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We were very, very lucky being in the first round of Y Combinator because that alone generated a lot of interest. A lot of readers of Paul Graham were just excited to see what was going to come up. And we were the first ones to launch.

Alexis Ohanian

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Alexis Ohanian
Age: 41
Born: 1983
Born: April 24
Entrepreneur
Internet Entrepreneur
Investor
Venture Capitalist
Brooklyn
New York
Kn0thing
Alexis Kerry Ohanian
Come
Rounds
First
Excited
Going
Reader
Graham
Lucky
Generated
Ones
Launch
Alone
Paul
Interest
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More quotes by Alexis Ohanian

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What one realizes there is that we are not in control of the [reddit] community, in any way, shape or form. We have no power over it and so we've lost this total control.
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The people who are going to be succeeding are not going to be waiting around for anyone's permission.
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Facebook makes me hate the people I know, and Reddit makes me love the people I don't.
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Because it's so empowering, I want people to think about being entrepreneurial regardless. They don't have to start companies, but that's what makes them great employees, that's what makes them great citizens.
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I want to be in an industry where the upstarts can grow and displace the incumbents, because that's why there's so much innovation.
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Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar.
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Can we imagine the United States without electricity? No, that would be pretty hard. Likewise, we can't really imagine being without an open Internet. The cost would be so grave, so serious.
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The Internet is, as a communication platform and a learning platform, unparalleled because whether you want to learn something or share something, it's simply a few clicks away.
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There is a much bigger issue with student loan rates, the cost of tuition those are some huge problems that need to be resolved.
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I hate phone calls so I believe in a telephone armistice. To me, the idea of calling someone unprompted is basically saying, 'Hey, stop whatever you're doing and talk to me right now.
Alexis Ohanian
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Hundreds of these companies I've seen since the beginning stages - including Dropbox and Airbnb - one of them has actually been crushed by an incumbent. The Googles, the Twitters, the Facebooks, they might be someone to acquire you, which is not necessarily a bad position to be in.
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Let's do 150 stops. Let's go to 75 universities, and let's spread this gospel of Internet entrepreneurship everywhere we go.
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The problem is these politicians have very, very big interests in being re-elected, and the money that gets them there is provided by people who don't necessarily have the interest of the public in mind.
Alexis Ohanian
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We all have great ideas. No one ever says, I've got this terrible idea.
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I can't begrudge anyone who opts to get a job instead of creating one for themselves.
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Obviously solving the education problem is big and complex, and there's already so many failings, but coding is the new fluency. This is the most valuable skill of this century. If you want to be a founder of a company, and not even just a tech company, but like a founder of a company, because I'm telling you software is going to play a role.
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It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.
Alexis Ohanian
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Having ideas and doing them - that's what entrepreneurship comes down to. That's something that makes you not just a great founder who I want to invest in, but also a great employee or someone I want to work with.
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The stage of investing that I do is seed stage, so it's really early. Here's a pair of founders who maybe have a prototype. They have a little bit of traction, maybe one employee, tops. At that stage, you really, really can only evaluate a company based on those founders and what they've been able to build. It's very, very team driven.
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Everything is derivative. Everything is a remix, and we all stand on the shoulders of giants - a great phrase.
Alexis Ohanian