Reddit co-founder inspires students

On Tuesday night, Alexis Ohanian strode onto the stage in Levine Hall sporting bright green sneakers, an American Apparel hoodie and a T-shirt featuring the mascot of his company — Reddit.

Although he may have been dressed like the typical college student, Ohanian is an entrepreneurial idol for many engineers. As the co-founder of a thriving online community, his website has received 1.1 billion page views in just the last month. Reddit, with its slogan “the voice of the internet — news before it happens,” is a popular source of news and entertainment for many students.

“We just knew that there was way too much internet for us to sift through, so we had to find people who could help us in the quest,” Ohanian said.

These people, who are often called “redditters,” submit interesting pieces of content to the site, whether they are news articles, YouTube videos or photographs. Then other reditters rate the submissions with either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, indicating its popularity to the rest of the site’s users.

“This creates a front page of the web that rises and falls throughout the course of the day, pretty much in real time,” Ohanian explained.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005, Ohanian and his friend Steve Huffman came up with the idea to create Reddit. Although they initially faced rejection, the pair moved to Massachusetts to turn their passion project into reality.

Ohanian also talked about the importance of following your dreams, even when that means turning down the big bucks in order to get your own project started.

Even if students do choose more lucrative jobs over start-ups, Ohanian asked the crowd one thing — “If you want the opportunity to try and make something huge, promise me you’ll continue to work on passion projects on the side.”

One of the event’s organizers, Engineering junior Alexey Komissarouk was pleased with the event, which drew a crowd of about 100 students who filled the auditorium.

“He did a great job showing students what the start-up life is like, and he showed how the barriers to enter are pretty low,” Komissarouk said. “I’m really happy he came out and people enjoyed his presentation.”

For Engineering junior Michael Posner, Ohanian’s message hit close to home. “He inspired me to keep trying and to think about working on projects that you love, which is pretty important.” Posner said.

Engineering freshman Trisha Kothari was also encouraged by Ohanian’s speech. “He was a really funny speaker and really inspiring too,” Kothari said. “He made me realize that if I want to start something, now is the best time. I have nothing to lose.”

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