Milk: Kevin Rose's New Company Aims to Solve Big Problems on the Mobile Web | Hacker News Reader

Milk: Kevin Rose's New Company Aims to Solve Big Problems on the Mobile Web

techcrunch.com

80 pointshornokplease49 comments

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

As much as I hate buzzwords, I'll play along for the analogy:

You can't 'pivot' if you don't have any feet on the ground. If you have no real direction or dedication, moving to something new isn't 'pivoting', it's defining what you're doing in the first place.

Yes, but Kevin Rose. I hope now you understand.

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.

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.

If it weren't for TechCrunch's heavy focus on startups, I'd suggest they be banned from Hacker News in general. They provide information, but their tone is generally exactly what people are worried about Hacker News turning into. Annoyingly, I've seen a few cases in the past where TechCrunch's post have gotten more upvotes than the original source's blogpost (I believe it was a Google announcement).

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.

So, solutions in search of problems, then.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

Or maybe he can do his own thing and you can focus on yours?

Great point.

Let's ask PG to disable commenting on stories. :)

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

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

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

> actually studied computer science

...before dropping out in 1998.

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

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.

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. :)

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.

Just as Mark Zuckerberg and William Gates.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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