What-if certainty 2/5 debate potential 3/5

Huffman: Reddit might not have survived the 2008 recession independently

Steve Huffman · #400 Reddit Founder: “I Wish I Still Owned Reddit Now” – with Steve Huffman · Oct 20, 2010 · at 24:01

Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman reflects on selling the company in late 2006 shortly before the 2008 financial crisis.

0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.4s
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“Yeah, I, you know, I wish I still owned Reddit now, and had owned it for the last four or five years, but it would have, for everything to have gone right, for us to have the stomach to survive that economy, I mean, who knows, like, Kanye Nast's umbrella helped us during that economy. We didn't, we could still hire and pay market salaries when a lot of people couldn't. So maybe we wouldn't have even survived, it's hard to say.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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