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The first step, and the thing that everyone has to do right on the Internet is make something people want.

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
Right
Thing
Something
Step
Make
Internet
People
Steps
Everyone
Firsts
First

More quotes by Alexis Ohanian

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I actually haven't even found a curriculum in America that is really preparing people for this 21st century world.
Alexis Ohanian
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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.
Alexis Ohanian
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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.
Alexis Ohanian
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I can't begrudge anyone who opts to get a job instead of creating one for themselves.
Alexis Ohanian
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I think everyone should learn how to code.
Alexis Ohanian
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The first version of everything is janky.
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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If you imagine Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you can get all those requirements checked off and have all those amazing things that we need to just live lives, but actually get to do the thing that you're really passionate about.
Alexis Ohanian
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The weird thing about reddit is that, for a community its size - now I'm no longer at reddit, but the public traffic numbers that they put out are, I think with the site about eight million unique visitors a month, or every 30 days, which is a fairly big site.
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 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 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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If you look now, more than ever new entrants, new upstarts, are able to grow so much faster than they could before.
Alexis Ohanian
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The social-media landscape changes incredibly fast, so you have to be open-minded and nimble to keep up with it.
Alexis Ohanian
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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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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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The reality is, there's still so much we haven't yet figured out. There's still so much stuff that has not been made more, frankly, efficient.
Alexis Ohanian
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You can throw - and we've seen plenty of these kinds of companies - millions of dollars in advertising for a website or a service, and in the end if it's not useful no one's going to use it.
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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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