Reddit, Inc.

Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian applied to Y Combinator in 2005 with an idea for a mobile food ordering app called "My Mobile Menu." Paul Graham rejected it. He then called them back and told them they should build "the front page of the internet" — a social news aggregation site where users voted on links. Huffman and Ohanian built Reddit in three weeks. It launched in June 2005. The concept was simple: users submitted links, other users voted them up or down, and the most popular content rose to the top.

Conde Nast Publications acquired Reddit in October 2006 for a reported $10-20 million — less than 18 months after its founding. The acquisition seemed sensible: Reddit was growing rapidly as a source of news and discussion. Conde Nast gave Reddit relative autonomy but limited resources. The site grew organically while its parent company struggled to understand what it had bought. Reddit was spun out as an independent subsidiary in 2011, eventually becoming a standalone company with Advance Publications as its primary shareholder.

Reddit's moderation model — communities (subreddits) self-governed by volunteer moderators — created a platform that was simultaneously Reddit's greatest asset and its most persistent problem. The same structure that enabled thriving communities around every conceivable interest also enabled communities dedicated to harassment, hate speech, and illegal content. Reddit banned several high-profile subreddits in 2015 following a public controversy over content policies. The tension between free expression and content moderation has never been fully resolved.

In January 2021, users of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit coordinated to buy shares and call options in GameStop — a struggling video game retailer that was heavily shorted by hedge funds. The buying pressure drove GameStop's stock from approximately $20 to a peak of $483 in two weeks, causing billions of dollars in losses for short sellers including Melvin Capital, which required a $2.75 billion bailout. The episode made Reddit front-page news globally and demonstrated that online communities could move financial markets in ways that regulators and institutions had not anticipated.

Reddit announced in 2023 that it would charge third-party developers for API access — fees so high that most third-party Reddit apps became unviable. Thousands of subreddits went dark in protest, with moderators making communities private or restricting them to read-only. The protests were the largest coordinated action in Reddit's history. Reddit held firm. Third-party apps shut down. Reddit went public in March 2024 at $34 per share — a valuation of approximately $6.4 billion. The company that Paul Graham had told two founders to build had taken 19 years to reach the public markets.