Alexis Ohanian
Co-Founder of reddit, Entrepreneur, Investor, Activist & Bestselling Author of Without Their Permission
Alexis talking about the internet is like Sid Vicious talking about punk. Analysts merely adopted it, but Ohanian was born in it, molded by it, and is the voice of it. A fascinating story, but more importantly: a crucial insight into the healthy proactive mindset of the tech startup world that will keep defining the future.
Alexis Ohanian is an entrepreneur and investor in Brooklyn, NY, best known as the co-founder of reddit.
Alexis and Steve Huffman's original plan was to build an infrastructure that would allow people to order food from their cell phones. Though the idea was rejected, Alexis and Steve were invited to join the first class of Y Combinator, on the condition that they'd come up with a new concept. The next idea they pitched would become reddit.com. Today he sits on the board of reddit, inc., which last month alone had over 100 million unique visitors and is one of the 50 biggest US websites. Alexis also accepted a position as Y Combinator's Ambassador to the East.
In early November 2011, Alexis joined the fight against SOPA and PIPA. He continues to fight for internet freedom working on projects like the Declaration of Intenret Freedom, Internet Defense League, and the Internet 2012 Campaign Bus Tour. He also sat on the NYC Mayor's Council on Tech and Innovation under the Bloomberg Administration.
An active investor with over eighty tech startups now in his portfolio, Alexis is now one of the most prominent investors in tech.
Along the way, Alexis has spoken at TED (a talk viewed over a million times), been rendered in CGI on NMA.TV, was named
to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Technology two years in a row, and included in Inc. Magazine's 30 under 30 for his work at hipmunk. He's a regular contributor on Bloomberg TV, and is especially proud of unlocking his bucket-list achievement - appearing on The Colbert Report.
Alexis has lectured at conferences like TED, the Clinton Global Initiative, SXSW and ROFLCON; spoken to companies such as Google, BBDO, and Betaworks; hired for talks at Johnson & Johnson, Hyatt, Kraft, and Palantir. He even keynoted an entrepreneurship summit in Cairo organized by the U.S. State Department just months after the Egyptian Revolution.
Alexis has appeared in countless publications in print and online: New York Times, WSJ, CNN, Washington Post, The Economist, WIRED, NY Post, Gawker, TechCrunch, Mashable, Paper Magazine, Nylon guys, Forbes, Fast Company, and Inc. He's also appeared in television programs on networks including CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CNBC, Al-jazeera English, NPR and G4.
Videos featuring Alexis Ohanian
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Why Every Company Needs to Be a Tech Company
Alexis OhanianWell, it depends on the company. I obviously live in tech, for the last nine years all I've really known is software and technology startups. I know a few other things, but that’s the bread and butter.
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Previous Events featuring Alexis Ohanian
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Review: The Art of Entrepreneurship - Toronto 2014
Live it. Dream it. Do it. The following are closing remarks curated by our host, Ron Tite based on the presentations by Eric Ryan, Chris Guillebeau, Debbie Travis, Alexis Ohanian, and Gary Vaynerchuk at The Art of Entrepreneurship in Toronto.
Have you seen Alexis Ohanian speak? What did you think?