So, I'm a bit confused. How is Reddit considered a success story by it's founders? Wasn't it sold off really early to Conde Nast? Didn't it only start to blast off into success-o-sphere like right after Digg started dying? Wasn't Conde Nast not providing resources to the team which, forced them to ask for donations (reddit gold) from the community to build more servers/hire? I mean, it all sounds like a big barrel of luck that it even survived.
It was sold quite early, but for a double digit million dollar pay out. For a while, it was the biggest YC exit. It has been spun back out into an independent subsidiary, which Alexis is involved in again in an executive role (Steve could have been, too, I'm sure, but he's working on Hipmunk).
What do you consider success for fresh out of college 20-somethings, if having a few million bucks in the bank, and having built one of the biggest sites on the Internet, isn't success?
I love Reddit, but I find their story depressing. Everyone has fun personal projects that they make, but a lucky few will have them become wildly popular without much planning for reasons they can't foresee. I don't feel like I can learn anything from that, and it makes me feel very unlucky and that fate is largely out of my control.
Did you watch the video? If you watch it through to the end, you see the determination, conviction and sincerity that these guys have, which would have put them ahead of anyone else trying to do something similar (eg, Digg, in the long run).
No one denies that luck plays a big part in how successful any given startup will turn out to be.
But everyone can do things to make their chances of success higher, and the magnitude of that success greater, through the way they conduct themselves and the decisions they make about what they do.
The article is quite superficial, so not much unless you were clueless to the beginnings of reddit. That said, a lot of things are actually out of your control. You can't make everyone like the thing you want to work on and people often don't even know what they want to see next. Its not about doing projects just because they are fun and lucking out. These guys were actively trying to make a successful product and had to pivot from their original direction.
[+] [-] leak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|13 years ago|reply
What do you consider success for fresh out of college 20-somethings, if having a few million bucks in the bank, and having built one of the biggest sites on the Internet, isn't success?
[+] [-] grimboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hayksaakian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] double051|13 years ago|reply
The accounts they used weren't fake, they were just the two guys building a site with a lot of test accounts.
[+] [-] dreamdu5t|13 years ago|reply
I love Reddit, but I find their story depressing. Everyone has fun personal projects that they make, but a lucky few will have them become wildly popular without much planning for reasons they can't foresee. I don't feel like I can learn anything from that, and it makes me feel very unlucky and that fate is largely out of my control.
[+] [-] tomhoward|13 years ago|reply
No one denies that luck plays a big part in how successful any given startup will turn out to be.
But everyone can do things to make their chances of success higher, and the magnitude of that success greater, through the way they conduct themselves and the decisions they make about what they do.
[+] [-] chromic|13 years ago|reply