

I Am Sam Altman, Reddit Board Member and President of Y Combinator. AMA - sandmansandine
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cudmx/i_am_sam_altman_reddit_board_member_and_president/

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ThomPete
_reddit has more than $50MM in the bank, which will last many many years. At
some point the business needs to be profitable. Monetizing AMAs does not seem
like the right way to do it to me, but again, Steve 's call. Ads will work but
it'd be great to figure out something better that actually makes reddit
better._

What worries me is the trend of Silicon Valley darlings like Reddit, Uber and
AirBnB that aren't profitable but still in business.

From a monetization point of view Reddit isn't going to be different than any
other news channel out there. It's not a question of quality and never really
have been. Not enough people pay for quality content. Yet newspapers and VCs
keep this illusion alive.

It seems like lots of VCs trying to milk companies that aren't making any
money.

There is probably something I am not understanding but it seems like the
emperor gas no clothes and it's only a question about when the boy is going to
say the obvious.

Whats going on?

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mmanfrin
Amazon isn't profitable.

I think for Uber and Airbnb, it's not that they can't achieve profitability,
it's that they choose to funnel all that revenue in to expansion.

Reddit, though, I think is on the same boat as Twitter: all those views, but
not a clear way to monetize without ruining the original experience.

~~~
tptacek
Amazon could easily be profitable if it wanted to be. If you're gunning for
"the Walmart of the Internet", it's reasonable to take your time and get it
right. It took decades for Walmart to perfect the formula.

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ThomPete
But walmart was always profitable wasn't they?

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tptacek
They're not the same company as Amazon, and that wasn't my claim. My point is
just that being the Walmart of ${some big sector} is a prize worth waiting
for. In fact: we still don't know how big a prize it is, because Walmart is
still expanding.

~~~
ThomPete
For Amazon maybe maybe not, for the consumer sure. But I am beginning to doubt
whether this is a good thing for society in general. Something is not adding
up.

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mythz
"I receive about 1200 and send about 200 (emails per day)" \- Wow, not sure
how he gets anything done with that amount of context switching.

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tzs
A large number of emails does not necessarily imply a large number of context
switches.

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caminante
On a meta note, I'm curious what parameters are ideal for AMA's. I say this as
Sam's AMA has been up for 3 hrs, has ~1k comments, yet you have to scroll past
a drove of noisy, repetitive posts. Forgive me for overgeneralizing, but I
seem to get turned away as the audience for these things increase.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Check out r/tabled, it really helps cut down on the clutter

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PopeOfNope
Does anybody else find it weird that he kept asking about an android app when
there are many reddit android apps that work just fine? I'd like to know what
he's looking for in an android app that he hasn't seen yet. I personally use
'reddit is fun'.

