GREATEST: Alexis Ohanian
It’s 7 a.m. in Bel-Air and Alexis Ohanian is not a second late. With multiple speaking engagements, panel appearances, and press conferences all in the same day, the Reddit co-founder is pretty upbeat – for 7 a.m.
Greeted with a smile and a big (6’5") hug, Ohanian glides into our shoot. Ohanian’s journey from recent college grad to successful CEO is a remarkable one. Ohanian and Steve Huffman sold Reddit to Condé Nast for an undisclosed sum just 16 months after graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005. Reddit was one of the first start-ups to receive seed funding ($12,000 to be exact) from Y Combinator, widely known as a "start-up incubator." From there, Ohanian would devote his efforts to making the world "suck less," always showcasing the Internet as anyone’s game with his ideology that "all links are created equal." With Reddit celebrating its 12th anniversary, we ask Ohanian about his go-to Jordans and giving lots of damns.
You have to get people to care. You have to obsessively focus on things that people want and will eventually love.
ALEXIS OHANIAN
I specifically enjoyed the “How to Surprise and Delight” section of Chapter Four in your 2013 book Without Their Permission because it reinforces the age old notion of going an extra step not just in upholding good business practices, but in everyday life. With Reddit celebrating its 12th anniversary, at any point are you still amazed by the global connectivity Reddit has brought forth?
Wow. I’m old. Thank you. I am consistently amazed by Reddit’s global reach and I’ve gotten to meet Redditors all over the world. I’ve been to meetups from Birmingham, Alabama to Bangalore, India, and every single time I meet a user, I hear some story about how Reddit has affected them. It could be in some really life-changing way or some small simple way, but it basically helped them find their home or homes, with the many different hundreds of thousands of communities within the platform. That is really amazing to think that all across the world, across so many borders, people can come together here and find common ground, have a discussion about their common interests, whether it’s sneakers or fashion or gardening. It’s all there and it’s exciting because they usually teach me about Reddit communities I didn’t even know about.
When you wrote Without Their Permission, Reddit was a top fifty website – now it’s the fourth most visited website in the world. As someone who pushes the importance of traction (and concrete data), did you ever expect Reddit to grow to this degree?
Note: We're 4 in U.S. according to Alexa. We're only 7 in the world. That said, we had no idea it would grow to this degree, especially after Steve and I left and the product and business essentially stopped evolving for six years. It's remarkable and a testament to the power of the users and communities who make up the platform.
Last year in 2016, people like Stephen Colbert, Blake Mycoskie, you and other public figures helped raise $14 million towards teacher classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org (started in 2000 by Bronx teacher Charles Best) in flash-funding for #BestSchoolDay. What has been the most rewarding feedback from teachers and students whose projects were funded by everyday Internet citizens?
So that #BestSchoolDay event was a lot of fun. A bunch of people got together and funded projects from their hometown. I funded all the projects from Fort Greene in Brooklyn where I was made. What makes DonorsChoose.org so special is that you get this feedback from students as well as teachers; it’s often photos, drawings, and I’ll take them out and display them, and post them on socials. It’s the little thank you’s that come from these students and teachers that are getting these classroom supplies – sometimes really basic classroom supplies that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise get – and every one of them is special. Every one of them makes you feel like your donation is actually going to work. A lot of us are able to make pretty big donations, but you can give as little as $5 or $20 and still be able to get that same sense of connection. Because you know exactly where the money is going; every cent is going to that classroom for those supplies and that’s powerful. That’s the future of philanthropy.
I have to ask about your doodles since your Reddit alien Snoo has become a very beloved character (see r/SnooRequest subreddit). How often do you doodle and do you keep a sketchbook with you at all times?
I've seen so many tattoos of Snoo! As an artist, this sort of thing is supremely validating. I still doodle from time to time, but I don't carry around a sketchbook. I think I should. I'm going to start doing that now thanks to you.
Switching gears to sneakers, what’s your preferred pair as someone who is always on the go? Do you have any pairs of sneakers you’ve kept over the years that still hold sentimental value to you?
I actually probably think way too much about what I’ll be doing on these trips and then plan my shoes accordingly. If I’m doing any kind of serious business, it’s usually Jordans. If I know I’m going to be doing something purely for pleasure and I’m just hanging out, and I just need something that’s going to get beat to hell, there’s always a pair of Onitsuka Tigers that I just love. There are a billion colors and they’re just easy, comfortable shoes, but then there’s a bunch of stuff in between – a lot of Adidas and Creative Recreation – but the Jordans are the serious business shoes.
When it comes to sentimental value, there are different ones. I am an investor at GOAT, but I will get a pair of shoes around big life events, so that I can now forever attach a shoe to that life event. Like, I have a pair of Jordans that I bought when I proposed. I have a pair of shoes, usually Jordans, from every Grand Slam that I’ve been to. If there’s a major life event that’s happening, I usually have a pair of shoes that’s attached to it and they have their story. This [points to his Jordan 1 Pinnacle Vachetta Tan sneakers] was my first GOAT pair of shoes and so when I wear the shoe, it’s not that I only really love this thing, and it looks good, and it feels good, it’s also a story.
Is it safe to say your favorite Jordan silhouette is the Jordan 1?
The Jordan 1 design is a staple. It is classic. It is so rare in design to have things that last decades and still look amazing and still inspire and still just...work. I’ve never really wavered from that. I’ll grab another pair of shoes here and there, but the Jordan 1s are definitely my favorites and they’re just great. I think that’s the reason all of this got started is because so many kids, a whole generation was inspired by them, and probably ended up being the designers and collectors today.
Serena [Williams, Ohanian's fiancée] has a pair of these really 90s Jordans that she has kept for a long time. These shoes have been through everything. They have paint splatters on them, they’ve got a rich history – and she still wears them all the time. I was spending a lot of time trying to find a deadstock version of those shoes in her size. I haven’t given up yet, they’re on my Want list on GOAT, but these are such a random, rare pair of shoes and these weren’t major grails. I just don’t think there are that many of them floating around in her size, but I’m hoping one day I’m going to find a deadstock pair of them. I found a lightly used version, but I’m holding out for an immaculate deadstock version for her.
What do they look like?
They’re just red and black, but let me get my phone out. You want to know how 90s these are? They are the Retro Phat, P-H-A-T, like pretty hot and tempting, and it’s these red, white, and black Jordans. They’re good-looking shoes but they’re not easy to find. We’ll get Serena on [the phone] and then you can talk to her about them. She’s literally had them for a really long time.
The other thing I really appreciate, since we’re talking about GOAT, is y’all came into a quasi-crowded space and delivered on a product promise that is just so high-quality that it’s crazy. Because we talk about this a lot in tech where if you build a great product, there is this idea where people will come and everyone usually is wrong about that. Usually they find out they have to build a product and they have to work their asses off, but it actually has happened that if you build a really great product, you have this power. You can’t help but attract people because everything that exists on the market just isn’t good enough, and when people are using GOAT, they don’t want GOAT, they want the power of the network. Right? The reason we’re here is because of the shoes and if you can deliver an amazing product experience, it just gets you what you want and it’s pretty special. Y’all are the greatest examples of the grinding founders who just stayed lean, and just focused on the shit that mattered. It’s a testament. It’s going to be an amazing story when you get to tell the whole story, like Grubwithus.
You hammer in the idea of “giving lots of damns" not only in your book but in lectures, interviews, etc. By always keeping an innovative approach to traditional marketing ($500 spent on stickers for Reddit), what advice would you give young people today who don’t know where or how to start giving a damn?
Okay, you are going to fail unless you really care or give a damn or lots of damns about whatever it is you’re trying to get other people to really care about. You will fail because if you can’t believe in it, you’re not going to convince anyone else to. And that isn’t just with customers, but with future employees, with co-founders, and investors. I don’t spend a lot of time with cynicism or cynics because you’re not going to get very far with that attitude if you’re trying to build something bigger than just yourself. Frankly, it’s very hard to do anything alone.
Your first step is finding something you genuinely care about. A lot of people won’t even get the opportunity to work on something they genuinely care about, and if you’ve had enough jobs that you didn’t give a damn about, and I’ve had plenty, you come to really appreciate when you get to work on something you genuinely care about. For founders especially, there should be some core that gets you out of bed at 4 a.m. and you’re hungry to do it. I mean, sneakers end up being a passion point for a lot of people, but it doesn’t mean you have to be doing something that is obviously a passion. There are plenty of entrepreneurs out there who are solving problems in industries that are still really important but involve making a better blood testing device or making a better logistics company. These are things that are not as sexy, but there should still be some thing or reason why you want to take that phone call at 4 a.m. or solve a customer’s problem when no one cares about you because otherwise, you aren’t going to go very far.
INTERVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPHY: DIANE ABAPO