What is Kevin Rose's Net Worth?
Kevin Rose is an American internet entrepreneur who has a net worth of $100 million. Kevin Rose is known for co-founding the social news and networking websites Digg and Pownce. He has also co-founded a number of other groups, such as Revision3, Watchville, and Proof Collective, and invested in such tech companies as Gowalla, Dailybooth, OMGPOP, and Formspring. Among his other activities, Rose was a co-host and production assistant on the TechTV show "The Screen Savers" during the program's final years in 2004 and 2005. In August 2022 his Web3 startup, Proof, raised $50 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz. In April 2022, Proof released a limited collection of 10,000 owl NFTs. That collection quickly generated $450 million in revenue. Within days of the release, Moonbird NFTs were trading at 38.5 Ether. By December 2022, the price had dropped to 8 Ether.
Early Life and Education
Kevin Rose was born on February 21, 1977 in Redding, California and lived briefly in Oregon before moving with his family to Las Vegas, Nevada. He spent the majority of his childhood there, becoming an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. As a teenager, Rose went to the Southeast Career Technical Academy. He went on to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a computer science major, but ultimately dropped out in 1998.
At the age of 19, Rose's computer skills were so good that he landed a job at the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site, which he worked while attending the University of Las Vegas. He dropped out of college his sophomore year to work as a programmer full-time.
The Screen Savers
Rose began one of his most prominent early gigs in 2004, working as a production assistant on the TechTV show "The Screen Savers." Shortly after that, the show was revamped to focus more on pop culture in a variety show format, and Rose became a co-host. During his tenure, which lasted until the cancellation of the program in 2005, his co-hosts included Kevin Pereira, Sarah Lane, and Brendan Moran.
Digg
Through his time as host of Screen Savers, Kevin made a number of important connections with some of Silicon Valley's biggest players, including Apple computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. Envious of Wozniak's stories of the days of pioneering the Apple computer with Steve Jobs, Rose went home to dig around the internet for interesting tidbits of news that might be somewhat obscure and was struck by the realization that this searching of the web was messy and time-consuming. And that got Rose thinking…maybe he could create a service that did this automatically for users…one that tapped the site's community to post and rank content from bloggers and news sites. Those stories that appeared on the front page would represent the most popular ones of the day…and $1,200 (from his own bank account) later, Digg was born. Digg was also co-founded by Jay Adelson, Owen Byrne, and Ron Gorodetzky. Originally, the aim of the site was to allow users to discover, share, and recommend web content by voting pages up ("digging") or down ("burying"). A controversial redesign took place in 2010, after which Rose and Adelson left the company.
A shrewd investor, Rose put money into the early launches of Twitter and Foursquare. In July 2012 it was announced that the assets of Digg.com had been acquired by a company called Betaworks for $500,000 plus equity. Later that year he became a venture partner at Google Ventures.
(Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Other Business Ventures
In 2005, along with Jay Adelson and David Prager, Rose co-founded another startup, Revision3. Based in San Francisco, it was a multi-channel television network specializing in the production and distribution of streaming shows focused on niche topics. In 2013, the network began operating as a subsidiary of Discovery Digital Networks, which eventually shut down Revision3 four years later.
Rose also co-founded the social networking and microblogging site Pownce, which lasted from 2007 through 2008, and created the mobile application production company Milk, which had a short-lived product called Oink. Later, he launched Watchville, a news aggregation site focused on wristwatches. The company merged with HODINKEE in 2015, and two years after that Rose left the company. Among his other startups is Proof Collective, which is comprised of NFT collectors peddling the digital tokens.
In 2012, Rose became a senior product manager at Google. However, he left the position after a couple of months to join Google's venture capitalist investment arm GV. Rose has invested in such tech companies as Gowalla, Dailybooth, Twitter, Facebook, OMGPOP, and Formspring. In early 2015, he left GV to focus on his app development lab North. A little later, Rose joined the California startup venture firm True Ventures.
Podcasts
Rose has been very active on the podcast scene. His first podcast, "thebroken," debuted in the summer of 2003. Two years after that, he began co-hosting his popular weekly podcast "Diggnation" with Alex Albrecht. On the show, which ran through 2011, the pair reviewed and then consumed various beverages as they discussed stories from Rose's website Digg. Rose also had an intermittent podcast called "The Random Show" that he co-hosted with his entrepreneur friend Tim Ferriss.
Personal Life and Real Estate
In 2013, Rose wed Darya Pino. The pair courted controversy early the next year when they bought a 19th-century house in Portland, Oregon only to remove its historic designation and plan to demolish it. Ultimately, longtime residents of the neighborhood averted the disaster by purchasing the home for $1.375 million.
In 2014 Kevin purchased a 1.24 acre property in Portland, Oregon. He proceeded to demolish the former structure and construct what ultimately became a 6,665 square foot modern mansion full of impressive amenities. He listed this mansion for sale in July 2022 for $7.998 million and sold it for right around asking in November 2022. Here is a video tour of that mansion:
