When Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman sold Reddit to Condé Nast in 2006, the 23-year-old co-founders became multi-millionaires overnight. The exact sale price was never disclosed but the site, which they sold within two years of launching it, reportedly went for between $10 million and $20 million.

It was “more money for me than my entire family — my mother and father — had made in their entire lives," Ohanian, who washed dishes at Pizza Hut as a teen, told Guy Raz during a live podcast taping of NPR’s “How I Built This.”

His first subsequent purchase was a memorable one: Front row season tickets at FedEx Field, home to the NFL team he has been supporting since age five: the Washington Redskins.

“The very first thing I did was I called up the ticket office,” Ohanian told CNBC Make It on Tuesday at the launch of 1850 Brand Coffee's Bold Pioneer contest for aspiring entrepreneurs. “My dad had two nosebleeds for a number of years and I upgraded his seats to four seats at the front row around the 50-yard line.”