Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian: What it’s like being Serena Williams’ husband
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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian: What information technology's like being Serena Williams' husband
The 36-year-old tech titan is celebrated for championing her, speaking up publicly against sexism, racism and toxic masculinity.
Alexis Ohanian watches Serena Williams at the Wimbledon final in 2018. (Photo: AFP)
Alexis Ohanian embodies the triumphant tech titan. He'southward the guy who travelled 500 miles to blind pitch an investor with his starting time-up idea. He's the guy who built a company with his college roommate, and sold information technology within two years for betwixt US$10 million (S$xiii.8 million) and United states$20 meg. He'south the nerdy kid who worked at a computer warehouse store equally a teenager, and then grew up to marry Serena Williams, arguably the greatest lawn tennis player of all time.
It is the stuff of Silicon Valley myth: That with inventiveness and audacity, you lot tin have it all. Merely what happens when your cosmos, the matter that made you rich, is also known as a convenance ground for detest?
I'm sitting at a tiny tin table on the front sidewalk of Cherry-red's, a hip, good for you Australian buffet in Manhattan, with the 36-year-old founder of America'southward sixth most popular website, Reddit. Ohanian wants to talk about Initialized Uppercase, the venture firm he co-founded, which focuses on early stage seed funding and mentoring, and has The states$500 million nether direction. He wants to talk about some of the companies in its 200-plus portfolio that have missions he believes in. He wants to talk about the importance of shared parental leave, which he recently wrote an op-ed advocating in The New York Times. But I want to talk about Reddit.
Ohanian and I are trying to get comfortable in two rickety chairs. It's sunny, and I am sweating, and he is not. He's in a quintessential tech bro uniform: Black polo, blackness jeans and Atoms, a venture-backed shoe that comes in quarter sizes. He has a black circular power button tattoo on his forearm. He is sharing survival tips for living in transit ("Hydrate!") and immediately reads as relaxed and likeable.
"I'm only remembering I should call my dad," he said. "I try to phone call him every Dominicus and I missed him this calendar week."
Ohanian has a busy agenda: Be a adept trendspotter, investor, husband, father, son. I am here to learn what drives information technology. Is this a human with a guilty conscience?
Incommunicable BURGERS AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES
To understand Ohanian you lot must understand Reddit, a discussion-based social platform that hosts thousands of cocky-moderated communities. Valued at United states$3 billion, its approximately 330 1000000 monthly active users geek out on topics that range from sneakers to skincare to Pokemon.
In the group r/explainlikeimfive, 17 1000000 members talk over questions such as, "How is world population calculated?" and "Why practice crackers have holes in them?"
In r/nostupidquestions, i redditor posits, "My girlfriend is concerned that we've never fought. Is this a problem?" The site was fashioned in the freewheeling spirit some believe the internet was designed for: An uncensored and messy reflection of humanity in all its diverseness. The all-time of Reddit is achingly uplifting, surprisingly helpful, or useless and brilliant in equal measure.
Just Reddit has also been charged with being an incubator of the alt-right, a platform for revenge porn and a identify where conspiracies run riot. Meanwhile, over the by 15 years, Reddit'south social media peers became unmoored giants that have shifted shape to profit from our data. In this surroundings, public trust is running low. Ohanian, a seemingly altruistic man, must be grappling with this. Did his platform aid to spawn the ascension in detest crimes across America?
First, though, we need to eat. Ohanian knows his order well before the waitress arrives: A flat white and a meatless Impossible Burger with fries. This burger is trending. Made with something called soy leghemoglobin, it supposedly looks, tastes and bleeds like beef. It's why he chose Ruby's. Feeling cornered but curious – and prepare to hate information technology – I order one too, with a cold brew iced coffee.
Ohanian and I take a common interest: Cultural identity. Nosotros are both half-Armenian. We realise that we were both sent as children to Army camp Nubar, an Armenian camp in upstate New York, to discover our heritage. Neither of u.s. felt Armenian enough to fit in. "I remember these large tables and campers, with food in the middle, family unit style," recalled Ohanian. "Mountains of buttery aromatic pilaf, and a ton of conversations effectually the table, all in Armenian . . . which I didn't speak!"
I imagine Ohanian as a pre-teen: A bit stubby, a bit dorky (and cocky-defined as such in his memoir), an outsider who feels Armenian but not plenty to pass the test. When he gets onetime enough to build something, taller, slimmer, more socially capable, he makes Reddit: A place where no one feels left out.
In 2005, right later on graduating from higher, Ohanian and his co-founder Steve Huffman began developing Reddit as "the front end folio of the internet". At this indicate, YouTube had merely posted its first viral video, Facebook had just expanded to loftier school students, and MySpace, Livejournal and AOL ruled. Communities built rapidly on Reddit, and Conde Nast caused the site in 2006.
Ohanian tells me the story of leaving Reddit, five years later on founding it, as a immature multi-millionaire. Instead of jetting off to Fiji he bought a flight to Armenia, rented a small apartment in downtown Yerevan, ready a Kiva branch and spent four months giving microfinance loans to Armenian entrepreneurs.
Our food arrives and I eye what does indeed look similar a regular burger. Ohanian takes a bite of his. "Oh, human being," he said. "So total disclosure, I did invest in this . . . "
Yeah, I know, I say.
I cutting the affair in half – no blood, simply still a surprisingly meat-like substance, smothered in lettuce, onions, pickles and mayonnaise.
It tastes like a burger, I say.
"Right?" he said, settling into his agenda. "For two decades, if someone offered you a veggie burger, you knew what y'all were getting. It was going to gustation terrible. And I love love love dearest dearest beefiness. I was dared to try it, and I couldn't tell the departure."
He pops a French fry in his mouth. "What I appreciate is they said look, nosotros're making this for meat eaters," he said. "If you lot desire progress, that's the move. And the ecology cost of this is a fraction of that large sometime cow. Information technology felt to me like a existent elevator from everything I've heard until then."
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REDDIT IN A POST-CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA Earth
As I push button a pickle back in my burger, I turn to Reddit. While Ohanian was in Armenia, his creation was succumbing to trolls. He calls the 5 years after he and Huffman left the company its "night ages".
This was the era in which subreddits such as "/incel", brusk for "involuntary celibates", were born and thrived. Incel is a subculture of generally white men who cocky-place as unable to observe sexual partners. It is considered a hate grouping, with a record of violence against women.
Yishan Wong, an early PayPal employee brought in equally chief executive of Reddit in 2012, had a hands-off approach to offensive content. A company argument he published shortly earlier his departure in 2022 described their philosophy equally: "each individual is responsible for his or her moral actions".
Wong was succeeded by Ellen Pao, already well known in Silicon Valley for speaking out confronting gendered hiring practices, and for filing an early gender discrimination suit confronting a former employer. Merely her efforts to tackle Reddit's culture led to a backlash among users and she resigned after less than a year, warning that "the trolls are winning". The founders decided to come up back full fourth dimension to fix Reddit, Ohanian as chairman, Huffmann as master executive.
Upon returning, Ohanian says they instated an "anti-evil" squad. The company congenital software that uses car learning to anticipate how trolls shift offensive keywords.
Equally someone who spent three years responsible for reader comments at the FT, I am keenly aware of the conflicts inherent in running an on-site community. I believe in the net's ability to connect people and allow them to speak back to power. But recent events, from Cambridge Analytica to Russian election interference, take laid bare how susceptible people tin be to manipulation. I go it, I tell him. We make tough choices daily near which conversations we enable on our site. These tech giants practise the same, on an unimaginable calibration. But I'm not convinced of how seriously you lot all take that responsibility.
"I'm proud of a lot of progress that the team made at Reddit. I think at that place's however overwhelming good that these platforms create that past nature never makes headlines." – Alexis Ohanian
How do y'all feel existence the face up of a platform that . . . ?
"Well, quondam," he said. "I'm all Initialized now."
OK, just you're still on the lath, I say. And can you ever escape your creation?
"Yep, fair. OK, give me your question."
What is your responsibility? I inquire. What is Reddit'south? Where is the line?
"I feel like I bring this upwards virtually every board meeting, and take been for the concluding few years," he said. "I'm proud of a lot of progress that the squad made at Reddit. I retrieve in that location'south still overwhelming good that these platforms create that by nature never makes headlines. Simply one of the all-time advantages to Reddit'southward dark ages was that it created awareness in 2022 of the level of responsibility we demand to have."
He says Reddit was lucky to face these issues earlier than its contemporaries, citing Mark Zuckerberg'southward Washington Postal service op-ed in March requesting more than regulation around internet speech every bit an example of a new cultural shift. I ask whether these k gestures, such as Facebook's recent pivot to privacy, are just reactions to falling share prices.
"Long term, yes. Some of that is true. I desire to believe, though, that in that location are other people at the board and executive level saying that nosotros take a responsibility, and nosotros can be meliorate."
Ohanian has abandoned his concluding fries. "I actually think this all comes back to existence Armenian," he says. We are both descendants of genocide survivors. "I was both proud and heartbroken when I establish my first Armenian Genocide denier post on Reddit. I was proud in the sense that, wow, nosotros're truly a global platform. And then heartbroken, because goddamnit, we're truly a global platform and there are lots of people who believe this awful state-sponsored thing."
And you can't delete information technology, I say.
"And nosotros didn't," he said. "I think nosotros have to ultimately take more than conversations and not less. That's the optimistic, idealistic and pragmatic part of it. Only convincing people to eat less meat [won't work]. To actually become the change you want, we demand more conversations with the people who want a delicious burger."
Information technology's non an easy trouble. As I listen to Ohanian talk through his compromise, I eye the remnants of my own false burger. Common cold and sauceless, information technology suddenly looks a bit gross.
"I'g not trying to trivialise this issue," he connected, "but how practise nosotros make certain that conversation happens in a constructive fashion? Sometimes upsetting, and that's OK, only still a place where people can come share, non exist harassed, feel condom enough. I don't think nosotros ever discover that residue."
"I retrieve nosotros have to ultimately take more than conversations and non less." – Alexis Ohanian
ON Beingness MARRIED TO SERENA WILLIAMS
The waitress arrives with the bill. I shift topic to Serena Williams.
Nosotros all live in contradictions, with diverse levels of comfort. One of Ohanian's clearest lies in his union to i of the world's well-nigh visible women of color, a adult female who has faced relentless, infuriating prejudice throughout her career. He is celebrated for championing her, speaking up publicly confronting sexism, racism and toxic masculinity, and working toward an equal gender breakdown amidst partners at Initialized.
I ask whether he and Serena always talk about that conflict, between his advocacy for social change and his cosmos of a platform that gives her trolls and critics infinite to radicalise. "It hasn't come upward," he said. As he searches for an respond, I realise he either doesn't meet these things as incongruous, or he only doesn't recollect information technology's that deep.
"Nosotros'll talk broadly about . . . " he stopped. "I mean all of . . . " He reframes again. "The sad reality is, you don't take to look very far on a news article, Instagram post or Twitter post to find these comments near her. And so nosotros talk broadly about it considering it'south conspicuously something that she has been able to somehow process and put out of mind. But her thought of consuming content on the internet is the verbal opposite of mine. She has zero interest. There'south the athlete thing where you don't want to read any printing about you, but she does not consume any press or any social media. She'due south merely at that place to produce content and and then walk away."
He and Serena have a two-year-old girl, Alexis Olympia Ohanian, Jr, who has her own Instagram and Twitter accounts, which they run. It also seems likely – he doesn't confirm – that he runs social accounts for her doll, Qai Qai, posed in diverse dramatic predicaments. Together, Ohanian'southward daughter and her doll have more than 760,000 followers. I inquire whether he'due south comfortable with how his life has inverse, and with so much of his life in public. He insists that it hasn't changed much.
Just your hymeneals is on HBO, I tell him. Your kid'south birth is on HBO.
"Aye, OK, it's definitely different," he said with a smile. He seems to similar it. "I used to get pitched at restaurants and walking down streets. People were similar, hey, can I tell you almost my offset-up? Now people will just be like, I love your wife!"
As we showtime a six-block walk to Ohanian's next meeting, I am of a sudden conscious of his height, which is six foot five. Our stroll becomes borderline aerobic. He redirects my intrusive personal questions into a conversation about shared parental exit. Ohanian took 16 weeks of paid paternity leave when his daughter was born, in accordance with a company-wide policy at Reddit. "I think half the battle is really getting people to have advantage of information technology," he said.
We cease upwards in the conference room of a large warehouse part. Curious to understand Ohanian'due south role as a VC, I sit down in on a meeting between him and the founder of healthtech company Ro. Ro has one site for men with bug such as erectile dysfunction and hair loss, and another for menopausal women. He explains that these are unsexy, hugely ignored markets: Adults with embarrassing non-critical medical needs, navigating entrenched stigmas.
I ask the founders how Ohanian helps them. "This is going to embarrass Alexis," said its primary executive, 27-year-sometime Zach Reitano. "But when we talk well-nigh the ideal version of a guy, we actually use him equally the model. Considering at that place are very specific examples! Professionally ambitious. Stands upwardly for causes that he believes in. Isn't scared at all to be vulnerable. Also, his wife makes more money than him and he'due south proud of it."
Imagine: That nervous kid at Armenian military camp, shish kebab on his plate, at present the face of mod masculinity. Ohanian laughs, looking pleased. "It'southward true!" he said. "Very truthful."
"How exercise we make sure that conversation happens in a effective fashion? Sometimes upsetting, and that's OK, but nonetheless a place where people can come share, not be harassed, feel safe plenty. I don't think nosotros ever find that residue." – Alexis Ohanian
By Lilah Raptopoulos © 2022 The Fiscal Times
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