ALEXIS OHANIAN: 

UVA graduating class of 2021, I am very excited to be here. And if I'm being honest, I barely got in here in the first place. And if it weren't for early decision applications and a retake of SAT, I don't think I'd be a Wahoo. Fortunately, though, I was.

And I was here on grounds during, I think it was my second year, when I walked out of an LSAT that I was taking in order to go get breakfast at Waffle House on 29. That place is amazing for waffles and epiphanies. You see, because while I was there in booth 19, I decided I probably shouldn't be a lawyer if I walked out of the LSAT. And instead, I should start a startup. So if it weren't for being hungry, I don't think I'd have ever started Reddit and wouldn't be here either.

But luckily, 16 years ago, I was right where you are, hung over and waiting for a graduation speaker to get their commencement speech over with. I knew I was going to start a company. But even then, I didn't know how it would work other than "front page of the internet." And then I had a mascot which I created while I was bored in a class at McIntyre-- true story.

Very little in your life will make sense as it's happening. You'll connect all these dots of meaning later when you look back on it. And spoiler alert, graduates, this day is not for you. It's really for the people who helped get you here. I didn't realize that until many years after my mom had died. But what I have now are the photos of her that day and how ridiculously proud she was. She had given up a career to overstay her work visa here in America because of love. She ended up with a GED and a son whom she always told could do anything.

And she was so proud, you would have thought she was the one graduating here 16 years ago. I never could have guessed that she would have been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer just a few months into starting Reddit. But all the very best parts of me and any of the good things that I've contributed to Reddit or anything, really, they're thanks to her. So take that time.

Gosh, take that time to hug. Take that time to appreciate every single person who helped get you here. All right. Do that. You will not regret it. Thank them. Tell them you love them. And really, really mean it because you're going to have so many moments in your life that you won't be able to get back. And this is one of those really special ones. So that's an easy one. You're not going to regret that decision. There's some free advice. I guarantee you're going to appreciate it later.

And it actually speaks to a bigger thing, which is, those people and the experiences they had and you had with them, those are the things that matter. And I got to learn this firsthand as a 21-year-old because my mom was faced with a limited window. She knew how many years she had left. And those are the things that people care about when they face that end. So please, invest in people and experiences.

Not a lot of people realize this. Actually, I don't think I've told anyone this. The Reddit alien started having these little doodles in the top corner. You see, my mom, she did her best to be supportive, even going through chemo and that really torturous process. And so, whenever we'd talk on the phone, and she'd have read Reddit, even though the content was really not anything she was into, to try to make conversation and just share an interest in my work. So I wanted to make it a little easier on her.

So I started drawing a fun doodle every morning in the logo. So like this little Canvas of 120 by 40 pixels, I would just draw these doodles, kind of how Google does for holidays. I would just do them for holidays, but also just for no reason, every day. And these adventures of space travel or snowball fights. And I had this little canvas where I would spend 30 minutes a day drawing and creating. And it was very cathartic. It was really the only therapy that I got during those years, and it shouldn't have been, but it was.

And it turned out what I was creating with those hundreds of designs was something that was really special for our users, for our community. I have countless people telling me how much they enjoyed coming to the site just to see how the alien Snoo was doing. I've met dozens of people, literally met dozens of people who have a tattoo of this creature that I created while I was a bored fourth year and that I brought to life just because I wanted to make my sick mom smile a little bit every day.

And that experience, especially while so young and feeling so invulnerable was just incredibly grounding for me. And it's something I've tried to carry as best I can. It's something that I hope to instill in my daughter now. People and experiences are the ones who matter. They are our-- our family is that atomic, most basic atomic unit of community.

And I didn't appreciate this until I was a father myself. But now I really understand how, even from the earliest days, the people who are here supporting you have been thinking about this, have been looking forward to this and feel so much fulfillment, more than you will understand until maybe one day, god willing, you get to be a parent yourself.

And now, as a father, I can only hope, for many moments like the one that I cringed about at the time 16 years ago of my proud parent, but now I'm the proud parent who's so excited about my own kids' triumphs. And for instance, it was a really big deal around here the first time our daughter Olympia wrote her own name. And look, no offense, Olympia, but you all graduated from the best university in the United States of America. Hell, yeah. So that's a hell of an accomplishment.

But I'm not going to-- look, I'm not going to talk to you as a CEO today. I'm actually-- I'd like to talk to you as a history major because, after all, I did declare it here my very first semester as a first year. And it's actually the reason my new company is called 776, which is the year of the first ancient Olympic games. Thank you, Professor Lendon, great class, Ancient Greek History. And if you want to know what will happen next, study history.

I'm in the business of technology and investing. But I'm not good at my job because I can predict the future. I'm good at my job because I can learn quickly from the past and the present in order to see where things are trending, in order to connect the dots between all the people and all the experiences that I see. And there have been two major cultural transformations in Western civilization. And both of them followed global pandemics.

See where I'm going here? After the bubonic plague came the Renaissance, kind of a big deal for Western culture and civilization. Then after the Spanish flu came the roaring '20s. Radical cultural changes happened in America. Mass media, all kinds of things were being revolutionized. And then the party ended with the Great Depression, which helped Hitler convince Germans and far too many Americans than we'd like to admit that national socialism was the solution. Remember, humans did that, all the good and all the bad. Let's learn from both so that we can do more good.

And so if there's one thing I'd like to instill in all of you, it's that no one is perfect. I'm not perfect, sorry to say, neither are you. But that's great. So we shouldn't lionize individuals or man-made institutions because, like the people that created them, they are all inherently flawed. Now, rainbows, they're perfect, especially double rainbows. We should continue to be in awe of rainbows. My daughter is really into rainbows right now.

But everything else, a very imperfect human made that. And that's OK because that means another imperfect human like you has the power to make it better or replace it entirely. The sooner you start looking at the world this way, the sooner you will be in a position to radically change things, to improve things, to build better systems. Critically looking at things and criticizing them is a part of the process. But don't let that be where it ends.

Start building better systems. And use those observations to inform how you do it. Keep asking why. It's one of the greatest gifts of having a 3 and 1/2 year old is getting asked endlessly why. Because it challenges you, as a parent, to really think, like, OK, why? That first-principles thinking is one of the best things you can do. And look, if you find yourself in a situation where you can't make the changes needed, it's OK to walk away because sometimes that can have an even bigger impact. I know that's true.

Now, look, after COVID, we will enter a third defining period of cultural transformation. And community will be what defines this era. Look, I know it's the Reddit guy talking about community, but hear me out, OK. Before social media and smartphones, civic engagement was plummeting. Community was on the decline. If you haven't read Bowling Alone, you should. But something changed.

Thanks to the democratization of the World Wide Web, people started communing again, even with other people they had never met before offline, people they'd never seen face to face, people they may only through a username or an avatar. And people started bonding, falling in love, finding community. And it's happening online as much as it's happening offline. And I'd argue it's even stronger online where you're able to be your truest self.

So this is a very defining trend of this third wave. And I encourage you all to serve as the architects of this next period in our collective history. As someone who is at the forefront of building digital communities, I am intimately aware of the improvements that need to be made. And I feel a deep responsibility to your generation that we continue to pursue them. We have to do better. It is crucial we get this right because, when the crash comes-- and it will-- we need to have a strong enough community, a strong enough nation to withstand it.

History has shown us, everything is trending toward a more fractured and tribal world right now. And your generation was the first to be truly digital native and grew up affected by all the things we got right and wrong with social media. Yeah, it's complicated. But you all have perspective that I will never have, and you have a full life ahead of you. Please don't squander it. We have such an amazing opportunity.

This third cultural shift, this third renaissance, it's happening. Technology like the World Wide Web has enabled it. The framework is there, probably is going to have something to do with crypto. But most importantly, we have a responsibility to do better, to be better, and to build these experiences that support the people, the people who make our lives everything it is worth living. That's my hope.

I hope all of you know, everything is made up except for the rainbows. Everything is made up. And that should be some of the most empowering and exciting news that you hear. Because there are a few universal truths, those people and those experiences. And there is going to be an amazing time over the next 10, 15, 20 years as we see what happens with this new technology, with the power of community, to hopefully create a lot more good.

And I don't see any other path forward. We have to figure it out. We have to make it better for my daughter, for her entire generation, for all of us to be able to not just survive, but thrive together, as a community, accepting the fact that we are all deeply flawed, but working to bring about the very best in each and every one of us. So thank you, really, from the bottom of my heart, UVA. I'm so grateful. I wish I could be here or there to do it in person. But thank you for giving me this opportunity.

And congratulations to UVA's graduating class of 2021.

OLYMPIA OHANIAN: [INAUDIBLE]

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, Olympia, thank you for dressing up for this.

OLYMPIA OHANIAN: [INAUDIBLE]

ALEXIS OHANIAN: You look very nice. So all the people papa's talking to went to his university, the University of Virginia, the best university.

OLYMPIA OHANIAN: Aa-ooh

ALEXIS OHANIAN: One of the things that we say at UVA is wahoowa. Can you give me a big wahoowa?

OLYMPIA OHANIAN: Wahowa-hoowa.

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Let's try that again. Hold on. Wahoowa.

OLYMPIA OHANIAN: Wahoowa.

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Hey, there we go, baby girl. Papa's so proud of you. Thank you for helping me with my commencement speech. Congratulations, class of 2021. You did it.