Reddit has become one of the largest community forums nowadays. With its success, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian admitted that building the business, or any other business, is not "fun."
In his talk at the Entrepreneur 360 Conference in New York, Ohanian told the audience that they did not have any "fun time." Being a busy investor and advisor of over 100 tech startups, he had no time to discuss Ellen Pao's case after the users revolted on her leadership.
"Now they call it a pivot, but in my day we called it failure," Entrepreneur quoted Ohanian as saying during the conference.
Instead of blaming Pao, Ohanian took the blame and said that Reddit had an existing problem of "failing to update the tools." He said that he had to undergo treacherous experiences as a businessman before he got it right. He had a project with another Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman back in 2003 when they were still in college. They created the My Mobile Menu, also known as MMM. Though it was an interesting idea, it was rejected by Y Combinator.
It was when Ohanian and Huffman came to Y Combinator again that they had their success with their next idea, Reddit, which has a massive international audience of 250 million and now Ohanian is exploring their business venture.
Ohanian created a new stand-alone site for original content that will serve as Reddit's extension. In the new website Upvoted, he posted that it will be a "hub to give the stories of Reddit - from the seemingly ordinary to extraordinary - the creative space to expand, breathe and grow."
This could finally be Reddit's avenue to attract advertisers to their company.