

How Y Combinator Helped Shape Reddit - mattculbreth
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070926_082638.htm

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dfranke
Was the change in the Reddits' idea really as complete as it's portrayed here?
I've heard this story told before, but I always got the impression that Reddit
was a variation on the theme of the original idea, not a complete change.

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rms
I had heard this story from Alexis, it's true. Their first idea had absolutely
nothing to do with reddit.

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kn0thing
Yep. Our original startup (based on Steve's idea from a trip to a gas station
in central VA) was mobile-based and 100% rejected by YC. Heh.

We left that meeting with PG (Steve and I still have the notes in our
notebooks) aiming to build a "front page of the web." And we didn't have a
clue as to what it'd look like. Case in point:
<http://reddit.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-machine.html>

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nickb
YC has wonderful PR! pg, care to quickly tell us how you guys manage to get
into Time, BW, WSJ etc? Do you have someone doing PR for YC companies? How
does it happen?

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jsjenkins168
Jessica Livingston has apparently had a very successful career in marketing.
I'd bet she has a hand in much of the PR.

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mattculbreth
Really seems like from this and from other things I've read that Reddit was
either PG's idea or was very heavily inspired by him. That true PG?

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kn0thing
Yes, as I mentioned above, we left that conversation with PG thinking about
how we could build a destination for all the best & freshest content online.
The catchy slogan (front page of the web) was pure PG. But how the actual site
would function came about while Steve and I toiled in our Medford apartment.
Perhaps the biggest inspiration was actually del.icio.us/popular -- we thought
that site (albeit a byproduct of the actual site) was on to something.

We really had never heard of digg until we'd already been online for a month
and change, but by then reddit had already developed a unique identity. I
believe that ignorance turned out to be quite an advantage.

We just tried to build the best site we could.

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mattculbreth
Yep, and it's still my #1 place for surfing, nice work.

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drm237
For more info from the reddit guys, check out
[http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc-
emphasi...](http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc-emphasis-on-
boys.html)

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Alex3917
Looks like YC just got a little more ultracompetitive.

/Just the way I like it.

