
PanARMENIAN.Net - Nicki Swift presents an article about Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, providing interesting details from the tech entrepreneur's personal and professional achievements.
First of all, he is Armenian.
Much like the Kardashian clan, as well as singer Cher and tennis star Andre Agassi, the computer mogul is of Armenian descent. In fact, he was born on the same day as the annual Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
His ancestry is very important to him. Ohanian has visited Armenia several times, first with a Kiva fellowship, and helped set up TEDx Yerevan in 2010. "I ended up being born in Brooklyn, but I could've been born in Yerevan, or probably somewhere in Western Armenia," he once said. "I want my knowledge to help as many people as possible, but especially my fellow Armenians."
Nice guys finish first
Whether it is in an interview, on social media, or on Reddit, Ohanian comes across as a genuinely nice guy, a claim that has been backed up by Williams herself. "He's incredibly — a really nice person," she said, according to People. "I think he definitely treats everyone the same, which is really cool to see. Really, really nice to see."
How a meal at Waffle House changed his future
Ohanian grew up in Ellicott City, MD, and spent most of his spare time on the Internet, playing games, doing web design, and chatting online. "In school, I was just a kid, he shared with Inc. magazine in 2012. "Online, I had authority."
He met future Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman on move-in day at the University of Virginia in 2001. They were complete opposites; Huffman was an engineering major, while Ohanian majored in history and also studied commerce. But they hit it off immediately, finding shared interest in gaming and computing. Huffman described his business partner of looking "grungy" then, but said "he was very charming," right from the beginning.
Ohanian changed the trajectory of his life in his junior year, when he was studying to take the LSAT to be an immigration lawyer. "I flipped over my test and thought, You b******. I walked out and went to Waffle House. That's where I had what I call The Waffle House Epiphany," he told Inc. "I didn't want to be a lawyer. I wanted to make a dent in the universe." Or, as he describes his philosophy on his social accounts and website, "making the world suck less."
He co-founded Reddit in college
After Ohanian pulled the plug on becoming a lawyer, he and Huffman decided to develop a way to order meals online. He told Inc. magazine that they reached out to Paul Graham of Y Combinator, a startup incubator, to see if he would be interested in their MyMobileMenu idea.
It took just three weeks to build Reddit. "It was just Web links and text submitted by users," Ohanian said, "with Interesting or Uninteresting buttons that you could click on underneath." Later, they added the ability to comment. Huffman would later describe their partnership by claiming, "I made Reddit, and Alexis made Reddit cool."
His personal life fell apart after Reddit launched
Although Ohanian's professional life was skyrocketing around the time of Reddit's launch, his personal life was falling apart at the seams. According to the New York Times, Ohanian's girlfriend at the time had attempted suicide by jumping out of a window in Germany. In September 2005, the Times also reports that his mother had a seizure the day they put down their family dog. The seizure led the family to discover that Ohanian's mother had terminal brain cancer.
"My mother was diagnosed with a class IV Glioblastoma multiforme. Such an ugly name," Ohanian wrote in a personal blog entry. "I remember the first time I googled it, hoping I could search my way to a cure. But it basically meant terminal brain cancer."
"She was 51 when she was diagnosed," he continued. "I flew down to Maryland first thing the next morning. And you know the first thing she told me? 'I'm sorry. Sorry because I know how much you've already been through.'"
He sold Reddit in part because of his mother
Just 16 months after Reddit started, Conde Nast bought Reddit, paying somewhere "between $10 million and $20 million" for the website, Ohanian coyly told Inc. What caused Ohanian to suddenly cash out? According to the New York Times, part of the reason had to do with his mother's health. She died less than two years after Conde Nast's purchase, according to the report.
While his mother was battling cancer, Ohanian wrote that he often traveled between Boston and Maryland to be by h...
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