Today, Reddit is one of the most influential sites on the web. But back in 2005 when it was just getting started, co-founder Alexis Ohanian remembers thinking, "We really didn't know what we were doing." But intentionally or not, Ohanian and co-founder Steve Huffman were doing something right. One year after launch, they sold Reddit to Conde Nast in 2006 for a reported $20 million. The site spun off in late 2011, and went on to score 37 billion pageviews in 2012. In the past year, the site has since spun off and attracted the likes of Bill Gates, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and President Barack Obama for its trademark AMAs (Ask Me Anything).

Today, Ohanian invests in and advises close to 50 startups, including Reddit and the travel site Hipmunk, and he runs Breadpig, an ecommerce site that donates proceeds to charity. In pursuing each of these opportunities, Ohanian says he's working to "make the world suck less." Also part of that agenda is Ohanian's emergence as an opinionated activist and a passionate defender of Internet freedom — he built an anti-SOPA billboard, launched a bus tour in support of an open Internet. He even weighed in on the recent Donglegate scandal at PyCon.

In case you were worried that he wasn't busy enough, Ohanian is also working on a book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made Not Managed, in which he expounds on the web and modern-day entrepreneurship.

Mashable's Chief Strategy Officer Adam Ostrow sat down with Ohanian to talk about the power of the Internet, the Washington Redskins and Spider-Man's mantra.

Image courtesy of Flickr, KetchumPR