Reddit grew for astir 2 decades earlier going nationalist successful March astatine astir a $6.5 cardinal valuation. Though nan societal media forum tract now boasts 91 million regular progressive users, its occurrence was not a certainty. In fact, Reddit's co-founders were rejected by startup accelerator Y Combinator astatine nan commencement of their entrepreneurial journey.
"So, Alexis [Ohanian], my co-founder, assemblage roommate astatine nan time, he and I applied to Y Combinator," Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman connected Thursday. Their first thought was to create a measurement to bid nutrient from compartment phones — which wasn't nan norm successful 2005.
Y Combinator rejected nan thought but asked Ohanian and Huffman, who were 22 and 21 years aged astatine nan time, to activity connected thing else. They came up pinch Reddit, which Y Combinator funded pinch a $12,000 check.
The thought for Reddit came astir from 2 websites: Delicious and Slashdot. Delicious was a website that fto users shop and stock bookmarks; Yahoo acquired it successful 2007. Slashdot.org still exists arsenic a societal news tract covering subject and tech news; Reddit's co-founders were drawn to nan organization it had but wanted to grow beyond tech.
Reddit "was benignant of a Delicious positive Slashdot, but make some of them better," Huffman said. "Honestly, I deliberation that's beautiful overmuch what we built. But for 19 years, we've been iterating connected this and tweaking it, and benignant of pursuing our users and adding features."
Related: 'A Huge Opportunity:' Reddit CEO Aims to Bring AI to 1 Billion Reddit Searches
For example, Huffman pointed retired that Reddit's "most important feature," aliases nan powerfulness it gives users to create their ain communities, was introduced 3 years aft launch.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Since going public, Reddit has posted earnings that beat expectations for 2 consecutive quarters. The institution inked AI licensing deals pinch Google and OpenAI earlier this year, allowing Google's Gemini AI and OpenAI's ChatGPT to usage Reddit posts successful their training data.
Huffman said location is "a tremendous magnitude of opportunity" pinch AI.
"I'm very proud that Reddit has played a domiciled successful nan improvement of these technologies," he said.
Related: Reddit Traffic Nearly Triples successful 8 Months, Posts Rise to nan Top of Google Search
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