Alexis Ohanian

Businessman

51 Quotes

I try not to have the computer in the bedroom. I used to sleep with it, though. I used to wake up spooning my laptop.

Reddit is a network where someone with a million karma points has an equal shot as someone with 10 karma points to hit the #1 post or comment.

Love making jewelry? Awesome! Find blogs that inspire you, follow people on social media who have great taste, start an Etsy store, and borrow a friend's DSLR to take some beautiful photos of your craft. All of this costs $0.

Founders are supposed to be not at all interested in selling. But there is a price at which a founder can't help being interested.

Until we actually get legislation that protects our rights online, we will continue to fight against stupid, lobbyist-bought legislation. We want bills that protect us, not ones that destroy us.

Status quo just means that everyone's doing it. It doesn't mean that this was divinely ordained, and of course this is the right decision.

Unless it's really an emergency, I'm not going to bother you. And you can see people chafe at that. 'You're in the same office and instant-message each other? Why don't you just walk over?' That's the perfect example of how ingrained the status quo is. To certain people, it may seem lazy, but I would argue it's much more efficient and considerate.

On my father's side, I'm descended from immigrants, one of whom was a Syrian refugee from the Armenian genocide, and my mother was an immigrant from Germany whose visa had expired and, for a year and change, was undocumented here in the U.S.

The best part of being an angel investor is seeing these kids coming up with companies that get way more traffic than Reddit had when we sold it. I think, 'Are you kidding me? They're just kids, and they've done so much.'

Waking up every morning with a company is a lot of pressure. But when you're aware of what other people are waking up with, it's a whole lot easier.

My entire career has been built on the understanding that I am not only not the smartest person in the room, I am definitely not the smartest person in the world. And I am instead going to try to create as many opportunities to connect those great ideas and help them be great.

I went to high school in Ellicott City, Maryland, and I felt pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. It just took time away from my doing things on the Internet - like creating clans in Quake II or starting a Web design nonprofit. In school, I was just a kid. Online, I had authority.

Republicans want to keep the open Internet safe from big government. Democrats want to keep it safe from big corporations. I say we agree to agree and move ahead.

The biggest threat to the Internet is, frankly, always going to be complacency. I want to see more and more of us activated and people thinking of themselves as defenders of it.

Ramen in L.A. is much better than ramen in San Francisco. That's just a fact.

The reason why I think Reddit is still around and some of our competitors are not is because we were really adamant about maintaining the integrity of the site.

It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.

I'm probably the worst Silicon Valley insider ever. I don't hang out with Silicon Valley people.

Reddit offers the opportunity for us as humans to connect on a much deeper, broader level because users have an alter ego and aren't tied to a social network of friends with whom they want to share how perfect their lives are.

If you've never seen people taking the pledge of allegiance for the first time as U.S. Citizens, it will move you: a room full of people who can really appreciate what I was lucky enough to grow up with, simply by being born in Brooklyn.

2 of 3
1 2 3