[secretasiandan]

I think you've entirely missed his point. Note that he says: "It doesn't matter if they understand how to code or not."

His main point? "Once they have that reputation as being awesome it will stick around no matter how badly they perform after their initial success"

And I totally agree. In fact, after a success the odds are more in your favor. So if you can't succeed again, it calls into question your 'true' level of talent.

[winterchil]

There's actually a good reason that you get credit for a long time and that is successes are so rare and valuable that you deserve credit for a long time.

The vast majority of these silicon-valley companies are built with investors' money (typically from Venture Capital firms). The VC business model generates outsized returns on a few successful companies which pay for all the failures. Careers and entire funds can swing to success based on the outcome of one company so if you're a founder you deserve that credit. It also means you've returned tons of extra money to investors that pays for all your subsequent losses.

Kevin Rose specifically is an interesting case because Digg was not a success for his investors, but her personally did well.

[rhizome]

So wait, the "good reason" he gets credit is for not doing the thing that causes people to give people like him credit?

To me, this all sounds like the Fundamental Attribution Error. Kevin Rose is thought to have some special talent, when really all he did was get lucky, and really, not even lucky enough to get his investors paid. His subsequent failures would seem to support this.

However, we must have our stars and Time coverboys. I would say that the reason he keeps getting biz is directly related to his fame, and not so much his business acumen or skills. Call it Calcanis Syndrome.

[jayliew]

Did Oink fail because of product, or market? If it's product, being technical will help, if it's market, being technical won't help. (edit: to add, the product worked - so it likely wasn't a problem with the product.)

[ralphos]

Yes the product worked, but perhaps the product didn't fit the market?

[jayliew]

Which is what I'm guessing as well. Since it's not a product-issue, Kevin's not-coding didn't hurt. Which was the point I was trying to get at. Even if he could code, that wouldn't help solve the market-fit problem.