Insight
Huffman: Pricing an IPO at a discount is best marketing spend
“If you go out at a lower price, and this is what I, the advice I generally give is go out at a lower price so you can have that momentum carry your price up. Everybody's happy. Your new investors are happy. Your employees will be happy. It costs you a little b…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Huffman: Reddit data has trained every major LLM, with or without permission
“Reddit's data has been used to train every large language model you've heard of, some with and others without our permission, which has, you know, been a situation to navigate but with our biggest partners, Google and OpenAI, you know, we do it on purpose, and…”
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit only uses ID-checking verification when coerced by governments
“There's others we use that actually check your ID. I don't love those, but we're compelled or coerced to use them by various governments.”
Opinion
Huffman: Reddit is more productive post-COVID without return-to-office policy
“And we are way more productive now than we were before COVID. So you can't convince me that being in the office is the key to productivity. Maybe it is, but I think it's like lever number 10 behind like having a consistent strategy and having good leaders.”
Disclosure
Huffman: AI productivity gains will not decrease Reddit's engineering headcount
“No way. No way. No way. We are a building company. And so in order for engineering headcount to go down, we'd have to know everything we wanted to build. So let's say AI makes our engineers 50, a hundred percent, or even 10 X more productive. We'll just build …”
Assertion Partly supported
Huffman: Reddit IPO'd at $34 after late 2021 private valuation of $61
“So, you know, when we went out it was like, 34 dollars a share was the IPO price. So we went out March, twenty-twenty-four. Our last private round was in end of 21. Share price was 61 dollars. So we went out with a pretty big valuation haircut from our previou…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Huffman: 40% of conversations on Reddit are commercial
“Like, 40% of the conversations on Reddit are commercial.”
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit requires a human present when AI agents use platform
“The way we're thinking about it today is we want to make sure there's an ass in seat. Like, are you physically watching this thing?”
Insight
Huffman: Platform context, not real-world identity, drives good online behavior
“It's a big misconception. People think anonymity equals lack of safety. As if real world platforms with bad behavior don't exist. There's plenty of platforms with real world identities and lots of bad behavior. What incentivizes good or bad behavior is, I thin…”
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit will outsource verification to third parties using privacy tokens
“Our design of these things is that you, it's not, Reddit doesn't do the verifying. And in fact, the way we want to implement these things is you actually kind of leave the app and then come back. So it's very clear you're in a different app, you're on a differ…”
Insight
Huffman: Reddit avoids inauthentic behavior because users cannot get famous
“What's interesting about Reddit is you don't get famous in the real world for being good at Reddit. You might become infamous once in a while. You don't become rich by being good at Reddit. So, which is not true on social media. You can become rich and famous …”
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit built proprietary ad tech and abandoned programmatic networks
“One of the biggest decisions we made around then was we were going to invest in our own ad tech. So our own ad server, our own tracking, our own measurement, all of this. We were small to do that. And we moved off of programmatic. So most websites or platforms…”
Disclosure
Huffman: Rich Barton urged Reddit to IPO to 'play in big leagues'
“When we were preparing to go public, a person I called a number of times was Rich Barton. He was the founder CEO of Expedia, then Zillow, then Glassdoor. And he had a lot of really good advice for me on Whether to go public? His answer was yes. He's like, do y…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Huffman: Code review, not generation, is Reddit's engineering bottleneck
“Our bottleneck at Reddit right now is actually code review. Because we can produce so much code, but we've got to review it and deploy it.”
Insight
Huffman: Companies must hire top graduates before they permanently leave market
“Also the best new grads, like if you don't hire them as new grads, you will never see them. They will never be on the job market again. They're too valuable to ever let them be on the job market. So if you don't hire them when they're young, you will never see…”
Assertion Supported
Huffman: Reddit had over 60% revenue growth for five straight quarters
“So we've had revenue growth over 60% for five quarters in a row.”
Assertion Supported
Huffman: Reddit achieved GAAP profitability in its first year post-IPO
“And we were able to get to gap profitability in our first year out a little bit ahead of schedule.”
Insight
Huffman: Reddit generates virality and meme stocks without being viral itself
“Reddit creates virality, but itself is not viral. Reddit creates meme stocks, but itself Isn't really that. You get just a little bit of that energy, but not like those other companies.”
Insight
Huffman: Reddit is organized around communities, not friends or followers
“Reddit's different than social media. It's organized around communities, not the, what I call the F's. Friends, family, famous people, followers.”
Disclosure
Huffman: Reddit refuses to optimize algorithms for enraging content
“Reddit's never been the engagement platform. Right? Find the most engaging or enraging posts to drive time on site or to drive traffic. That's just not how we run the business. That's not what our community wants.”
Insight
Huffman: AI-Sanitized Internet Makes Reddit's Human Content More Appreciated
“And now even more so with AI, where the whole internet becomes sanitized and summarized by AI, which actually has a lot of value But it causes people to appreciate the humanness of Reddit.”
Insight
Huffman: Brands perform better on Reddit when transparent about selling
“We want the brands too, but the brands need to show up as brands. Like it's okay for them to say, we're here to sell you stuff. In fact, they do a lot better paid and organic. If they just tell the truth, I'm here to sell you something.”
Insight
Huffman: An AMA is Reddit's best organic marketing strategy
“Tried and true organic strategy on Reddit for a brand is to do an AMA. Like, I'm, you know, famous director. I'm here to answer questions. I'm also here to promote my movie. People get that. Or I'm here to answer questions. I'm also here to promote my book. I …”
Insight
Huffman: Reddit's value is community discussion, even if posts are fake
“The point of Reddit is often not the post. The point is the conversation, right? You read these relationship advice, or am I the asshole, or whatever. Like, the experience is the conversation. The conversation is real. The post is just the prompt for a convers…”
Steve Huffman