Kevin Rose is returning to the world of institutional venture capital. The serial entrepreneur has joined True Ventures as a venture partner to place bets on early stage startups.
More than two years ago, Rose walked away from a similar role at GV (formerly Google Ventures) to focus on his latest startup, North Technologies. His company merged with watch blog Hodinkee and he stepped in to assume the role of chief executive. Under his leadership, the company set out on an “ambitious plan to expand editorial and push into mobile e-commerce,” Rose wrote on Medium.
Fast forward to today. Now that the site has seen growth in traffic and revenue, Rose is stepping back from his CEO duties and handing it back to Hodinkee founder Ben Clymer. Now unemployed, Rose opted to rejoin the investment community with True Ventures, the firm with GigaOm founder Om Malik, About.me’s Tony Conrad, and others.
Rose is quite familiar with True Ventures, as the firm has a history of backing his companies. As a VC, he hasn’t disclosed his particular strategy or interests as an investor, at least not publicly.
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“I’ve known the team over at True for years, and they’ve most recently been an incredible partner (and lead investor) in Hodinkee,” he said in a blog post. “I’ve always found the team to be deeply thoughtful, measured, and they’ve helped shape much of my thinking around company building, product design, and investing. It’s these strong core values and approach to supporting Founders that attracts me to True. I’m thrilled to be joining such a great group of people for this new chapter.”
This is definitely not Rose’s first time at this rodeo. He’s been investing for quite some time, even outside of an institutional role. An avid angel investor, he’s made bets on Shyp, Wealthfront, Fab, Path, Formspring, Gowalla, Algolia, About.me, SimpleGeo, Twitter, Foursquare, Square, Zynga, and DailyBooth, to name a few.
Rose said that both he and his family will be returning to San Francisco from New York City to begin his second go-around as an investor, while also simultaneously building products that will “improve people’s lives.”
