Aug 31, 2017 · 52m · how-i-built-this
Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Recorded live in San Francisco, this episode of How I Built This features Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian discussing the platform's humble beginnings, rapid acquisition, founder estrangement, and subsequent return to lead the site through critical community crises.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 24% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 1.9 Guest teaching 1.9 Guest disagreement 1.0 Guy pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 43:05 Steve rejects the premise of completely sanitizing Reddit
Huffman directly rejects Raz's premise that eliminating every cruel person is the goal, insisting Reddit must authentically mirror humanity.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 42:49 Guy confronts Steve about virulent hate groups on the platformRaz directly challenges Huffman with the Southern Poverty Law Center report on hate speech, asking if Reddit can ever realistically remove toxicity.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 35:31 Alexis explains DC legislative ignorance surrounding SOPAOhanian informs Raz and the audience how well-intentioned lawmakers drafted bills that would have broken core internet protocols without technologist input.
Guy holds their own ▶ 41:46 Guy cites Ellen Pao and SPLC reportsRaz marshals specific evidence from Ellen Pao's op-ed and the Southern Poverty Law Center report to frame the severe crisis facing Reddit.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Banter: Steve Huffman's Dinosaur Sweater | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Guy Raz kicks off the live show by playfully teasing Steve Huffman about his dinosaur sweater before moving into origin questions. Huffman and Ohanian banter amicably about their first impressions meeting as college freshmen. | |
| The Epiphany and First Startup: My Mobile Menu | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz questions the founders about their college ambitions and makes a slight joke about ordering gas station sandwiches. Huffman and Ohanian describe the epiphany at Waffle House and the pre-app concept of My Mobile Menu. | |
| Meeting Paul Graham on Spring Break in Boston | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz prompts the founders to recount tracking down Paul Graham at Harvard over spring break. Huffman and Ohanian tell the story cooperatively, highlighting Graham's enthusiastic initial reception of their food ordering concept. | |
| Y Combinator Interview, Rejection, and Immediate Pivot | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Raz follows the narrative arc as the founders detail their Y Combinator interview, their initial rejection, and Paul Graham's quick follow-up phone call offering funding if they changed their idea. | |
| Brainstorming the Genesis of Reddit with Paul Graham | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz asks how they transitioned from My Mobile Menu to Reddit. Huffman explains how synthesizing elements of Delicious and Slashdot led directly to coining the phrase 'front page of the internet.' | |
| Launching Reddit: Naming, Snoo Mascot, and Roles | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz tracks the rapid three-week development timeline and division of labor between Steve's programming and Alexis's non-technical responsibilities, which Alexis jokes was a running punchline at YC. | |
| Seeding Reddit: Fake Accounts, Early Press, and Growth | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz asks how Reddit generated early traffic. Huffman openly details creating fake accounts to populate submissions, followed by Paul Graham linking the site in an essay without warning. | |
| The Turning Point: Organic Community and Real Users | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz probes about early business models and sustainability. Huffman explains they had no formal model until seeing organic user submissions fill the homepage on a day he took off. | |
| Personal Tragedy and Perspective: Alexis Ohanian's Difficult Year | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Raz compassionately opens space for Ohanian to discuss personal tragedies in late 2005, including his girlfriend's severe accident and his mother's terminal cancer diagnosis. | |
| Mid-Show Break and Recap | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | After the mid-show recap, Raz confirms the Condé Nast sale price range and asks if the founders simply wanted a payout at age 22. Ohanian warmly emphasizes providing security for his ailing mother. | |
| Life at Condé Nast, Departures, and Friendship Friction | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz inquires about the founders' departure from Condé Nast and why their friendship deteriorated. Both founders candidly explain how unaddressed co-founder role boundaries led to resentment. | |
| Divergent Paths: Anti-SOPA Activism and Hipmunk | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz asks Alexis about his anti-SOPA/PIPA activism and Steve about building Hipmunk. Alexis educates the audience on congressional technology misunderstandings and grassroots internet blackouts. | |
| The 2015 Reddit Crisis and Rebuilding the Friendship | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz charts Reddit's turbulent 2015 moderator blackout alongside Steve and Alexis repairing their relationship through therapy before Huffman agreed to return. | |
| Returning as CEO, Tackling Trolls, and Community Culture | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Raz pushes on whether Reddit can realistically eliminate racists and hate speech. Huffman gently pushes back against total elimination as the primary objective, advocating instead for representing authentic humanity while moderating bad actors. | |
| Personal Lives: Serena Williams and Wimbledon Emojis | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Raz shifts to personal lives and Alexis's relationship with Serena Williams. Alexis playfully deflects Guy's birds-with-arms reference and Huffman shares an unprompted story about Serena texting Alexis before walking onto Wimbledon court. | |
| Reflections on Success: Intelligence, Hard Work, and Luck | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Raz asks his signature closing question regarding skill versus luck. Both Huffman and Ohanian reflect philosophically on the essential balance of hard work, intelligence, and timing. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Ohanian: Walked out of the LSAT for a Waffle House epiphany
“And then on a Saturday morning, walked out of an LSAT to go eat waffles. And I went to a waffle house. It's a great place for epiphanies and waffles. And I had both there that morning and realized if I wanted these waffles more than the LSAT, I probably should…”
Huffman: Early startup idea was inspired by Sheetz touch-screen ordering
“There's an electronic ordering system inside, if I could just convey my order to that machine, the fella inside could be making my sandwich, and then I wouldn't have to wait. And so that was the idea for my mobile menu.”
Huffman: Paul Graham predicted mobile food ordering would end lines
“He said, this will be the end of lines.”
Ohanian: Graham funded founders on condition they abandon their original idea
“We like you to, and if you change your idea, we'll invest.”
Ohanian: Reddit founders received $12,000 from Paul Graham for three months
“And this was a chance to basically get 12,000 dollars from an investor we really trusted to just try something for three months.”
Ohanian: Paul Graham is terrible at naming companies
“PG is terrible at naming companies, but when he nailed it with that phrase, it was special.”
Ohanian: Reddit launched after only three weeks of development
“We actually only worked on it for about three weeks before we launched it.”
Huffman: Never built a website before writing Reddit's first line of code
“I didn't write the first line of code until June, and I had never built a website before, and we were kind of Paul's special projects a little bit, you know, because of how we got into YC,”
Reddit couldn't afford snoo.com because $4,000 was one-third of its funding
“Unfortunately, snoo.com cost 4000 dollars, which we didn't have. It was a third of our fund, so couldn't afford it.”
Huffman: Reddit's first 100 accounts were fake profiles created by the founders
“And that's why the first hundred or so Reddit users were either characters from World of Warcraft or pieces of furniture in our living room.”
Huffman: Reddit's first real users came from Paul Graham's essay readers
“So our first real users were actually Paul Graham fans, people who were reading his essays, and that kind of set the tone for the for the early days of Reddit.”
Early Reddit required all front-page links to be under 24 hours old
“Alexis and I were submitting all the content, and we had a rule back then that all of the content on the front page had to be less than 24 hours old. And the front page was 25 links long. So if there were fewer than 25 links submitted that day, there would be …”
Ohanian: Regrets early Reddit sale financially, but the money was life-changing
“So I regret from a business standpoint, yes, we sold it early, but I have no regret whatsoever as a decision because I got to make that phone call.”
Ohanian: SOPA and PIPA would have effectively broken the internet
“Well-intentioned people, I think most of whom are well-intentioned in D.C., writing bills for technology they don't really understand without people around them who are themselves technologists often lead to things like SOPA and PIPA, and those were two bills …”
Huffman: Knew zero percent of Reddit's staff while running Hipmunk
“There was a time when I was at Hitmonk where I knew zero percent of the people who worked at Reddit.”
Huffman: Reddit co-founders attended therapy together in 2015 to reconcile
“And we actually saw my therapist saw him together.”
Huffman: 2015 moderator revolt effectively shut Reddit down for two days
“All the communities on Reddit, you know, the many thousands of them are created by users and run by users that we call moderators, and they were upset, you know, for some acute issues and also just, like, just general frustration, and so they took their commun…”
Huffman: Digg was five times bigger than Reddit before a fatal redesign
“Dig was five times bigger than us. They released a new version of their software that was so Disliked by users that the users came to Reddit.”
Ohanian: 300 million people visit Reddit each month
“Consider three hundred million people will visit Reddit this month. That's almost as big as the population in the United States.”