

The first 6 months of Reddit (YC S05): "Entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence" - g0atbutt
http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/15/the-first-6-months-of-reddit-yc-05-entrepreneurship-is-a-bipolar-existence/

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g0atbutt
Highlights of this video:

1\. Initially the Reddit team was rejected by YCombinator. Paul Graham then
followed up with them via a phone call and said “as long as you ditch your
original idea, you can come be a part of YCombinator”. This is a great
reminder that investors often care more about the team then they do the
product.

2\. Alexis also talks about how Reddit was able to get new users by creating
fake accounts to simulate an active community.

3\. Alexis talks about a meeting they had with Yahoo, but he felt that the
meeting sucked because Yahoo was more interested in the traffic they were
generating then the actual mission of the site.

4\. Met with Google, and things went really well. This was a huge boost of
confidence for the Reddit team as “some very smart people at Google were
interested in our product”.

5\. Alexis also reminisces about doing “digital grunt work”. Alexis attributes
a lot of Reddit’s success to doing things that aren’t glamorous. Great
reminder that entrepreneurship is all about “the hustle”.

6\. Entrepreneurship is a Bipolar existence. Sometimes you feel like you’re
building an online empire, and other days you feel like a nobody. This is
completely normal.

7\. A tip that Alexis shared for other startups was to “celebrate quick and
easy wins” (especially in the first 6 months). This helps to build momentum,
and establishes comradery on your team.

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noahc
What I love about this video is at the end it repeats the introduction again.
It's super awkward, but it shows how unpolished something can be and STILL be
useful/valuable.

The take away lesson: Do something publicly and reap the reward. Keep it
private as you perfect it and loose big time.

Andrew Warner has competition now!

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chr15
I don't think pg is given enough credit for his hand in reddit. I wonder how
many redditors have heard of him and/or YC.

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jedberg
It's funny you mention that. Just yesterday I made a graph of how many
accounts were created each day since the beginning of reddit. It's very clear
which day Paul mentioned reddit in his essay, because there was a 3x jump in
signups that day. More importantly, it never receded from that level. I like
to think this is because people kept finding his essays.

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dustingetz
"Alexis also talks about how Reddit was able to get new users by creating fake
accounts to simulate an active community."

"simulating" is probably too strong a word. the early adopters didn't care if
it was the team posting or other people; they liked the content and the
discussion.

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redthrowaway
Not discussion. Reddit didn't get comments until much later.

