[keysersosa]

> Conde Nast were chumps when they allowed Chris Anderson, high on his own supply, convince them to buy Reddit for its supposed "Long Tail News" value.

That's not how it happened.

> Now they're chumps for not putting a grown up in charge

I like to think of myself as a grown up.

> converting 280 million page views/month and a dedicated community to enough money to support 4 engineers and a bunch of servers.

This is the crux of the problem. Marketing and ad sales is out of our direct control and has been lacking, so we've had to resort to other options. Self serve advertising last year was one of them, and it has done us well. This is more extreme for sure, but our plan is to eventually go towards the optional subscription model (like Ars Technica or Fark).

[nir]

>That's not how it happened.

Granted, you know better than me.

>I like to think of myself as a grown up

By "grown up" I just mean someone experienced with running the business side. I wouldn't call myself "a grown up" either in that sense, having never done that.

> Marketing and ad sales is out of our direct control and has been lacking

Sorry to hear that. Seems like a common story for startups. I think you guys could do well with a paid model like Metafilter's.

[goatforce5]

Wired Digital/Conde Nast doesn't have the option to buy ads on a 'run of network' kinda basis? That sounds like utter madness.