Reddit Co-Founder Ohanian to Speak Friday on New Book

Alexis Ohanian headshot

U.Va. graduate Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the social news site Reddit, will be on Grounds Friday to discuss his best-selling new book, “Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed.”

University of Virginia graduate Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the social news site Reddit, will be on Grounds Friday to share lessons learned from the companies he’s started and to discuss his best-selling new book, “Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed.”

Ohanian will speak at 8 p.m. in Rouss/Robertson Hall, room 120, along with three fellow young alumni entrepreneurs: Greg Herrington, co-founder of DealStage; Jaffray Woodriff, co-founder of Quantitative Investment Management; and Tommy Nicholas, co-founder of Coffitivity.com, The City Swig and High Five.

The talk will be preceded by an informal cookout at Hack Cville (#9 Elliwoood Ave. on the Corner) starting at 6 p.m., and will be followed by a networking opportunity in Rouss/Robertson Hall and then an afterparty at Hack Cville, starting at 10 p.m.

All events are free and open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-in, although organizers request that those interested in attending RSVP here.

Books will be available for purchase, and Ohanian will be signing books after the talk.

Billing itself as the “front page of the Internet,” Reddit is a user-driven social news site and global discussion board with more than 80 million users whose collective wisdom rises to the top of thousands of subsections dedicated to just about any topic or interest imaginable, from cute cat photos to nuclear weapon technology. This has made Reddit one of the 50 biggest U.S. websites.

Ohanian and fellow Wahoo Steve Huffman co-founded Reddit in 2005 while they were still undergrads at U.Va. Ohanian continued to manage the product and business at Reddit until leaving in 2010 to volunteer in Armenia for Kiva.org. Today he sits on the board of Reddit.

Ohanian has gone on to help start or invest in more than 60 other startup ventures, including the travel website Hipmunk, founded by Huffman, and his own social enterprise, Breadpig, which has generated more than $200,000 for charities. Based now in Brooklyn, Ohanian is also “Ambassador to the East” for the influential Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture firm Y Combinator.

His new book combines “advice for building successful startup ventures and marketing secrets with examples of heartwarming stories about using the Internet for grassroots campaigns,” according to a CNN review. “It will also include doodles, which perhaps shouldn’t be surprising coming from the man who designed the logos for Breadpig, Hipmunk and Reddit.”

The Ohanian events are presented by Hack Cville, the Entrepreneurship Group at U.Va., the Alpha Kappa Psi co-ed business fraternity at U.Va., the Galant Center for Entrepreneurship at the McIntire School of Commerce, and the Batten Institute at the Darden School of Business.

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