Business
Alexis Ohanian ignored Paul Graham’s warning that Reddit’s ‘terrible’ name would be ‘poison’. Now it’s a $38 billion business
Alexis Ohanian once rejected business advice from one of Silicon Valley’s most legendary investors–and it led to a multibillion-dollar success story.
“One of my favorite worst pieces of business advice was given to me by Paul Graham,” the Reddit cofounder revealed on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in October. The Y Combinator cofounder thought Reddit’s name was “terrible” for a fledgling company, and he wanted Ohanian to ditch the orange-eyed mascot he had designed, the alien named Snoo.
“I made a lot of mistakes as a first-time CEO, but disregarding that advice was definitely one of the things I got right,” Ohanian, now a 42-year-old millionaire investor and founder of venture firm Seven Seven Six, said.
Back in 2005, after soon-to-be University of Virginia graduate Ohanian famously ditched his law school admission test (LSAT) in favor of a meal at a nearby Waffle House, he decided to become an entrepreneur. Ohanian and his college roommate-turned-cofounder, Steve Huffman, joined the inaugural cohort of Graham’s prestigious Silicon Valley start-up accelerator, originally working on a mobile food-ordering app called “My Mobile Menu.”
Their original idea was rejected, but Graham and the Y Combinator team, known for launching successes like Airbnb, Coinbase, and DoorDash, encouraged the young founders to pivot. Graham suggested the duo draw inspiration from Delicious, the sophisticated social tagging system, which Huffman coupled with the vibrant community engagement model of Slashdot.
“Paul was enamored with this idea of like what is going to replace The New York Times when the front page needs to be more than just what one editorial board, what one publication, can decide,” Ohanian told Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha in 2024.
What emerged from their setback would soon become Reddit—along with a $12,000 grant from Y Combinator—but not before Graham, author of the viral “founder mode” essay, weighed in on what he saw as fatal flaws in the budding company’s DNA.
“He was like ‘The name is poison to potential investors, and that mascot, that bug thing, looks so dumb,’” Ohanian told Fortune. “You might as well put it in the corner if you insist on keeping it, put it at the bottom so everyone thinks it’s a joke.’”
Ohanian chose the name from a simple idea: “I read it on Reddit,” anticipating that users would naturally adopt the phrase. The forum-style platform is built around topic-based communities known as subreddits, where members share links, text posts, images, and videos that are upvoted and discussed. In October, Reddit reported 444 million weekly active users across over 100,000 active subreddits.
“I don’t know if anyone’s actually ever said that,” he admitted. “But then I realized we could call the people who use Reddit, because they are effectively editors of Reddit, Redditors.”
But for Graham and Huffman, it was “the dumbest thing and it would never work,” Ohanian said. What’s more, the Y Combinator founder even offered alternatives for the brand’s name, including “Octopop.”
“He liked that one because he said I could turn the Reddit alien into an octopus if I insisted on keeping it,” Ohanian said. “Thank God we did not listen to that advice.”
Huffman, now the company’s chief executive, wrote the site’s code in 20 days while Ohanian managed operations. The two cofounders eventually sold their startup to Condé Nast in 2006 for a reported $10 million, becoming multimillionaires overnight. Years after the sale, Ohanian left Reddit to focus on investing, then returned in 2015. Five years later, Ohanian resigned from his board position and urged the company to replace him with a Black candidate.
Now, 20 years after its founders set out to create the “front page of the internet,” Reddit boasts 116 million daily active visitors, and in October scored its fifth consecutive quarter of profitability since going public in March 2024. The surge also propelled Huffman, one of Reddit’s largest individual shareholders, to billionaire status thanks to his 3.1 million shares and a 2% to 3% stake in the company.
For Ohanian, standing firm on the brand’s name and logo was the right call.
“Reddit obviously has become one of the best known brands in tech, and I’ve seen it literally tattooed on people’s bodies,” he said. “So safe to say, Paul was very wrong about that.”
Ohanian’s best business advice
While rejecting Graham’s counsel on the Reddit brand proved prescient, Ohanian has been equally thoughtful about the advice he does choose to embrace.
“Josh Kushner gave me this advice quite a few years back, and he told me, ‘Look, you’ve got to build your firm for what you think is best,’” Ohanian said of the Thrive Capital founder. “‘You are the expert. Don’t build the firm for what LPs think is best. Build for what you think is the best.’”
Five years after founding his venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six, Ohanian says the success is “a testament to me following that advice as best I can.”
That conviction has translated into tangible results. Seven Seven Six now manages nearly $1 billion in assets. Ohanian is also now the founding controlling owner of Angel City FC and Los Angeles Golf Club, and creator of professional women’s track and field event series Athlos.
On stage at the Fortune Global Forum, Ohanian said he has not forgotten being “savagely trolled” for posting to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that women’s sports is a “massively undervalued asset.”
“I saved all those tweets from all the haters who said I was an idiot. No one watches women’s sports. You’re gonna lose all your money,” Ohanian said. “Every time we hit another revenue milestone, I tag them and thank them for the motivation.”
As he looks ahead, Ohanian sees a unique advantage for a new generation of founders if they choose to build with artificial intelligence.
“Anyone who has started a company in the last two years has been building a company in the AI age, and they are at a default advantage, because the DNA of their organization is in this new world,” he told Fortune offstage. “There are folks very hungry right now who are building new companies, who are ready to drink the milkshake of so many incumbents. That founding DNA makes a huge difference in how well they’re going to be able to execute, how well they’re going to be able to build.”
