Kevin Rose is a high profile Silicon Valley figure. Anything he does is going to get attention. Even things that aren’t very good. The same is true for anyone like him.

That means that he could launch something totally lame and some small number of people will actually use it. I’m not saying Oink was totally lame, but I think it’s fair to say it was not totally awesome (yet).

It’s very possible Oink could have been built up into something big. Almost certain in my mind. It’s solving a real problem (finding good Things at local merchants). It would have taken 2+ years probably to bear fruit.

My guess at why he decided to close it down is because he’s just not passionate about it and that is the single best reason to kill a startup idea.

Passion is a prerequisite. You can be passion about the idea or even just passionate about the idea of running a company. Either way seems to work.

For someone like Kevin Rose though, he probably needs to be passionate about the idea. He’s already got some cash and has already started a company. It’s a given for him that he can have his own company. Investors will give him a million dollars per year every year until he tells them to stop. So he need an exciting idea to get him out of bed in the morning.

The easy thing to do would have been to keep Oink alive on life support. Just assign one or two junior guys on the team to keep working on it. He didn’t do that. He took the harder route. He knew he’d take flack for it too.

I’m just disappointed at how much flack he seems to be receiving. As if he did something wrong or evil.

Some of those chastising him are using the idea of users getting hurt as the reason. The ol’  ”think of the children” chestnut. Users will be perfectly okay. Oink wasn’t an integral part of anyone’s life yet. No one is getting hurt.

One of the biggest differentiators of The Silicon Valley Way is the reduced consequences of failure. Kevin Rose should be praised for doing the right thing — not admonished.

He’s a notch up in my book.