Reddit co-founder to speak at Penn

On Dec. 2, Penn students will step away from their computers to hear one of the great minds behind social networking speak.

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, will be visiting Penn as part of his 65-college and 5-month long tour around the country. Ohanian announced Wednesday on Reddit that the tour is partly a promotion for his new book “Without Their Permission,” a guidebook for aspiring entrepreneurs, scheduled to be released Oct. 1.

The event, scheduled to be held on Dec. 2, has not been fully planned out yet. On the website, the event’s status is listed as “In Progress.” Ohanian’s plan, according to his post on Reddit’s blog, is to encourage students at Penn to help him organize the event.

The co-founder says he will ask Penn students to tell him what he should discuss using Penn’s subreddit — a forum dedicated to Penn — a week before he is scheduled to visit. He is encouraging students to ask him anything.

“What I look forward to hearing from him is how entrepreneurship on the internet is different than it is traditionally,” said Michael Soo, a graduate student in the Perelman School of Medicine. “How does he raise money, work with collaborators, find a userbase, and constantly innovate without deviating too much from the central tenet of the project?”

Ohanian also plans to bring back a Penn alumnus, whom he has not decided on yet, to interview him or her on their work on anything related to the internet since graduating.

Afterwards, there will be a book signing and networking event, as well as a meet-up to be organized by the Penn subreddit.

College sophomore Josef Hoenzsch said, “Reddit has fostered an incredible community for open discussion on an enormous variety of topics — from World News to coffee — and I love what it has done for me by offering such great accessibility for information.”

Ohanian sold Reddit for millions of dollars only a couple years after graduating from the University of Virginia. He hopes to use this tour to inspire students around the country to take advantage of the potential of the internet and entrepreneurship.

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