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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, one of the big things I did a few years back was I joined the Board of Robin Hood, the nonprofit in New York, and I made a big grant to child care there in the city, in part because it was there in Brooklyn when my mother and father were working at the Ashland Place apartments there in Fort Greene. Aunt Vera would pinch hit and just watch me and stuff.
So my one of my parents were at work and all that as a little kid. And so child care. makes a huge difference. And, and we were lucky enough to have a family member just across, almost across the hallway and, you know, another building. And, uh, and so I wanted to pay it forward and that was in honor of her. That was a tribute to her.
But, uh, like I said, I'll be paying that back, uh, for the rest of my life for sure.
i took my pops back too and we were walking around the four greens changed a lot since the 80s uh but the the block is still there and uh and it was great taking my dad through there just hearing stories from him and uh yeah it's wild then you become a parent and you start imagining you see this little person and you're reminded that you were that little person once to your parent and it makes your relationship to them feel very different it's it was a trip but it was great to be able to come back and i'll like i said i'm i'm paying off those debts the rest of my life
Yeah, well, I dealt with it very poorly. But so...
for the first 20 years of my life like i said i mean awesome like no no real uh strife i was ready to take over the world like i felt so confident in our ability to build this business uh so excited and gosh like two months in to starting reddit fresh out of school my then girlfriend who was a year younger than me she was studying abroad she had a pretty serious accident big fall.
She was in a coma. She survived. She made a nearly full recovery actually. But the first month, two months of Y Combinator was this. And you get that phone call and you're like, and again, I was very lucky. I never had a phone call like that before in my life. And you get that phone call and it guts you and you're on the first plane to Germany and you're trying to
just make sense of the world right this person you love this person you care about and another month or two later and then i get the call that my mom has had a seizure and she's been diagnosed with a terminal brain cancer a glioblastoma multiforma stage four and there's words you don't want to hear and you know the that that was really the crippling blow where
know here was someone who i mean i had like a great relationship with my parents but like definitely a mama's boy and i was an only child what can i say i was pretty cool but no she was she was amazing and and the first thing i did when i saw her so i flew down to baltimore First thing I did when I saw her was asking her, how are you? How's everything going? How are you feeling?
And her first response, first words out of her mouth were, I am sorry. And I was like, what do you mean? You don't mean, I'm sorry. And she's like, well, I know you're starting this company. You're supposed to be a CEO right now. You got to focus on Reddit. Don't focus on me. And I know how much of a distraction this is going to be for you.
And you hear something like that from someone who you love so much, who's already given you so much, man. And- And I thought, I was like, I'm the last person. You should not be apologizing to me right now. Focus on yourself, please. I'm going to be fine. You owe me nothing. You've already given me everything. And that's emblematic of who she was. What it did was it gave me a confidence.
I knew there was no way Reddit would fail. No way. No chance I was going to let it. No way it could possibly not succeed. Because she blessed it with that. She really, even in those situations, still was looking out for her little boy above herself. And, you know, she fought for another three, four years. She got to see me sell Reddit. It had a lot, not going to lie, right?
You know, in the grand scheme of tech, a $10 million exit is minuscule. For 16 months worth of work, pretty good ROI. But to be able to make that call to my mom to say, hey, your faith in me paid off. Like, what can I buy you? Was worth everything. And then true to form. True to form. Like, I knew I was going to get my dad some season tickets for our local NFL team there in D.C.
True to form, though, my mom was like, I don't want anything. I'm like, no, no, I'm not going to let you do this. Come on, what do you want? She was like, I don't want anything. And I ended up making a donation for her to her favorite nonprofit. She was like, all right, if you're going to have to give me something, you can do that. And I was so mad.
I was so mad because lovingly, I was like, God, there is no way I'm ever going to top this. You realize you have set the bar so high that if I ever have kids, I'm going to be chasing that goal. But like I said, that's who she was. That's all she cared about. She was an undocumented immigrant.
She was an au pair from Germany who overstayed her visa because she fell in love with my dad, this Armenian-American here in the States. Yeah, they eventually got married, had me. But she worked the jobs she needed to work to pay the bills and do the things. And her number one, I mean, I don't think anyone would have told you, the most important thing to her was her family.
And I was an only child, so I got all the shine from that. Yeah. That was the foundation, man. And when folks want to know how or why or all this stuff, man, I pointed to her. Sorry, dad, you get some credit too. But having that confidence, having that support, having that unwavering.
When I told her, I told this woman I wanted to be a professional waiter in high school because I was so good serving at Pizza Hut. Yeah. So I worked pizza in high school and I was a dishwasher, then I was a cook. And then the deep dish pizzas are a sleeper. I'll make them at home now with the cast iron. They're good. And eventually I made it as a serving and I was pretty good.
And my boss, Tony, he was like, hey, you know what? Instead of going to college, I think you could do this full time. Like, you're really good. And I was like, really? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, I could move to New York. And he's like, you can move to New York. You can make a great career out of this.
and uh and so i remember going home and telling my parents i was like i'm thinking about not going to college and the last thing you would tell an armenian dad is that you're not going to go to college just to be clear and my dad to his credit didn't say anything my mom though so sweet she was like look whatever you do i know you're going to be the best at it i know you're going to work your hardest why don't you start with a budget and figure out what it'll cost to live there and then how much you'll get paid and see if that's something you want to accomplish and thankfully
Showing 121–140 of 292 · page 7 of 15
← Previous
Next →