How one can Begin a $6.5 Billion Enterprise At 21 Years Outdated: Reddit

Reddit grew for practically twenty 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 each day energetic customers, its success was not a certainty. In truth, Reddit’s co-founders had been rejected by startup accelerator Y Combinator initially of their entrepreneurial journey.

“So, Alexis [Ohanian], my co-founder, faculty roommate on the time, he and I utilized to Y Combinator,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on Thursday. Their preliminary thought was to create a method to order meals from cell telephones — which wasn’t the norm in 2005.

Y Combinator rejected the thought however requested Ohanian and Huffman, who had been 22 and 21 years outdated on the time, to work on one thing else. They got here up with Reddit, which Y Combinator funded with a $12,000 check.

The thought for Reddit happened from two web sites: Scrumptious and Slashdot. Scrumptious was a website that permit customers retailer and share bookmarks; Yahoo acquired it in 2007. Slashdot.org still exists as a social information web site protecting science and tech information; Reddit’s co-founders had been drawn to the neighborhood it had however wished to increase past tech.

Reddit “was sort of a Scrumptious plus Slashdot, however make each of them higher,” Huffman stated. “Actually, I believe that is just about what we constructed. However for 19 years, we have been iterating on this and tweaking it, and sort of following our customers and including options.”

Associated: ‘A Big Alternative:’ Reddit CEO Goals to Convey AI to 1 Billion Reddit Searches

For instance, Huffman identified that Reddit’s “most essential characteristic,” 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 Pictures}

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 yr, permitting Google’s Gemini AI and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to make use of Reddit posts of their coaching knowledge.

Huffman stated there may be “an incredible quantity of alternative” with AI.

“I am very proud that Reddit has performed a task within the improvement of those applied sciences,” he stated.