Kevin Rose is a smart guy. As an aside, I had the pleasure to meet him at Disrupt in 2010 right after the launch of Digg v4. It struck me as an incredibly inte

Kevin Rose is a smart guy. As an aside, I had the pleasure to meet him at Disrupt in 2010 right after the launch of Digg v4. It struck me as an incredibly interesting moment in time (to set the stage, Digg had just flattened their site, removed granular categorization and was now pulling in content automatically while Reddit was, antithetically, doing the complete opposite). I talked with Kevin and it was clear to me that he knew what was at stake and that he was doing his best to deliver what he thought was the right answer. It's sort of like 1984 versus Brave New World. The leader in '84 is sort of a tyrant and we almost universally reject his dictum because of this. In BNW, Huxley's leader genuinely believes that what he's doing is right, and he's not sure, but what he is sure is that he thinks what he's doing is the best way to lead. This was a profound lesson, for me, about management. Even though Kevin Rose was ultimately mistaken about his hypothesis, he executed with conviction and leadership. On some level, you still have to admire the captain of the Titanic, and that's a sort of backhanded way of explaining why I admire Kevin Rose so much. To fail, and rise from the ashes, is one of the most difficult things in the world, but I think Kevin has certainly done it.