StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Steve Huffman

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Reddit · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineerLinkedIn ↗reddit.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Steve Huffman co-founded Reddit in 2005 alongside Alexis Ohanian in Y Combinator’s inaugural batch, later returning as CEO in 2015 to oversee its growth, content moderation policies, and 2024 initial public offering. Between his tenures at Reddit, he co-founded the travel search engine Hipmunk in 2010, serving as its chief technology officer.

11statements → 8claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.82/5average certainty → 1.27/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

8 assertions · 2 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Steve argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
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…”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 40:06 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Steve Huffman on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Steve Huffman said on How I Built This that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 20:29 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Supported
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…”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 40:06 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Supported
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.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 40:51 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
What-if
Huffman: Starting Reddit over with perfect hindsight might still fail
“If I went back 10 years ago and knew everything I knew now and had to start Reddit all over again, I don't know if we could succeed.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 50:15 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Huffman: Paul Graham predicted mobile food ordering would end lines
“He said, this will be the end of lines.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 11:40 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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,”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 17:20 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 21:25 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Supported
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 …”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 24:10 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit co-founders attended therapy together in 2015 to reconcile
“And we actually saw my therapist saw him together.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 39:29 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Disclosure
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.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 7:51 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 37:37 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman

The other half of the tape: Steve Huffman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 3 episodes on How I Built This. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Guy Raz 3

Statements about Steve Huffman, by other people (2)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ohanian: Graham funded founders on condition they abandon their original idea
“We like you to, and if you change your idea, we'll invest.”
Alexis Ohanian Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 13:53 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman
Assertion Supported
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.”
Alexis Ohanian Aug 31, 2017 ▶ 15:51 Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
001111201720182019202020212022episodesmentions
011201720182019202020212022episodes it came up in
000.50.511201720182019202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Live Episode! Reddit: Alexis Ohanian & Steve Huffman Aug 31, 2017 17m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 800 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more