We Are the Nerds

We Are the Nerds Plot Summary

Introduction

In a small, cramped apartment in Medford, Massachusetts, during the summer of 2005, two recent college graduates were about to change how millions of people would discover and share content online. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, roommates from the University of Virginia with complementary skills and personalities, had just received $12,000 in seed funding to build what would eventually become "the front page of the internet." Huffman, the technically brilliant programmer who had been coding since childhood, and Ohanian, the charismatic marketing mind with boundless enthusiasm, embarked on creating a platform where users themselves would determine what content deserved attention through a simple voting system. Their creation, Reddit, would grow from a scrappy startup with fake users (created by the founders themselves to give the illusion of activity) into one of the most influential platforms on the internet, hosting communities dedicated to everything from scientific discussion to meme sharing. Through their journey, we witness not only the evolution of a transformative digital platform but also the personal growth of two entrepreneurs navigating the complex intersection of technology, community governance, and corporate interests. Their story illuminates the challenges of maintaining a community-driven platform in an increasingly commercialized digital landscape, the tensions between free expression and responsible governance, and how their original vision of an open digital commons continues to shape online discourse today.

Chapter 1: College Friendship: The Unlikely Partnership

The partnership that would eventually create one of the internet's most influential platforms began with a misunderstanding. In the fall of 2001, Steve Huffman was moving into his University of Virginia dormitory when he noticed the name "Alexis Ohanian" on a nearby door. Assuming Alexis was a female student, Huffman was surprised when he later encountered a tall, confident young man with a plate of cookies, confidently introducing himself to a group of women in Huffman's room. This first impression of Ohanian as someone with "no shame" would prove prophetic for their future business relationship. Despite their contrasting personalities, Huffman and Ohanian quickly formed a friendship based on shared interests and complementary strengths. Huffman, the reserved computer science major who had been programming since age eight, possessed exceptional technical abilities and analytical thinking. Ohanian, studying history and business, brought charisma, marketing instincts, and big-picture vision to their relationship. They bonded over marathon gaming sessions of Gran Turismo and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, often playing deep into the night in their dorm rooms. Their friendship deepened through their undergraduate years, with each recognizing qualities in the other that they themselves lacked. Huffman admired Ohanian's fearlessness in social situations and ability to communicate complex ideas simply. Ohanian respected Huffman's technical brilliance and methodical approach to problem-solving. This mutual appreciation laid the groundwork for their future collaboration, though neither initially planned to start a business together. During their senior year, a pivotal moment occurred when they decided to attend a lecture by programmer and essayist Paul Graham during spring break instead of heading to a beach like most of their peers. This decision, seemingly minor at the time, would set them on the path to founding Reddit. After the talk, they approached Graham with their idea for a mobile food-ordering app called "MyMobileMenu." Though Graham initially rejected them from his startup incubator Y Combinator, he called the next day with a counterproposal: he liked them as founders but wanted them to pursue a different idea. Their willingness to pivot from their original concept demonstrated the flexibility and pragmatism that would serve them well as entrepreneurs. When Graham suggested building "the front page of the Internet," they immediately recognized the potential in creating a platform where users could submit and vote on content. This moment of opportunity, seized by two friends with complementary skills and a shared willingness to take risks, would ultimately lead to the creation of one of the most influential websites in internet history.

Chapter 2: Building Reddit: Creating the Front Page of the Internet

With $12,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator, Huffman and Ohanian moved into a small apartment in Medford, Massachusetts, for the summer of 2005. Their mission was clear but daunting: build "the front page of the internet" from scratch in just three months. The division of labor fell naturally along their skill sets. Huffman, the technical co-founder, immersed himself in coding the site's backend, working marathon sessions to create the voting algorithm and core functionality. Meanwhile, Ohanian designed the site's alien mascot "Snoo," handled business matters, and began crafting Reddit's distinctive voice and community approach. The first version of Reddit was remarkably simple by today's standards. The site featured a blue header, minimal graphics, and a straightforward list of links that users could vote up or down. This simplicity was partly by necessity – they had limited resources and time – but also reflected their philosophy that content should take center stage over design flourishes. Huffman built the entire site using Lisp, an unconventional choice of programming language that nevertheless allowed for rapid development and iteration. When Reddit launched on June 23, 2005, it faced the classic chicken-and-egg problem of any new social platform: without users, there was no content, and without content, there would be no users. To solve this dilemma, Huffman and Ohanian employed a clever hack – they created numerous fake accounts and populated the site with content themselves. Using pseudonyms often named after items in their apartment (like "desk" or "lamp"), they submitted links and engaged in conversations to create the illusion of activity. This strategy worked; gradually, real users began to join and participate. The founders were obsessive about site performance and user experience. Huffman ensured that Reddit loaded quickly, even on the slow internet connections of 2005, while Ohanian personally welcomed new users and solicited feedback. They made improvements daily, often implementing user suggestions within hours of receiving them. This responsiveness created strong loyalty among early adopters, who felt personally invested in the platform's development. A crucial innovation came when they introduced "subreddits" – topic-specific communities that users could create and moderate themselves. This decentralized approach allowed Reddit to scale across countless interest areas without requiring direct oversight from the small founding team. It also fostered a sense of ownership among users, who could build their own communities within the larger Reddit ecosystem. The subreddit system would eventually become Reddit's defining feature and the key to its remarkable longevity. By fall 2005, Reddit was gaining significant traction, with thousands of daily visitors and a growing collection of active communities. The founders' complementary partnership continued to drive the platform's evolution – Huffman focusing on technical improvements while Ohanian cultivated the community and promoted the site tirelessly. Their creation was rapidly becoming exactly what they had envisioned: a democratic platform where users collectively determined what content deserved attention, truly functioning as "the front page of the internet."

Chapter 3: Corporate Challenges: The Condé Nast Years

In October 2006, just sixteen months after launching Reddit, Huffman and Ohanian faced a life-changing decision. Condé Nast, the publishing giant behind Vogue, The New Yorker, and Wired, offered to acquire their startup for approximately $10 million. For two 23-year-olds with mounting server costs and limited funding options, the offer was compelling. After intense discussions about their vision for Reddit and its future, they accepted the deal, becoming millionaires overnight. The acquisition announcement came on Halloween, a fitting date for what would prove to be a transformative and sometimes frightening new chapter. The transition from independent startup to corporate subsidiary created immediate culture shock. Reddit's team moved into a small conference room inside Wired magazine's San Francisco office, with Huffman and engineer Chris Slowe handling technical operations while Ohanian worked from Condé Nast's headquarters in New York. This physical separation strained the founders' partnership and complicated decision-making. More significantly, Reddit's scrappy, move-fast approach collided with Condé Nast's traditional media processes and hierarchies. Simple requests that would have taken minutes as an independent company now required multiple approvals and weeks of waiting. Corporate bureaucracy became a constant source of frustration. When Reddit needed to hire additional engineers to handle its rapidly growing traffic, they found themselves hamstrung by Condé Nast's lengthy recruitment procedures. Talented candidates who might have joined a nimble startup were lost during the protracted corporate hiring process. Similarly, technical resources that were essential for scaling the platform became subjects of budgetary debates rather than immediate priorities. Despite Reddit's traffic doubling approximately every eight months, the team remained severely understaffed. The most significant tensions emerged around content policies. Reddit had always operated with minimal content restrictions, allowing users considerable freedom in what they could post and discuss. This approach conflicted with Condé Nast's more traditional publishing standards and concerns about brand association. The breaking point came during what became known as the "Sears incident," when corporate executives demanded the removal of posts mocking a vulnerability on the retailer's website. Huffman reluctantly complied but encouraged users to protest the censorship, creating a backlash that highlighted the fundamental disconnect between Reddit's community-driven ethos and corporate control. By 2009, both founders were experiencing burnout. The entrepreneurial excitement that had fueled their early work had given way to corporate frustration. Huffman, who had been the technical backbone of Reddit since its inception, felt particularly constrained by the inability to implement changes quickly. When his three-year contract expired, he decided to leave, with Ohanian following shortly after. Their departure marked the end of Reddit's founding era, though in a final act of defiance before leaving, they launched "Reddit Gold" – a premium subscription service – without corporate approval, demonstrating their continued commitment to the platform's sustainability. The Condé Nast years revealed the inherent tensions between community-driven platforms and traditional media businesses. Despite these challenges, Reddit continued its remarkable growth, laying the groundwork for its eventual independence and the founders' unexpected return years later.

Chapter 4: Departures and Returns: Leadership Evolution

When Huffman and Ohanian left Reddit in 2009, they departed with mixed emotions – pride in what they had built, frustration with corporate constraints, and uncertainty about the platform's future. Their exits marked the beginning of a tumultuous period for Reddit, which operated with a skeleton crew under Condé Nast's ownership. Despite minimal resources, the site's traffic continued to grow exponentially, demonstrating the power of its community-driven model. The remaining team, led by community manager Erik Martin, maintained Reddit's core functionality while introducing initiatives like Reddit Gifts, a secret Santa exchange that connected thousands of strangers worldwide. Huffman and Ohanian pursued separate paths after leaving. Huffman co-founded Hipmunk, a travel search website designed to reduce the "agony" of finding flights, while Ohanian spent time in Armenia connecting with his heritage and working with microfinance organization Kiva. Their relationship, strained during their final months at Reddit, had space to heal as they developed independently as entrepreneurs. Ohanian embraced roles as an investor, author, and advocate for internet freedom, becoming particularly vocal during the SOPA/PIPA debates in 2012. Huffman focused intensely on building Hipmunk, applying lessons from Reddit while enjoying the freedom of working outside corporate constraints. By 2014, Reddit had been spun out as an independent company, though Advance Publications (Condé Nast's parent) remained the majority shareholder. The site was experiencing significant internal turmoil under CEO Yishan Wong, culminating in his abrupt resignation following disagreements with the board. Ellen Pao stepped in as interim CEO and attempted to implement much-needed policy changes, including banning harassment and non-consensual pornography. However, her tenure became increasingly controversial, particularly after the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, a beloved employee who coordinated Reddit's popular "Ask Me Anything" interviews. This decision triggered massive community backlash, with hundreds of subreddits going dark in protest during what became known as the "Reddit Revolt" or "AMAgeddon." As the platform descended into chaos, the board made a surprising decision: they would bring back co-founder Steve Huffman as CEO. Initially reluctant to return to the company he had left six years earlier, Huffman ultimately felt a responsibility toward the platform he had created. "I felt like I had a duty," he later explained. "This was my baby, and it was in trouble." Ohanian also returned in a role as executive chairman, reuniting the original founding team. Their return represented both a homecoming and an enormous challenge. Reddit had grown to hundreds of millions of users, far beyond what they had managed during their first tenure. The platform faced complex issues around content policies, community governance, and business sustainability that hadn't existed in its early days. Huffman immediately addressed the community in an AMA, acknowledging the challenges and promising greater transparency. His first major action was to establish clearer content policies, banning subreddits dedicated to harassment while attempting to preserve Reddit's commitment to free expression. The founders' return marked a new chapter for Reddit – one that would require balancing their original vision with the realities of managing a platform that had become a significant cultural force. Their leadership evolution from scrappy startup founders to executives of a major internet company reflected both personal growth and adaptation to the changing digital landscape.

Chapter 5: Platform Governance: Balancing Freedom and Responsibility

The tension between free expression and responsible platform governance has defined much of Reddit's history and presented its founders with their most persistent challenge. In Reddit's early days, Huffman and Ohanian embraced an almost absolutist approach to free speech, believing that open discourse would naturally lead to the best content rising to the top through the site's voting system. This philosophy helped Reddit grow into a vibrant community but also created spaces for controversial, offensive, and sometimes harmful content. When Huffman returned as CEO in 2015, he inherited a platform that had become notorious for hosting problematic communities. His approach to this challenge would fundamentally reshape Reddit's identity and policies. Initially maintaining Reddit's historical commitment to free speech, Huffman famously stated that the platform would not ban legal content, regardless of how offensive it might be. However, this position quickly evolved as he confronted the realities of running a major platform in an increasingly polarized online environment. A turning point came in November 2016 with what became known as "Spezgiving." Frustrated by personal attacks from users in r/The_Donald (a subreddit dedicated to supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump), Huffman secretly edited comments that criticized him, replacing his username with those of the subreddit's moderators. When discovered, this breach of trust caused an uproar. Huffman publicly apologized, acknowledging that as CEO, he should be held to a higher standard. The incident forced a moment of reflection about Reddit's approach to moderation and community management. Following this controversy, Huffman and his team developed more comprehensive content policies. They introduced the concept of "quarantining" problematic subreddits – restricting their visibility without outright banning them – and established clearer rules against harassment, violence, and illegal activities. After the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in a death, Reddit banned several white nationalist communities. These decisions marked a significant shift from Reddit's earlier absolutist free speech stance to a more nuanced approach that considered the real-world impact of online communities. To implement these policies consistently, Reddit built specialized teams focused on trust and safety, anti-evil operations (combating spam and manipulation), and policy enforcement. The company developed sophisticated tools to detect coordinated inauthentic behavior, particularly after evidence emerged of foreign interference on the platform during the 2016 election. These investments reflected a growing recognition that platform governance required both clear principles and robust enforcement mechanisms. Despite these changes, Huffman maintained that Reddit should remain a place where a wide range of viewpoints could be expressed. He resisted calls to ban controversial but rule-abiding communities, arguing that driving such discussions underground would only make them more extreme. Instead, he focused on creating clearer boundaries and better enforcement mechanisms, while preserving Reddit's fundamental character as a platform where communities largely governed themselves through volunteer moderators. This evolution in platform governance reflected both founders' growing understanding that absolute freedom without accountability was ultimately detrimental to the very communities Reddit aimed to serve. Their approach sought to balance their original vision of an open digital commons with the responsibilities that came with operating a platform used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. This balance remains an ongoing challenge, with each policy decision requiring careful consideration of competing values and interests.

Chapter 6: Beyond Reddit: Expanding Their Impact

After establishing Reddit as one of the internet's most influential platforms, both Huffman and Ohanian have leveraged their experiences and visibility to expand their impact across the technology ecosystem and beyond. Their post-Reddit trajectories reflect their distinct personalities and priorities while continuing to shape digital culture in meaningful ways. Ohanian has embraced a multifaceted public role as investor, advocate, and cultural figure. In 2011, he co-founded Initialized Capital, a venture firm that became an early backer of successful companies like Coinbase, Instacart, and Patreon. His investment philosophy often centered on companies that empowered individuals and communities – reflecting the same values that had guided Reddit's development. In 2016, he launched 776, a new venture fund named after the year of America's founding, with a particular focus on sustainability, health, and economic empowerment. Beyond his investment activities, Ohanian has become a vocal advocate for issues ranging from internet freedom to paternity leave. His marriage to tennis champion Serena Williams in 2017 and the birth of their daughter further elevated his public profile, providing platforms to address topics not typically associated with tech entrepreneurs. When he resigned from Reddit's board in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, he urged the company to replace him with a Black candidate, demonstrating his commitment to using his position to create opportunities for others. Huffman has maintained a more focused approach, concentrating primarily on Reddit's operations since his return as CEO. Under his leadership, Reddit has transformed from a troubled company to a thriving platform with hundreds of millions of users and a multibillion-dollar valuation. He has overseen Reddit's first major redesign in over a decade, the development of native mobile apps, and the introduction of new features like streaming video and audio chat. These initiatives have helped make Reddit more accessible to mainstream users while preserving its distinctive community-driven character. In 2021, Huffman guided Reddit through a significant funding round that valued the company at over $10 billion, positioning it for potential public offering. This financial milestone represented a remarkable evolution from the scrappy startup he and Ohanian had founded in 2005. Throughout this growth, Huffman has maintained his hands-on approach to product development, continuing to shape Reddit's technical architecture and user experience. Both founders have also shared their knowledge and experiences through writing, speaking, and mentorship. Ohanian's book "Without Their Permission" chronicles Reddit's early days while advocating for entrepreneurship and internet freedom. Huffman has been more selective in his public appearances but has spoken candidly about the challenges of content moderation and platform governance at industry conferences and in congressional testimony. Their expanded influence reflects how the skills and perspectives developed during Reddit's creation have applications far beyond a single platform. Ohanian's entrepreneurial evangelism and social advocacy, alongside Huffman's technical leadership and governance experience, continue to shape conversations about technology's role in society. While their paths have diverged in many ways, both remain connected to the vision of an open digital commons that inspired Reddit's creation.

Chapter 7: Legacy: Reshaping How Communities Form Online

What began in 2005 as a simple link-sharing website has evolved into one of the most influential platforms on the internet, with profound impacts on media, politics, finance, and popular culture. Reddit's journey from niche forum to mainstream cultural force reflects broader shifts in how information spreads and communities form in the digital age, establishing a lasting legacy for its founders that extends far beyond the platform itself. Reddit's most significant contribution to internet culture lies in its community-centered design. By creating subreddits – topic-specific forums that users could create and moderate themselves – Huffman and Ohanian pioneered a decentralized approach to online community building that has influenced countless platforms. This structure allowed for remarkable diversity of content and conversation, from highly specialized academic discussions to broad interest communities. The subreddit system demonstrated that online platforms could scale across countless interest areas without requiring direct oversight from a central authority, a model that has been widely adopted across the social internet. The platform's democratic approach to content curation – where users, not editors or algorithms, determine what receives visibility through voting – challenged traditional gatekeeping models. This system created opportunities for voices and perspectives that might otherwise have been overlooked by mainstream media to find audiences. From scientific breakthroughs explained by actual researchers to firsthand accounts from people experiencing historical events, Reddit became a place where expertise and authentic experience were valued regardless of credentials or status. This democratization of information sharing has influenced how news organizations, brands, and public figures approach online engagement. Reddit has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to mobilize collective action, from charitable initiatives to political movements. The platform played a significant role in organizing opposition to SOPA and PIPA legislation in 2012, contributing to one of the internet's most successful policy advocacy campaigns. More recently, communities like r/WallStreetBets have challenged financial power structures by coordinating retail investors around "meme stocks" like GameStop. These examples illustrate how Reddit's structure enables not just conversation but coordinated action that can impact systems far beyond the platform itself. Perhaps most importantly, Huffman and Ohanian's creation has provided a counterpoint to the trend toward increasingly closed, algorithm-driven social platforms. While much of the social internet has moved toward optimizing engagement through personalized feeds and recommendation systems, Reddit has maintained its community-centered approach where users actively seek out specific conversations rather than passively consuming algorithmically selected content. This model has preserved a space for deeper engagement and community formation in an increasingly fragmented digital landscape. The founders' legacy extends beyond Reddit itself to their influence on internet governance and digital entrepreneurship. Their experiences navigating the complexities of platform responsibility have informed broader conversations about content moderation, free expression, and the social impacts of technology. Their journey from college roommates to influential technology leaders demonstrates how vision, adaptability, and commitment to core principles can shape not just a successful company but the very fabric of online interaction. As the internet continues to evolve, the model of community-driven discourse that Huffman and Ohanian pioneered remains a powerful alternative to both traditional media hierarchies and algorithm-dominated social platforms. Their lasting contribution has been creating a space where communities can form around shared interests and collectively determine what matters – truly making Reddit "the front page of the internet" for millions of users worldwide.

Summary

Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian's creation of Reddit represents one of the internet's most consequential experiments in community-driven content and governance. From their unlikely partnership at the University of Virginia to building a platform now used by hundreds of millions, their journey illuminates how complementary talents can create something greater than the sum of its parts. Huffman's technical brilliance and systematic thinking paired with Ohanian's charisma and marketing instincts enabled them to build not just a website but an ecosystem where thousands of distinct communities could flourish under a shared framework. Their most enduring contribution lies in demonstrating that online spaces can be genuinely democratic – where users rather than algorithms or editors determine what deserves attention. This vision of an open digital commons, where communities largely govern themselves while sharing a common infrastructure, offers a powerful alternative to both the walled gardens of social media giants and the fragmentation of the broader internet. For anyone interested in how online communities form and evolve, or how platforms balance freedom with responsibility, the Reddit founders' ongoing experiment continues to provide valuable insights into the possibilities and challenges of digital community building in the twenty-first century.

About Author

Loading...

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

Read more