Sierra Gamelgaard

Go Ducks 🐣 | Comms @Reddit | Previous life: @OutCastAgency @UOregon

[Molly O’Shea @MollySOShea]

"@Reddit's data has been used to train every large language model you've heard of"

"Reddit is the fuel for AI.”

[Molly O’Shea @MollySOShea]

BREAKING: @Reddit Hits 2 Years as a Public Company on NYSE ( $RDDT)

Inside Reddit's SF HQ w/ Founder & CEO Steve Huffman

How they cracked the social media + AI $$ model:
ads, AI data, bots, & the “ass in seat” rule

Record Stats:
• $2.2B Annual Revenue FY25 (+69% YoY)
• 24B+ Posts & Comments
• 121M Daily Active Uniques
• 471M+ Weekly Active Uniques
• 100K+ Active Communities

“Users hate ads, but they love brands.”
“Reddit creates virality, but itself is not viral.”
“Reddit is the world’s greatest bullsh*t detector.”

Reddit officially went public on March 21, 2024, trading on @NYSE @lynnmartin

We discuss:
• The IPO strategy that worked (& why to price for momentum)
• From $12M → $2.2B: Reddit’s business evolution
• Why 40% of conversations are commercial
• How Reddit built a winning ads + ad tech engine
• Becoming core infrastructure for AI (“fuel for AI”)
• Data partnerships w/ OpenAI + Google
• Bots vs humans + Reddit’s “ass in seat” philosophy
• Human verification w/o sacrificing anonymity
• Why Reddit rejected engagement-driven social model
• Leadership lessons from building for 20 years

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Steve Huffman, Founder & CEO at Reddit
(01:14) Why going public made Reddit stronger
(05:40) What drove Reddit’s IPO success
(08:30) Letting users buy shares at IPO price
(10:51) What people get wrong about Reddit communities
(14:10) Why Reddit ads work so well
(18:40) Where does AI get its training data?
(21:00) Bots vs AI pretending to be human
(24:40) Internet’s truth detector
(25:57) Why Reddit never became social media
(28:10) How brands should actually use Reddit
(30:20) Fake stories & why they still work
(36:30) Human verification vs privacy online
(40:30) What Reddit protects vs what it changes
(42:10) Incentives & real human behavior
(43:10) What metrics Reddit actually cares about?
(44:50) From $12M to $2.2B how it happened
(48:30) Where Steve gets his advice
(50:40) Advice from Rich Barton on going public
(51:22) Tour Inside Reddit’s SF HQ
(53:20) How AI is changing engineering productivity
(54:40) Why AI will not reduce engineers

[Sequoia Capital @sequoia]

1/ The @Reddit story is one of a kind:

* Startup to sale in ~1 year
* Spin-out once again, outgrowing their parent company
* Community so powerful it catalyzed leadership change
* Founders leaving and returning years later to a company in crisis
* Growing more than 50-fold to an IPO 19 years in the making

Here’s what Reddit looked like 5 minutes after Steve Huffman and @alexisohanian launched it.

[Schwab Network @SchwabNetwork]

“Long story short, our work is working.” $RDDT

@Reddit Co-Founder & CEO Steve Huffman speaks to the evolution of the business and the monetization of A.I. with @NPetallides:

[Schwab Network @SchwabNetwork]

r/ThisWeekOnTheWatchList 🚨

@Reddit $RDDT Co-Founder and CEO Steve Huffman joins @NPetallides to talk earnings, retail trading, meme stocks, and more.

Catch the interview Wednesday at 2:20pm ET!

[Reddit, Inc. @Reddit]

So excited for this AMA®️ done in partnership with our Community Funds program

[Empire State Building Observation Deck @EmpireStateBldg]

Look who came to visit @Reddit

[Fast Company @FastCompany]

Reddit's first chief product officer, Pali Bhat, has been focused for two years on making the site more easily searchable, giving millions of users easier access to "one of the largest corpora of authentic human conversation online." https://t.co/0egRoFDzAx

[Fast Company @FastCompany]

Artists and creators can earn royalties from sales of their avatars. https://t.co/mclT49c3MJ

[Campaign US @CampaignLiveUS]

.@roxyyoung, @Reddit, has earned a spot on this year’s Inspiring Women list. Congratulations! #CampaignInspiringWomen

Check out the other honorees: https://t.co/zUUrrdmVj8

Register Now: https://t.co/i3PSiP4Ens

[Reddit, Inc. @Reddit]

One year in and our Community Funds program is going strong! So far, 14 communities around the world have brought their ideas, like a @NASCAR car design and an art gallery in Brisbane, to life.

Learn more on r/reddit: https://t.co/dSWX2tCI96

[rat king 🐀 @MikeIsaac]

some news: Reddit will begin charging the biggest companies for API access, which has been used historically to train the coming wave of LLMs and artificially intelligent programs

“It’s a good time for us to tighten things up," CEO Steve Huffman said.

https://t.co/rAizNA8EIg

[Reddit, Inc. @Reddit]

In keeping with our value of being "Default Open," today we're sharing our 2022 Transparency Report, as well as our new Transparency Center—a centralized hub for finding information about Reddit's safety, security, and policy practices. https://t.co/izQWKee7mO

[chase @_chase_____]

fuck i completely forgot i need to curl up on my couch and scroll my phone for six hours. can we reschedule

[Casey Newton @CaseyNewton]

It's Hard Fork Friday! This week on the show, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stops by to explain the risks of the Supreme Court meddling with Section 230. PLUS: Kevin reflects on getting Sydney killed https://t.co/Wzn6d5Qzfp

[Reddit, Inc. @Reddit]

TLDR: We have a podcast (!!). "Building Reddit" takes you behind the scenes of your favorite community of communities — you'll hear from engineers, data scientists, marketers & more.

For our first episode, we cover the "Fix the Video Player" initiative: https://t.co/PtWISlPsun

[Insider Advertising @insiderads]

Reddit just hired its first-ever CRO. He tells Insider how Reddit's ad sales team quintupled since 2020, and why a bad economy won't keep it from hiring more this year. https://t.co/l9NcUIRTJp

[LilMoonLambo @LilMoonLambo]

A helicopter being cheaper than a taxi is the best way to describe how living in New York City is like

[Sierra Gamelgaard @sgamelgaard]

Anyone else have the White Lotus theme song constantly playing in their head?….Just me? Cool cool

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

Need a break from the mayhem of Twitter and the mind-numbing scroll of Instagram? “Come over and give Reddit a shot,” @cbattan writes.
https://t.co/SefgMhPtzr