Reddit Co-Founder Sold It For $10 Million As Mom Battled Brain Cancer, Girlfriend Lay In A Coma & Dog Died—Now It's Worth $35 Billion. 'I Was Naive'
Reddit is packed with stories of people who cashed out too early, but none hit quite like the one told by the guy who helped build the platform from nothing. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian sat down with Wired's "Uncanny Valley" podcast in August and laid out a version of Reddit's origin story that blends early-internet scrappiness with real-life upheaval. He talked about the mid-2000s as a time when today's startup playbook simply did not exist. "In 2005, 2006, it was not the startup economy. All the things we take for granted now were not a thing yet." Momentum looked different. Expectations were different. The entire energy of the space was different. Don't Miss: That context shaped how he viewed the famous moment when Mark Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo to buy Facebook. Ohanian told the "Uncanny Valley" podcast he remembered seeing the headline and thinking, "My God, if I could have gotten that much money for a few years' worth of work, I would've taken it in a heartbeat." To him, $10 million for 16 months of work looked like a miracle. It was more money than his parents would earn in their entire working lives. It landed like a once-in-a-lifetime escape hatch, not a stepping stone to something bigger. But the real deciding factors weren't financial. They were personal. "A month into Reddit, my then-girlfriend falls into a coma, my dog dies, and then my mom is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer." The timing was brutal. The demands of a young startup collided with loss, crisis, and the kind of fear no founder manual will ever prepare anyone for. Trending: From Chipotle to Red Bull, Top Brands Are Already Building With Modern Mill's Tree-Free Wood Alternative — Here's How You Can Invest Too His mother's diagnosis came with a blunt prognosis. Doctors gave her only a few years. Yet when he reached her in the hospital, her first words were, "I'm sorry," because she worried she would distract him from building the company. On the podcast, he described her as "an exceptional woman" and said he wanted nothing more than to prove her right and make her proud. When she died in 2008, his entire sense of perspective shifted. The pressure of running a company simply did not compare. "From that moment forward, I've never had anyone come to me with a business problem that was even remotely jarring." Meanwhile, Reddit kept growing. It became a cultural backbone of the internet, evolving far beyond the version Ohanian sold. As of November, its market capitalization sits around $35 billion, a number that can stop anyone in their tracks when they remember the original sale price was $10 million. See Also: If there was a new fund backed by Jeff Bezos offering a 7-9% target yield with monthly dividends would you invest in it? Yet Ohanian refuses to frame the past as a mistake. He sees it as a fork in the road that shaped everything that came next. He is now returning to the social-platform world with the relaunch of Digg alongside Kevin Rose, a move that feels like revisiting the same digital frontier that once launched his entire career. The takeaway is simple. Entrepreneurs love clean narratives and tidy decisions, but real life rarely offers either. Ohanian's story isn't about regret. It's about what someone builds after circumstances force them to grow up faster than they planned. And in that sense, it's not a cautionary tale at all. It's a reminder that value isn't only measured by dollar signs. It's measured by what a founder does once the first chapter closes. Read Next: Buffett's Secret to Wealth? Private Real Estate—Get Institutional Access Yourself Image: Shutterstock Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga: This article Reddit Co-Founder Sold It For $10 Million As Mom Battled Brain Cancer, Girlfriend Lay In A Coma & Dog Died—Now It's Worth $35 Billion. 'I Was Naive' originally appeared on Benzinga.com © 2025 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
