It's always interesting when people with special circumstances try to distill their situation into general principles. There's usually far too many variables to take their advice at face value, but occasionally you find useful tidbits.
There's a fine line here; how does one know whether their situation is special or if what worked for them is applicable to others? As you say, overzealous generalization yields bad advice, but it's easier for consumers of advice (us) to filter than to generate. I'd rather read 100 founder stories and conclude that 95 of those weren't applicable to me than to lose the five that were.
The greater worry, in my mind, is that people like to avoid the "I would have done X differently" or "I found that assumption Y was inapplicable/inaccurate," which are super-valuable advice types.
It would actually be an interesting interview if someone asked Kevin about shadiness. I note quite a bit of spin in Kevin's bio at the bottom of the article. Digg's inception keeps going further and further back in time, for starters.
Is it really necessary to comment on every single individual mention of Digg so negatively? Apparently you got screwed pretty bad by them, but your posts don't come across as "being in the know", they come across as bitter.
I'm not always negative about digg, and I'm often negative about other aspects of the "new journalism". Mostly because my experience with it is that it's nearly all bullshit, and that disappoints me.
He covers his mouth at that point, and it's hard to tell whether he said "mine" or "one." Anyway Kevin did hide his involvement with digg early on (he was a Comcast employee).
