Kevin Rose
Robert Kevin Rose is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV. In 2025, Rose re-purchased Digg with Alexis Ohanian and re-launched it as a competitor to Reddit.
Early life and education
Rose was born in California and lived in Oregon before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he spent most of his childhood. He became an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America. Rose transferred to Southeast Career Technical Academy for high school in Las Vegas in 1992. He then attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas, majored in computer science but dropped out in 1998.Career
Rose worked for two dot-com startups through CMGI.Digg
Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson formed Digg, a technology link website, publicly launched on December 5, 2004. In 2007, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. In 2006, Fox InteractiveMedia Group offered $60 million for Digg, which the Digg board turned down given how quickly the brand was continuing to grow. Over the next four years, CEO Rose lost interest in helping the site continue its growth, focusing on a series of non-Digg outside projects; the board eventually replaced him as CEO, on September 1, 2010.Rose continued on at Digg until March 18, 2011, when he resigned from all operational activities, only keeping a presence on the board of directors; Digg was acquired by Betaworks, in 2012, for $0.5 million.
In 2025, more than a decade after he originally sold it, Rose re-purchased Digg with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and re-launched it as a rebooted version of Digg's news aggregator with digging and burying features restored and the tagline: "The front page of the internet, now with superpowers." During its closed beta stage, it offered 21 generalized communities such as gaming, technology, and entertainment, and was open to 67,000 users on an invite-only basis. Its open beta launched to the public on January 14, 2026.
Television
Rose was hired as a production assistant for The Screen Savers. He began appearing on-air in the "Dark Tip" segments and on Unscrewed with Martin Sargent, where he provided information on developing computing activities. He became a regular co-host when Leo Laporte left TechTV on March 31, 2004. On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV, which resulted in a round of layoffs. Rose moved to Los Angeles to stay with G4. On May 22, 2005, Rose reached an agreement with G4 that released him from his contract and went on to create Systm and later, Revision3, where he co-hosted Diggnation alongside Alex Albrecht for 6 years.Guest appearances
Kevin Rose appeared on the first episode of R&D TV alongside Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht. On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show on Gigaom's NewTeeVee Live. On March 11, 2009, April 16, 2010, and November 28, 2011, Rose was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, along with fellow Diggnation host Alex Albrecht.Podcasting
Rose began his career in web video on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken while he was still working on The Screen Savers at TechTV. Rose founded Revision3 in Los Angeles, California, with Jay Adelson and David Prager in April 2005. On July 1, 2005, Rose and Alex Albrecht started the weekly podcast, Diggnation, which summarizes top stories submitted by Digg users. On October 3, 2011, Alex and Kevin announced that they would be retiring the weekly Diggnation show at the end of the year. The final show was taped on December 30, 2011, at The Music Box in Los Angeles, California.Starting in 2009, Rose started an intermittent podcast called The Random Show with friend Tim Ferriss.
In 2024, Kevin and Alex rebooted Diggnation on the YouTube channel @diggnation.
Other startups
Around 1998-1999, Kevin Rose started SimpleSearch.com in Las Vegas with his sister and brother-in-law, Kurt Arobogast. On June 27, 2007, Rose launched a micro-blogging site called Pownce, which was acquired on December 1, 2008, and shut down on December 15, 2008, by blogging company Six Apart. In April 2011, the technology blog TechCrunch reported on the founding of "Milk". The company is focused on creating mobile applications. The first application to be released was Oink, a tool for ranking real-world items. In March 2012, Milk, Inc. announced that it would be shutting down its only product, Oink.Venture capitalist
Rose invested in Gowalla, Twitter, Foursquare, Dailybooth, ngmoco, SimpleGeo, 3crowd, OMGPOP, Square, Facebook, Chomp and Formspring.Watchville/Hodinkee
After leaving Google, Rose started Watchville, a news aggregation app focused on wristwatches. In July 2015, after Watchville merged with another watch-enthusiast site called Hodinkee, Rose moved to New York City to become the chief executive of Hodinkee.In April 2017, Rose stepped down from his role as Hodinkee CEO to become a partner in a start-up venture firm, True Ventures.