Alexis Ohanian
speaker
292 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 12 Jun
Alexis Ohanian’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think the really telling thing in the era we're in now is we have the first generation of young people who are like in their early 20s who have grown up, like truly grown up on these social media platforms. And so it's exposed some of the most problematic parts.
It's also exposed some of the most impressive parts, like the excellence of an 19-year-old, 20-year-old who's pitching me to start her company. She is... orders of magnitude smarter, farther along, just just more impressive than I was at her age 20 years ago. And I think the Internet has a huge role to play in that.
At the same time, some of the stuff we talked about earlier, just trying to navigate an already really difficult time that is childhood where your entire life is gamified, you know, based on how many followers you get or how many hearts you get or whatever else also brings out the worst. But for me, no, that was that was my breaking point. And I just realized
I, like I said, I can deal with, I understand, you see this argument being made to this day. I respect that argument. And I at least appreciate when it's consistent. The inconsistency is the part that grinds my gears more than anything else. But we must also still accept the fact that, you know, the World Wide Web itself, the internet, is the totally open, free space.
The difference is when we build any kind of social media platform, platform, whatever it is on it, we are ultimately deciding what belongs and what doesn't. We've all agreed that spam does not matter. Like we are all okay impinging on the free speech of a spammer.
and that's a pretty easy argument everyone agrees so so if we agree on that then now we just need to agree on where we draw the line because it's there there's no such thing as a totally free network because again we've all agreed we draw a line on spam so where else does it go and like i said for me and i and i realize it is it's important for it to be a gray line and i can go into all the there's a myriad of reasons why it's actually really helpful to have it be a gray line the short answer is if you make it a bright line
then toxic users will go right to exactly where that line is and say, great, okay, I'm just going to hang on here on this line and troll because that's how they get satisfaction. So it's actually beneficial to have the gray line. So I totally understand the gray line. Even our laws in the United States have a gray line that usually get interpreted by judges or juries or what have you.
That's helpful. But I think, and this is where the tech optimist in me comes in, when I look at the next generation of consumer social, these apps, and every app starts with teens, usually teen girls, college age girls, they drive all online culture and adoption. You look at Instagram success, you look at Snap success, you look at TikTok success, it's the same story.
then the apps that are starting to make traction, and it's still early days, but they're much less based, even the ones that have blown up and fallen back down, the B-Reels of the world and some of these others, they're all much less based on the sort of internet popularity contest. And they're much more based on, Connecting with your actual friends.
One that I recently seeded is called Air Buds, and it's only about connecting over the music you're listening to. And it's purely like, this is the song I'm streaming right now on Spotify. React to it, vibe with it, share tastes. I think the culture has already now built up enough of an immune system that for this next generation, there's a pushback to... the previous mold of social.
And I think that alone will drive a much more healthy relationship to social media, but we'll see. But that is the lens through which we look at even making the investments. It's okay. When my kids are old enough, how good am I going to feel about this being a multi-billion dollar business that they're on? And look, admittedly, you cannot predict that.
There are so many different paths a company can take, any idea can take from day one to 10 years out, 15 years out, 20 years out. But we make the best assessment we can based on the founders, based on their attention and have, like I said, the starting line that these founders are on today is much more sophisticated than I was as a first time CEO right out of college.
because they like social media didn't exist. We had web forums. Facebook was still in colleges. There were a lot of blogs. Like it was just a very different world. Today, any, any founder pitching us has lived on social media and they've seen the good and they've seen the bad.
Has it happened? Okay, there have been companies where we haven't even taken the pitch just because... And again, I don't want to get too high horse about it. No one's out here saying like, okay, I guess there were... There was one company that I hard passed on Whatever, I can say it. They were a telehealth business basically handing out Adderall.
And the business was growing very quickly, but there was no way they were doing it responsibly. And that was a hard, hard, hard pass. It was... Both from a, I wouldn't feel good about my kids using this, also just from a risk standpoint, like at some point the FDA is going to look at this and y'all are going to have a bad time. Spoiler, the FDA did come down pretty hard on them.
But we do, I guess I would take the, it's the more optimistic version of that, which is, would I be excited to see this exist in the world that our kids are going to grow up in? And if it's a 100% reusable rocket company, which we did see called Stoke, hell yes. Like 100% reusable. So now you're talking about, one, there's an environmental benefit to it.
And two, the things we'll be able to do for all of us here on planet Earth when we have a much better, smoother relationship to low Earth orbit will be very good for humanity. But there's a version for that. But I think it's the... It's the more sort of positive lens. The very interesting thing about founders today as well, they are more sophisticated.
they also know just how big of a role technology plays in the world. And I know people would get on Zuck for his like aw shucks behavior, probably in the earlier days where he just, it didn't, it seemed implausible that he could not realize how much power Facebook has. And I will say to his credit, I think his tune changed on that. And also in his defense, none of us did.
The idea, if you had told me, probably in in most of the aughts throughout most of the aughts and probably even the early teens that these social media platforms would be among the most valuable businesses in the world i i would have been very very very very surprised and you know They made some smart M&A moves. They did the things.
But like for all of us, or I can speak for myself, but I would wager Jack feels the same way with Twitter. In those early days, in those aughts, you know, it was about building something that you hoped people loved. It was about keeping the servers online.
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