THE LONG CON: How Reddit's founders took their company back #reddit #tech #startups #stockmarket
00:00:00.000 | This was a post by you Sean, who is a former CEO of Reddit that
00:00:03.420 | was published back in I think 2015. He kind of lays out what I
00:00:06.780 | think happened. Reddit was sold for only about $10 million a
00:00:09.760 | year after it launched. So like really, really small. And I
00:00:12.400 | think that it kept growing. And the founders realized maybe that
00:00:15.920 | made a mistake. So they started scheming on how to get Conde Nast
00:00:19.040 | to spin it back out. So you shun lays out the steps they went
00:00:21.960 | through, they recruited a CEO, then they had that CEO demand
00:00:26.440 | options specifically in Reddit from Conde Nast, which meant
00:00:30.240 | that Conde Nast had to create a separate cap table for it. And
00:00:33.160 | then once they had a separate cap table, then they could sort
00:00:35.680 | of pressure to have like an outside investor bought in for
00:00:38.640 | the expertise that just happened to be Sam Altman. Eventually
00:00:41.600 | step by step, they worked it to the point where they got Conde
00:00:44.520 | Nast to spin off the company. And I guess this plan worked. It
00:00:47.280 | should be said that the largest shareholder in Reddit, according
00:00:50.580 | to the S1 is Conde Nast's parent company. It was smart for Conde
00:00:54.040 | Nast to do the spin out and give up 70% to 30% of what's going to
00:00:58.240 | be a multi billion dollar IPO.