In his book, , released in October, Alexis Ohanian shares his secrets for what makes a startup catch on and lays out how he believes the freedom of the Web will democratize the future. But Ohanian, who cofounded Reddit with Steve Huffman in 2004, also shares some interesting facts about the site that would go one to become "the front page of the Internet" and a top 50 site in the world.

Reddit Was a Backup Plan

Reddit.com was born of the startup bootcamp Y Combinator, which helps new tech companies get off the ground. In fact, it was Y Combinator's first successful launch. But it wasn't Ohanian and Huffman's first pitch. The pair originally approached Paul Graham, Y.C.'s cofounder, with their idea for MyMobileMenu, a Seamless-style mobile app that would allow you to place your takeout order painlessly ahead of time—since you already know what you want, the thinking goes, why shouldn't it be ready when you arrive?

Today this seems like a no-brainer. There are a plethora of food-related apps ready to help you cook new recipes, find great local restaurants, order delivery, or place an order for takeout ahead of time. But at the time, Graham talked them out of this idea, citing the fact that restaurants are not exactly early adopters.

However, Graham encouraged the two to return to Y.C. with another proposal. They settled on trying to build "the front page of the Internet," and the rest is Internet history.

The Alien Came First

The site's mascot—the polite little alien that sits in the upper left corner of every page, in one guise or another—dates back to a time before the site was even functional. "In truth," Ohanian writes, "I'd created these [sketches] months before we'd even figured out how the site would work. Priorities!" Hey, the logo matters. While several people tried to talk Ohanian out of using the alien mascot in 2004, it's now an icon of the Web.

Upvotes and Downvotes

The up and down arrows that define the Reddit experience could have been words instead. Ohanian's first version used "interesting" and "boring" as the metrics for readers to rate content. It was Huffman who came up with the idea for subreddits, which gave rise to incredibly active communities such as r/politics and r/science, goofy time sucks such as r/aww and r/wtf, and not-safe-for-work subreddits that will not be named.

Fakers

Nowadays, Reddit's moderators crack down on any kind of vote-rigging shenanigans, such as banning news organizations that set up fake accounts or otherwise push their own content to aggressively. But back before the site was a behemoth—when the most rudimentary version of Reddit launched, Ohanian and Huffman set up several fake accounts to submit content, just to make the site appear more active. "How do you get people to look at your user-driven website when you don't have any users? You fake them, naturally," Ohanian writes.

It Could've Been "Reditt"

Any tech startup worth its salt needs a clever alternative spelling in its name. (What up, Tumblr?) Ohanian came up with the name Reddit, as in "I read it," in the University of Virginia library. A friend told him this spelling worked better than another bastardization, "reditt."

Other Bad Names

Other suggested names for Reddit before it became Reddit: obaloo.com, and 360scope.com (as in, a telescope that sees in every direction).

The High-Dollar Ad Budget

"I never spent more than a few hundred dollars on advertising for reddit," Ohanian writes. "That's not a typo." That money went to stickers that he spread around Boston. But really, the site grew by word of mouth.

The Power of Cannoli

Today Reddit is owned by an arm of Condé Nast, the publishing company that owns magazines such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The reason? Cannoli. Ohanian took a trip down from Boston to New York to meet a reporter from Wired, another Condé Nast property. The interview over cannoli never turned into a story, but another person from the company later contacted Ohanian with a question about collaboration. A year later Condé Nast bought Reddit, making Ohanian a millionaire. Which is why he never turns down a cannolo.

Reddit, a Google Property

How's this for a what-could-have-been? Before selling to Condé Nast, Ohanian and Huffman took a meeting with Google but turned down the search giant's acquisition offer. They also met with Yahoo!, a get-together that didn't end quite so amicably. (An executive huffed that Reddit's traffic was "a rounding error" next to Yahoo's. Not anymore.)

When the Best Thing to Do Is Nothing

Remember the social Web of yore, when MySpace still mattered and Digg was the king of aggregating the Web's most popular content by having users vote on it? When Digg launched, Ohanian sent Huffman an email that simply read: "meet the enemy." Rather than try to destroy their rivals, Ohanian writes, he and Huffman decided to let Digg and its imitators that popped up around the Web destroy themselves. It worked: Digg remained king of the mountain until about 2009, despite a setup that allowed power users to yield great influence over what reached the site's front page. However, a redesign intended to rectify that situation backfired. Reddit, with its unapologetic minimalist aesthetic, passed Digg in traffic shortly thereafter and never looked back.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io