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Having that kind of endorsement and having Paul Graham's readership coming to your site and contributing to it and building the foundation of the community was just a really invaluable way to start Reddit.

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
Foundation
Endorsement
Coming
Endorsements
Building
Graham
Start
Readership
Community
Invaluable
Kind
Contributing
Really
Site
Way
Paul
Reddit

More quotes by Alexis Ohanian

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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.
Alexis Ohanian
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If I were a snarky Reddit user though, I would say, hypothetically, that that would just be like reading Reddit's Front Page a day later. But I'm not going to go there.
Alexis Ohanian
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Let's say you're all worried about student-loan debt and you need to have steady income. That doesn't have to be your everything.
Alexis Ohanian
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I don't have a crystal ball, but if you can ever put yourself in a situation where you are indispensable - where you aren't part of what looks like a fad, but you actually are a company, a brand that people trust and go to - at this point, you could put some of the mainstays of tech on anything, right?
Alexis Ohanian
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At the end of the day, how many ads did it take to convince you to use Facebook or Twitter? It wasn't marketing or advertising that convinced you to use these services. It was their value.
Alexis Ohanian
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If I'm at the University of Georgia and I can't inspire this room full of students, OK, fine. I'm not going to take it personally. Maybe a little bit, but I'll be all right.
Alexis Ohanian
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The first version of everything is janky.
Alexis Ohanian
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The Internet is such a tough marketplace because everyone is a click away from going back to a cat photo, or going back to whatever else they were doing. You have to win them over, and do it quickly, and do it by making something people actually want.
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.
Alexis Ohanian
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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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Facebook makes me hate the people I know, and Reddit makes me love the people I don't.
Alexis Ohanian
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I guess if you include contractors that are six or seven people working on reddit, but when we got acquired there were basically three and then in the years since, we've added three more developer hires full time, and a community manger. But the site is still remarkably small.
Alexis Ohanian
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The best part of being an angel investor is seeing these kids coming up with companies that get way more traffic than Reddit had when we sold it. I think, 'Are you kidding me? They're just kids, and they've done so much.
Alexis Ohanian
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I like sarcasm. I like snark.
Alexis Ohanian
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The goal shouldn't be to be the next Silicon Valley (there'll always only be one of those) - it's to be your own startup community.
Alexis Ohanian
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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.
Alexis Ohanian
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Every founder has to delude themselves into thinking, Yes, it's going to be big. It's going to take over the world.
Alexis Ohanian
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We all have great ideas. No one ever says, I've got this terrible idea.
Alexis Ohanian
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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.
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.
Alexis Ohanian