

 Alexis Ohanian, reddit's co-founder, has returned as an advisor - thecoffman
http://blog.reddit.com/2011/04/good-news-everyone.html

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wheels
So, what I find more interesting in this is that Reddit did bring in a "new"
general manager.

What worries me is that it's not actually someone new. Neither is Alexis, for
that matter.

From the outside looking in it would appear that while Reddit has been great
at building a community, ramping up page views and engagement ... they suck at
making money. (And this has limited their ability to hire and has spread the
existing team very thinly.) From from what I can tell, they've always sucked
at making money. So by promoting their community manager and bringing back the
original CEO as an advisor, it would seem that this would enhance the parts
that they're already really good at, but will they be willing to stir things
up enough to bump up the revenues (even if it pisses the community off some)?
In an armchair-quarterbacking sort of way, I'd hoped they'd bring in someone
that was more of an outsider.

~~~
redthrowaway
They've been doing fine for money since they brought in reddit gold. The
problem with hiring new staff had to do less with their revenue and more with
Conde Nast's print-centric internal structure. That's why reddit gold worked
out so well for them: they counted as "paid subscribers", which meant that
reddit could get more money allocated for staff. Before, they had rarely had a
problem getting servers or other infrastructure, but get approved to hire
people to run them was difficult.

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g0atbutt
Good for him. Alexis is a genuinely nice guy. When I launched The Startup
Foundry, Alexis emailed me two days after I launched (when I still didnt have
much traction) and offered his support. I've had the privilege to interview
him in a couple different occasions since then and he's always been incredibly
kind.

He's a real standup guy.

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blhack
This is awesome. From the things I've seen Alexis do, he seems like a
genuinely cool person, and it really makes me happy seeing people like him
succeed at things (advisor to Conde Nast seems like a pretty serious
position).

Congrats, man.

~~~
kn0thing
Thank you! It's not nearly as awesome for reddit as Erik becoming GM or Max
joining the team, but I'm happy to have the chance to give input into the
future of reddit.

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jacoblyles
Chromakode is a JavaScript badass. If you have a chance to listen to his talk
on generating dynamic audio in HTML5, you definitely should attend.

------
markkat
Down-to-earth cool guy. Reddit owes a lot of what it is to him. I can't see
how the community won't benefit from this. Congrats Alexis.

~~~
kn0thing
Thanks, but I hope no one catches on to all these shill accounts of mine ;)

~~~
markkat
Winking at a shill account is pretty meta. Your shill calling you on it is
even more meta.

Whoa.

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seiji
Time to update the Alexis Tracker 3000:

    
    
        - YC ambassador to the East
        - hip hipmunk
        - returning to reddit as advisor/doodler
          - (moving back to SF full-time?  part-time?)
        - advising conde nast
        - publishing books/magnets/sauce/posters/shirts for charity
        - talking talks
    

How much did I miss? I know more about your life than my own.

~~~
kn0thing
I'm not moving, Erik (hueypriest) Martin is.

Everything else in your tracker is right on :)

I'm bummed this is such a story, though, because the real story is Erik's
promotion (congrats, dude!) and Max (chromakode) joining the team. He's been a
longtime code contributor (socialite) and active redditor for even longer (he
also donates time to help breadpig, building stuff like WTFCNN.com for me).

I was simply asked by Conde to formally advise them from time to time about
reddit & their general web strategy (and possibly consult on future mascots
for new web properties). The chance to have some input on my baby was hard to
pass up, but this is not even a part-time gig -- managing and growing the
hipmunk brand & community is my fulltime commitment.

~~~
redthrowaway
What exactly will Erik's new duties as GM entail? How does it differ from what
he and Jeremy already do?

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staunch
Hoping for the best, but based on some of my own experience, these things
rarely work. You can't go home again.

~~~
kn0thing
I can't stress enough that I'm just a formal advisor now. I was already
informally doing it whenever someone asked me to. The exciting story here is
Erik moving out west to GM and Max joining (and bringing those UX skills).

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ajaymehta
Sweet! This can only be a good thing. Alexis is awesome (as evidenced by him
talking to us for 30 min at 1am for our YC pre-interview.)

~~~
kn0thing
Thanks, but that's a perfectly normal thing to do at 1am.

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ibejoeb
I wonder how that happened. Sounds very Jobsian... Very cool, glad to hear it.

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jasonwilk
Alexis is truly awesome. I'm sure he will be a huge help for CondeNast

