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If I didn't believe in rooting for founders and investing in founders, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite.

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
Investing
Bits
Didn
Believe
Rooting
Hypocrite
Founders

More quotes by Alexis Ohanian

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The great thing about the Internet is, it's the freest marketplace of ideas that there is.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I try to help founders as much as I can, but so many of us we won't even take meetings with people who still just have an idea, because everyone has an idea.
Alexis Ohanian
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It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.
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
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No, everyone has great ideas, but what makes a difference, especially online, or just in life, is actually doing it getting that first version out there.
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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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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There is a much bigger issue with student loan rates, the cost of tuition those are some huge problems that need to be resolved.
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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Even if you have no interest in starting a company, having the experience of having ideas and doing them, that's muscle to exercise because that's what people are going to want to see. That's what makes you different.
Alexis Ohanian
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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.
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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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