Paul Graham Called With an Offer They Couldn't Refuse
Alexis Ohanian: Paul Graham calls and says, 'Listen, we like you guys, we just don't like the idea. It's too early for mobile. If you're willing to kill this company a year in that you've been working on, we'll let you into the program.'
Ohanian: It took us about five seconds. We got on the next train back to Boston.
It took us about five seconds. We got on the next train back to Boston.
Sixty Minutes to Find an Idea
Ohanian: Paul sat us down for about an hour and said, 'All right, forget mobile. Build something on the web. What problems do you guys have every single day?'
Ohanian: Steve was a heavy Slashdot user. I read a bunch of tabs every morning of news websites. But neither one of us had a solution for news -- like a new kind of website that would be a front page for everything.
Neither one of us had a solution for news. Like a new kind of website that would be a front page for everything.
Delicious Popular Showed Them the Gap
Ohanian: Paul had mentioned Delicious Popular. We had never used it, but he was talking about it, and we thought -- there's an interesting thing here. The byproduct of people bookmarking reference material was an interesting kind of zeitgeist. But it was only a zeitgeist for reference material, not for what was new.
Ohanian: We needed to be something else. A place for people to go to find the more ephemeral news of the day. And that's how we got started with Reddit.
It was only a zeitgeist for reference material, not for what was new. We needed something else.