On Wednesday night, Reddit’s co-founder will be taking over Lillis with a speech and readings from his new book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed, about using the power of the Internet for good. It also provides advice for young entrepreneurs.
Eight years ago an innovative website hit the net. One that allows viewers to submit content and vote on each post to determine its rank on the site. Reddit quickly became “the front page of the Internet,” and is now the place to find everything from a photo of the Norwegian Curling Team’s Olympic Uniforms to a campaign to name a humpback whale “Mr. Splashy Pants.” Just last year, Reddit received more than 40 million posts and 56 billion page views.
Ohanian, a University of Virginia graduate, had only been legally going to bars for a year when he co-founded Reddit in 2005. In 2012, the site was speculated to be worth $240 million. Not too shabby for a 29-year-old. Inspiring entrepreneurs as well as anyone interested in media may be interested in hearing this young success story speak.
Junior Max Thompson, a business major turned journalism major and avid Reddit user is excited to learn more about the media world.
“When I saw that it was the founder of Reddit that would be speaking I knew I had to go. The best way to learn about a particular field is from the people that have first hand experience, so an opportunity like this is just too good to pass up,” he said.
Freshman business major Shelby Deffterios is interested in learning about the business side of Ohanian’s talk.
“I’m extremely interested in entrepreneurship. I’d love to hear about how he came about creating Reddit and how that became such a success,” she said.
Interestingly enough, UO didn’t recruit Ohanian. The tour list for the book was posted on Reddit and asked for people from the schools listed to help organize it. Foster Boone, an MBA student in the Lundquist College of Business who also works for the communications department for the Business Graduate School, responded.
“I use Reddit a fair amount. It’s definitely my main source of news so it’s not that outlandish that I saw it posted there. That’s the cool thing about Reddit—the ability for random people to meet and collaborate,” Boone said. “Entrepreneurship really excites me, and I’m excited to hear his take on how the openness of the Internet plays a part in that.”
Eugene is one stop on Ohanian’s five-month, 65-university bus tour. Taking college students across the country by storm, wearing jeans, flannel shirts and Converse, Ohanian is “Making The World Suck Less,” one of his taglines, by giving students the advice he wished he had in college.
See Alexis Ohanian on Wednesday, Jan. 29 in the Lillis Business Complex at 7 p.m.. Three hundred seats are available in Lillis 182. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/767165063297633/.