Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Huffman: Taking outside capital motivates founders by making it harder to quit

Steve Huffman · #400 Reddit Founder: “I Wish I Still Owned Reddit Now” – with Steve Huffman · Oct 20, 2010 · at 51:19

Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit and Hipmunk, explains to Andrew Warner why he chose to raise venture capital for Hipmunk despite having the personal funds to self-finance the company.

0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.0s
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“Taking money from other people is, is a great motivator. Especially for me, it would have been tough, or I should say, it would have been easy for me to walk away from Hipmunk at any point. And I'd be like, Adam, you know, hey, this isn't working out. Let's take our money back and, you know, go do something else. As soon as you take money from somebody else, you're on the hook. You know, kind of mentally and legally to do your job the best that you can. And that's good.”

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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