Here’s more indication that the consumer Internet is moving closer to the Hollywood operational model. In Hollywood, movies are often popular because of a star power like Tom Cruise. The movie doesn’t have to be good, but if Tom is in it, it will make money. In tech, things have traditionally been different: your product has to make sense and work. Value is created, not just through popularity, but by first-mover advantage, or technical excellence, or discovery of a new business model… typically something substantial.

Certainly there are a few serial winners in Silicon Valley like Steve Jobs, or Mike Cassidy (directhit, xfire) or Peter Thiel (paypal, facebook), but each time they’ve succeeded, they’ve done it from scratch, producing great products and great teams that battled their way to the top. They were never Tom Cruise. Their involvement didn’t guarantee success. In fact, most of the time, when you see people say “He’s done it before, so he can do it again this time, I’m puttin’ money in!” … it typically doesn’t work out. The tech market is unforgiving.

But Kevin Rose, with Pownce at 700 on Alexa in the U.S., may be revealing himself as Silicon Valley’s first Tom Cruise, where if he’s involved with something, it gets high adoption, which creates value, as long as it’s a network effect business. Is “Executive Producer: Kevin Rose” (ala Speilberg) far off?