Reddit grew for practically 20 years earlier than going public in March at round a $6.5 billion valuation. Although the social media discussion board web site now boasts 91 million every day lively customers, its success was not a certainty. In truth, Reddit’s co-founders have been rejected by startup accelerator Y Combinator at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey.
“So, Alexis [Ohanian], my co-founder, school roommate on the time, he and I utilized to Y Combinator,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman informed LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on Thursday. Their preliminary thought was to create a approach to order meals from cell telephones — which wasn’t the norm in 2005.
Y Combinator rejected the concept however requested Ohanian and Huffman, who have been 22 and 21 years previous on the time, to work on one thing else. They got here up with Reddit, which Y Combinator funded with a $12,000 examine.
The concept for Reddit took place from two web sites: Scrumptious and Slashdot. Scrumptious was an internet site that allow customers retailer and share bookmarks; Yahoo acquired it in 2007. Slashdot.org nonetheless exists as a social information web site overlaying science and tech information; Reddit’s co-founders have been drawn to the neighborhood it had however needed to broaden past tech.
Reddit “was type of a Scrumptious plus Slashdot, however make each of them higher,” Huffman mentioned. “Actually, I believe that is just about what we constructed. However for 19 years, we have been iterating on this and tweaking it, and type of following our customers and including options.”
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For instance, Huffman identified that Reddit’s “most vital function,” or the facility it provides customers to create their very own communities, was launched three years after launch.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Picture by Spencer Platt/Getty Photographs
Since going public, Reddit has posted earnings that beat expectations for 2 consecutive quarters. The corporate inked AI licensing offers with Google and OpenAI earlier this 12 months, permitting Google’s Gemini AI and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to make use of Reddit posts of their coaching information.
Huffman mentioned there’s “an amazing quantity of alternative” with AI.
“I am very proud that Reddit has performed a task within the growth of those applied sciences,” he mentioned.
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