

Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) from Reddit (YC S05) on Getting Traction - epi0Bauqu
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/02/alexis-ohanian-from-reddit-on-getting-traction.html

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epi0Bauqu
I'm actively looking for more good interview subjects on this focused topic
(getting traction). If you have any ideas, introductions, or would like to be
interviewed, please let me know.

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aditya
Thanks for doing this, they are amazing and super-relevant.

Ideas:

@ev/@jack on twitter

@tonystubblebine on crowdvine

@joshu on delicious

chris dixon/caterina fake on hunch/flickr

pg on viaweb

kevin rose on digg

steven chen or chad hurley on youtube

andrew warner on mixergy (recursive intervews, perhaps? :)

craig newmark on craigslist

jason fried on 37signals

that's off the top of my head anyway.

~~~
AndrewWarner
Email me if you need intros to anyone I interviewed.

Also, why aren't you on camera? Email me if you want to know more about my
setup.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx--I'll definitely take you up on that. My setup is certainly sub-optimal,
but me not being on camera is deliberate. On my second interview, I lost my
feed and so went without it. After it was done, I thought it worked better
than the first (with me in it). Since the interviewee does the vast majority
of the talking, it seemed I was just sitting there being distracting from the
main content. But maybe I'm wrong?

~~~
staunch
It breaks with the norm, but I think it may be preferable for _interviews_.
All we want from the host is for them to be a question-enhancing proxy for
ourselves. Seeing your own face in a mirror wouldn't improve the experience of
interviewing someone yourself, so seeing the host's shouldn't either.

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jeff18
So to summarize:

\- Make a lot of fake accounts to submit content, so it looks like there are
many more users than there actually are

\- Get mentioned in a very popular essay by Paul Graham

\- Eventually stop submitting content from fake accounts once you have grown
enough

\- Once you are so big that your referral starts showing up in the New York
Times, etc. log, people will naturally start putting your buttons on your
site.

\- There will be some other huge sites that haven't organically put your
button on their site yet. Cold email them.

\- Post in the comments of any site that mentions you, regardless of the size
to make yourself available to them.

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kn0thing
Well, when you say it like that...

There's also a big-font preface: "This only happened to work out well in a
very specific instance and while a few elements of my story may be
generalizable to your startup, so don't follow any of my advice as though it
were intended to be guidelines-for-success."

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axod
Some really useful tips here.

I always wonder if Reddit is profitable or not. Maybe it doesn't matter :/
Maybe it's a loss leader or something?

~~~
blhack
There was a thread on there a while ago where some admins answered questions.
They said that it was.

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vaksel
Good interview, Alexis seems like a nice guy

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kn0thing
It's all a facade. Dude eats babies.

~~~
vaksel
All millionaires have different quirks. I forgive him

