The Exchanges

Q What's one book that you think everyone should read?

A Oh, goodness. Um, there, there's Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl. Victor Frankl. Super famous book. Um, uh, He, he was a concentration camp survivor, and surviving a situation like that, you know, you have to have a reason to live, and so kind of the thesis of the book is you need to find a reason to live, and it doesn't even matter what it is, but you do need to find it and make that your reason for living. Um, that one really helped me get through a difficult period in my life where I was very stressed, And I, and I was constantly chasing this idea of like, how do I eliminate stress? And I think it's impossible to eliminate stress. The, and what that book kind of flipped around for me is the sort of stress that I have in my life as a result of the work that I do and the job that I have. Which is truly a privilege. I have a special job. I have my dream job and it's hard. And so if I didn't have that stress, what's the alternative? I'd be bored. And so that book helped me basically say thank you that I get to be stressed. Um, and so, and then as a result, I felt a lot less stressed. You know, it's funny how those things work out. So that's a, um, Uh, that's a big one.

AI assessment note: “there's Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl. Victor Frankl. Super famous book.”

Q So, you know, as CEO, What do you look at as like a dashboard for, you know, what's going on with Reddit? I mean, obviously there's questions around, uh, you know, revenue and engagement and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, that's interesting too, but I was kind of, I'm curious if there's anything else that's kind of very Reddit-ish about your dashboard.

A Oh, that's interesting. So look, there are dashboards with, you know, uh, revenue and users. And of course there's another layer of metrics that, uh, that, We really care about, uh, you know, number of advertisement, number of advertisers from this companies and retention, you know, customer retention and new user retention, all these things. Um, but for better or for worse, I use the Reddit app a lot. And so, uh, I, I, for been working on Reddit for 19 years, a lot of how I think about Reddit It comes not from the numbers, but from the feel of using the app. My intuition is constantly being refined, uh, and that's what I take to the team. It's like, hey, I think I see a, an issue here. Um, and so, I, I'd say in, in, from a kind of product development point of view, I think we went through a phase at Reddit, which I think a lot of startups go through where they actually put their intuition aside and they only look at numbers. I think it's really hard, if not impossible to run any company or system from a spreadsheet. And I think there's a little bit of this kind of false, uh, uh, ideal about, well, we're going to be so scientific and disciplined and, you know, um, You know, put metrics on everything, um, and test everything, but you, you, you lose some of the most important information, which is like, is it working? Is it good? How does it feel? Like, do I enjoy this? Do I see …

AI assessment note: “a lot of how I think about Reddit comes not from the numbers”

Q No, that's part of the good thing about, uh, if you learn well from challenges, you can, you can definitely get more robust and strong. All right, so lightning round. What's the most innovative funding source or strategy you've used?

A Reddit's pretty much always done kind of traditional financings, though I'd say our investors, our largest investors, the ones who have worked out the best, are themselves non-traditional. Um, uh, uh, folks who, Are really kind of true believers in Reddit, in the internet, in people, and it's really hard to see the future through spreadsheets. Um, uh, and so both, I think with finding investors and hiring people, the strategy that I found works really well is I keep meeting people until I find that kind of values chemistry. And you can tell in almost like 10 minutes, it's like, oh, these are my people. And then I find deals come together really fast. Hiring, not just, we don't just get them in the door, they end up staying with us for a long time.

AI assessment note: “Reddit's pretty much always done kind of traditional financings, though I'd say our investors”

Q You know, I'm, I'm thinking around the discourse that's had around You know, vaccines, which, you know, frequently got idiotic, um, you know, or things, you know, some, some online discourse, you know, QAnon, et cetera. What are the things you think are, are key for making those approaches that still, that do, that don't, aren't exerting control, but are building trust and shared reality?

A Transparency. Um, I think, um, We, in that era, and honestly we still do, I think, like we lacked transparency. I think broadly, I think for a leader to be credible, they have to share the bad news along with the good news. Um, because anytime somebody is telling you only good news, um, you know there's something missing, because there's always trade-offs. And I think as a general rule of thumb, the more kind of, uh, emotional they are, The more suspect the message should be. But I, I, I, I sense there's always this fear, and this is one of the things that drives me nuts, is this distrust of people. Like, oh, people can't handle the truth. That creates more distrust.

AI assessment note: “Transparency. Um, I think, um, We, in that era... lacked transparency.”

Q Are there any kind of set of principles that, or ways of thinking about that, or what the lessons of scale were there?

A Oh gosh. Um, so look, I could start with quickly, you know, what didn't change? We believed in community. We still do. We believe in the agency of people. We are aspirational about people. Um, we believe we should follow our users, right? They create the content. They rank the content. They create the subreddits. Um, they self-organize, uh, they set the tone. Um, but then we also learned, um, Right. Whether, uh, but you can't just completely, you can't sit on your hands. Um, you know, I talk about free speech as the founding principle of this country. Um, and for a country, it's essential. Democracy cannot exist without free speech. Um, and I think that's a great place to start. Right? A lot of our thinking about how Reddit works, again, we go to the real world, and so a lot of things we look at, we look at, ah, to democracies, in particular, to democracy in the US. And federalism, right, is another important aspect of, like, we have, we have our rules, um, ah, but the Soviets have their own rules, um, and so, ah, separation of powers, all these things. Um, but then there's other, like, one of the big learnings is we are not a country. Um, you know, we are a community platform, and we're also a business. This is a place that people have to want to be. You don't, you know, by and large, you don't choose where you live on Earth, um, but you can choose whether to be on Reddit or n…

AI assessment note: “We believed in community... We believe in the agency of people... one of the big learnings”

Q I think, you know, probably the, Most common brand for internet discourse is it's uncivil. Um, you know, that there's a lot of polarization, you know, hate speech, et cetera. What other things you do to try to encourage the, the kind of the positive aspirations of human discourse?

A Okay. It's a great question. Uh, and I think I have a couple ways of thinking about it. So first is the general way When we think about people and how people behave, when two people are together in person, They generally get along. Even the far left and the far right, like to take extremes in the United States right now, um, chances are in their day-to-day life, the vast majority of what they're going through or would talk about, they have in common, right? Maybe they're parents, maybe they're sports fans, maybe they watch the same TV shows or movies. And so that's just one, I think, just fact. It's like people generally get along when they're together in person. On Reddit, every conversation you have is in the context of a community. Um, you're not just yelling into the ether. Uh, communities have rules. They have written rules. They have unwritten rules. So this kind of idea of decorum, there's a social pressure to behave according to the rules of that community, right? If you don't, you'll be downvoted, uh, and, and you'll, you'll be silenced by your peers, which by the way, getting feedback from your peers like that is way more powerful Than getting feedback from, you know, the company or the man. Um, like when your friends tell you, hey, you're being rude, that's very different from your parents telling you you're being rude or, you know, the government, right?

AI assessment note: “On Reddit, every conversation you have is in the context of a community.”