The First Digg Developer Dispels the Myths Surrounding Digg & Startups in General

http://blog.mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-of-how-business-really-works-owen-byrne-digg/

by NewWorldOrder • 17 years ago

127 37 17 years ago

blog.mixergy.com

delano• 17 years ago

That's a very candid interview Owen, thanks (I'm assuming you'll be reading the comments!).

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

Of course. Wondering if there will be a backlash. I tried not to take more credit than was really due me and also tried to avoid coming off bitter despite the bait waived in front of me. I'm clearly better off because of digg, even if not comparatively to some others involved. An argument could be made that I'm better off than a couple of different people involved early on, but if I had my way, they would also have seen more.

terpua• 17 years ago

You'll now have to change your HN profile from the "built digg for $10/hour" to "$20/hour + equity" :)

merrick33• 17 years ago

BTW I was the one that mentioned the "bait" to Andrew, but not to bait you but rather to have others learn from your experience. I think it's important that people building a company know about liquidation preferences going in.

nickb• 17 years ago

Excellent interview! Congrats Owen.

breck• 17 years ago

I had assumed that Owen was in his 20's. Whoops. Very cool.

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

If you can figure out a way to make me be in my twenties, you can have all my digg shares. ;-)

by• 17 years ago

Just consider it as hexadecimal.

wave• 17 years ago

Is there any specific reason why would like to be in your twenties again?

fallentimes• 17 years ago

He drinks like he is :), and he's one of the most down to earth people I've ever met.

bkrausz• 17 years ago

I made the same mistake when he interviewed me...I heard "helped start Digg" and I made an assumption. Funny how the "young startup founder" stereotype is so strong.

vaksel• 17 years ago

good interview, but I don't recommend watching it, just listen. The audio is horribly out of sync.

The "your ip" website idea, just goes to show you, that digg was a fluke.

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

Fluke isn't really fair. Yes there was luck, but once that initial luck happened there was a lot of hard work by Kevin, me, and all the early employees to build upon it.

scotth• 17 years ago

But hard work very often results in nothing. I'm sure many on this site can attest to that.

That considered, you're more likely to get lucky if you work hard.

jonny_noog2• 17 years ago

Owen said: It’s a bit of a myth that it’s all young coders. There actually lots of people in their late 30s and their 40s. I’ve been a programmer for 25 years and I’ve actually worked hard to keep up with new technology.

That's quite encouraging. Sometimes I think one could be forgiven for getting the impression that if you're over 25 and you haven't made it in start-up land, then you may as well quit.

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

As I believe I said in the interview, the second developer we hired at digg was older than me (I was 45 at the time we hired him).

edwardog• 17 years ago

I was really happy to hear you say that when we met at your TravelPod presentation; I wish there was more focus on older hackers – sure gives me something to look forward to.

-Edward from Shopify (around the corner from you guys)

joshu• 17 years ago

I was 31 when I started Delicious as a company. That probably rounds down to 25 though.

nailer• 17 years ago

If your were giving your age in octal, it's the same thing. :-)

eugenejen2• 17 years ago

The only thing for youth is the tolerance for risk can be higher than 40 yrs old for most engineers. But as long as engineers keep up skills. Their experience are very valuable. It was the same when I worked in PubSub then. CTO Bob Wyman hired a bunch of 40 something engineers and they really can do cool engineering than 20 something.

-- edit --

Engineers in PubSub then are at least 30 yrs old in 2005. The youngest engineer is very talented but he started to write programs in forth when he was 10 on Apple II. Of course the draw back is the salary is higher and old engineers may have too much distractions from their children.

I think most of time, the myth for young engineers is to encourage students to join the rank. And the engineers in first world face big competition from countries with lower salary. But I always feel funny because for people working in software, US is the original birth place and the most experience engineers are here. But people probably would rather to pay an expensive old doctor to heal them than an old engineer to build something that works because they don't feel the value for what they pay in perceivable fashion.

-- edit --

And thanks for Owen to dispel myth from PR.

jonny_noog2• 17 years ago

... as long as engineers keep up skills ...

This is a good point that probably seems so obvious to most people here, but none the less is overlooked by many elsewhere. Where I work my day job now, I can see a clear delineation between those that left their "official" studying years with the conscious or unconscious idea that they really no longer had to learn anything new, and those who know that especially in our industry, you must actively and continuously put time into developing your skills and knowledge.

The sad thing is that in many if not all big organisations (particularly government), you can be the first kind of person and go through the motions each day just fine. They don't even get called on it most of the time.

I know which kind of person I get along with better and which shits me to tears when I have to deal with them.

abstractbill• 17 years ago

My friend and mentor did his startup (truveo.com) when he was 40, with a wife and two kids to support. His company was acquired by AOL for about $50 million. So yes, the myth that you have to be in your 20s to succeed in this game is exactly that.

10ren• 17 years ago

ADOBE: founded 1982 by John Warnock (born 1940) and Charles Geschke (born 1939) - that's about 42 and 43 years old. I believe they both had young families too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems

However... they were working at Xerox's PARC.

kyro• 17 years ago

Owen, a quick question. Who is Eli? I recall several times Kevin saying that he hired a guy named Eli from elance to do some personal web stuff for him, and then hired him to do Digg.

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

Eli White was the 3rd developer we hired. Kevin must have been confused because I'm pretty sure Eli never participated in elance.

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

Glad to hear that your story is getting a little more press, Owen. You deserve it.

known• 17 years ago

Somebody please create Wikipedia entry for Owen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Owen+Byrn...

Technophilis• 17 years ago

This description http://www.crunchbase.com/person/owen-byrne doesn't sound like the real story =)

AndrewWarner• 17 years ago

I edited that after our interview. I guess they didn't accept my edits. Strange. They usually take my post-interview edits. Maybe they need more time to a approve it.

newy• 17 years ago

Great hearing directly from you Owen, too bad the interview style was kind of distracting. The interviewer seemed to want to tell the story more than letting you narrate and kept beating the dead horse on certain points :)

ojbyrne9• 17 years ago

The impact of this story amazes me, and reinforces one point rather well.

I lived in San Francisco for 2+ years, and would tell the exact same story to anyone who would listen. Nobody ever bothered to listen.

It took someone from Southern California to actually get the story out there, because the PR culture in Norcal is so busy sucking up to power that they neglect to ever look for anything resembling the truth. Silicon Valley would be much better off if Techcrunch, Mashable, PaidContent, and every other PR blog there went out of business tomorrow.

abl• 17 years ago

Owen,

It would be very educational to hear you go into the details of the liquidation deal that you would prefer and recommend to people joining a new startup. Or, if you could recommend some reading material on the subject?

The First Digg Developer Dispels the Myths Surrounding Digg & Startups in General

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