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I'm Alexis Ohanian
the co-founder of Reddit and author of "Without Their Permission" and I'm here with an UberFact
You see, reddit did not start out as a top 50
website. In fact, maybe three months
into it ... Steve Huffman, may co-founder and I were invited out
to Silicon Valley. We were living in Boston at the time. Starting this little
startup from our little apartment. And this executive invites us out.
We're thrilled. We're like, "yes of course we will come out." He's an executive a company called Yahoo.
(Which hopefully people know). And we're flown out and we're at this meeting. And he sits us down...
he's like...
"Guys, we'd love to hear about reddit. Tell us, how are things going?" And we started getting into it...
And he just cuts us off! (pretty early) And he says, "hold on, hold on...
...how much traffic...
do you guys have, anyway?"
Ohanian: "Well, we just launched a few months ago, but it's grown week over week... maybe...
ten or eleven thousand users. And he just laughs at us.
He laughs at us! He's like, "You guys are a rounding error...
...compared to Yahoo. What are you even doing here?"
We're like, "You invited us. Is that a thing that...
...Yahoo does? You invite startups just to make fun of them?"
That meeting obviously did not go well. Steve and I flew back to Boston to our little
apartment. And the first thing I did was print something out and put it on my wall.
just a few words on a little piece of paper. It said: "You are a Rounding Error."
YOU ARE A ROUNDING ERROR
and every single morning I would look at that. It became my wall of negative reinforcement
And I would start putting other things on that wall. And every single morning
I wanted to know EXACTLY who Steve and I were proving wrong. And reddit is now a Top 50 website in the
world
and this guy (who I still have never named, I don't even name him in the book)
I'm so grateful. Because, to this
day, he still motivates me. He's still in tech, and he STILL motivates me. He probably doesn't even remember that meeting.
But, my advice to everyone these days is...
There are always going to be constructive critics, who are amazing...
... who make us better. Then, there are gonna be haters, right? HATERS GONNA HATE
So, you know what? Eat them for breakfast and use it as motivation
Use them as motivation and don't let them hold you back. So that is my little entrepreneurial story and I
think it is especially helpful
for everyone in the Verge community (by the way that's where I am right now)
we are
right here, Ground Zero in Indianapolis. I'm very excited for my Verge event.
And hope you enjoyed that UberFact!