You're a fool.

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noneedtosay
I think that, if you're going to post such a terribly immature and defamatory
comment, and presumably do so from some perspective of "I was involved with
Digg, I'm an insider," you have to provide some personal basis for it.

I think Jay's a good guy. It isn't his fault that Eric Schmidt walked away
from the acquisition. And it isn't his fault that Kevin Rose would use his
power as "founder of Digg" to arbitrarily dictate strategy -- only to return
to doing "cool" things worth tweeting about once he had turned everything
upside down. You don't have to take my word for it -- Kevin's illustrious
Twitter feed speaks for itself.

You really need to get over yourself. You were a contract programmer who
happened to work on the right project. Comments such as these give others
pause to ever want to work with you. Jay, on the other hand... He never talks
about what it's like to work alongside a complete nightmare like Kevin Rose.
Never says a bad thing about him, or about the executives who would choose
Kevin's stupid ideas over Jay's wisdom. Jay never said anything bad about
Google or Eric Schmidt, who clearly lead him down a blind alley before running
away.

And no, I'm not a friend of Jay's, or a friend of Kevin's, or an employee of
Digg. Guess that's true for you as well, huh?

~~~
ojbyrne
I appreciate your criticism, and take it to heart, except for that one big
word "defamatory." Everything I've mentioned above is documented in one place
or another and not just "insiderish."

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citizenkeys
YCombinator is mentioned by name in the article, describing it as an
incubator.

"YCombinator is the most successful of the new breed. Twice a year, Paul
Graham along with co-founder and now-wife Jessica Livingston choose 30 or so
companies from thousands of applicants, invest about $25,000 in exchange for
about 6 percent of a company. They then mentor the groups for a few months,
urging them to build and launch quickly..."

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jasonjei
This is fantastic news. More opportunities for startups to find support and
funding. Startups can probably learn a lot from Digg and Jay's experience.

