Reddit is worth nearly $ 21 billion after Megahit's profits last week. His CEO said success has taken two decades, a big change in leadership and reminding employees that they have to work hard.
In an episode of the “Prof G Pod” podcast released on Sunday, the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, spoke of the founding trip of the platform. He also answered a question about the biggest changes he made that had the most impact in the company.
He said the biggest change was to use common sense, to wonder if their product was actually good and to be ready to change things to get there.
“Another big change for Reddit was that we did not work as a business. We were really idealistic, and I think that in many ways, idealism was very good, but we were also idealistic not to be a business – which is not a great way to manage a sustainable business,” said Huffman about the growth of the company after its return as CEO in 2015.
“Enveloped in a part of this idealism was also like, not working very hard,” added Huffman.
Huffman remembers having said to the employees: “Listen, we have to work really, very hard. We are in a competitive space.”
He added: “If we do not work really hard and we are really working intelligent and this thing succeeded both from the point of view of the user and from the commercial point of view, then we cannot do it, and we will never reach our mission.”
Huffman co -founded Reddit with his university roommate Alexis Ohanian in 2005 and supervised his 2006 acquisition by Condé Nast. He left the company to coex the Hipmunk travel website before returning to Reddit as CEO in 2015. Huffman was responsible for overthrowing the business after having faced a series of challenges, including difficulty recruiting and poor advertising due to the controversial content on the platform.
Reddit became a public in March 2024 and increased up to 70% on his first day of negotiation. Since then, its stock has increased by 147% and is worth around $ 113.
In Sunday's podcast, Huffman said that the feeling of “idealism” faced at its beginnings is a problem in Silicon Valley as a whole.
“In the bay region, this is this, it's almost a right to” work in these companies, but I don't have to work very hard and I am here for me “,” he said.
Huffman added that technology employees, including Reddit engineers, tended to take ideas from other prosperous companies. He said that his engineers had adopted Apple's philosophy of “it's done when it is done” And used the sentence when he asked for product time limits.
“But the version I receive is not this artisanal world product product,” said Huffman. “It's like late and shitty.”
The CEO said that he too did not like to be precipitated as an engineer, and establishing realistic deadlines was part of his maturation as a leader.
On Thursday, Reddit published profits from the first quarter that sent its actions to 19% after the hours. Turnover increased 61% in annual shift to $ 392.4 million.
One of the biggest engines of Reddit's success is that users treat the platform as a search engine for their requests and often add “Reddit” at the end of their Google research. During the last year, changes in Google algorithm have both increased and injured Reddit.
During Thursday's winning call, Huffman said that the company “expects bumps along the google”, but the platform would always meet the needs of people looking for “subjective, authentic, messy and multiple, Reddit provides”.
