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 website now boasts 91 million each day energetic customers, its success was not a certainty. In reality, Reddit’s co-founders have been rejected by startup accelerator Y Combinator firstly 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 advised LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on Thursday. Their preliminary concept was to create a technique to order meals from cell telephones — which wasn’t the norm in 2005.
Y Combinator rejected the thought however requested Ohanian and Huffman, who have been 22 and 21 years outdated on the time, to work on one thing else.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 test.
The thought for Reddit took place from two web sites: Scrumptious and Slashdot. Scrumptious was a web site that allow customers retailer and share bookmarks; Yahoo acquired it in 2007. Slashdot.org nonetheless exists as a social information website masking science and tech information; Reddit’s co-founders have been drawn to the group it had however needed to develop past tech.
Reddit “was type of a Scrumptious plus Slashdot, however make each of them higher,” Huffman mentioned. “Truthfully, 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.”
Associated: ‘A Enormous Alternative:’ Reddit CEO Goals to Deliver AI to 1 Billion Reddit Searches
For instance, Huffman identified that Reddit’s “most essential function,” or the ability it offers customers to create their very own communities, was launched three years after launch.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Picture by Spencer Platt/Getty Photos
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 knowledge.
Huffman mentioned there may be “an amazing quantity of alternative” with AI.
“I am very proud that Reddit has performed a job within the improvement of those applied sciences,” he mentioned.
Associated: Reddit Visitors Almost Triples in 8 Months, Posts Rise to the High of Google Search
