Reddit Co-Founder: The PRICE Most Wont Pay for Success (Its Not What You Think)

Here are the top 10 insights from Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder, on navigating success, personal sacrifice, and finding meaning in both technology and humanity.

1. The weight of generational responsibility

Alexis Ohanian's earliest influential memory came from his great aunt Vera, who explained to him at just six years old that his birthday being on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day carried deep significance. She impressed upon him that he was "the product of all their sacrifice" and had "a tremendous responsibility to make the most out of this life."

This early conversation instilled in him a sense of purpose and responsibility that has driven him throughout his life. He describes it as a weight that he'll never escape, creating a feeling that he has "not done enough" despite his successes. This feeling of responsibility to honor his ancestors' sacrifices has been a powerful motivating force throughout his career.

The same aunt later funded his college education at the University of Virginia, allowing him to graduate debt-free. Ohanian acknowledges this "ultimate cheat code" of having loving parents and a supportive extended family as foundational to his success, while still feeling the pressure to live up to their sacrifices.

2. Compartmentalizing personal tragedy

During the early days of Reddit, Ohanian faced significant personal tragedies. Two months into starting the company, his girlfriend had a serious accident and fell into a coma. Shortly after, his mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme, stage four). Despite these devastating events, he used intense compartmentalization as a coping mechanism.

His mother's first words after her diagnosis were "I am sorry" because she worried about being a distraction from his company. This selfless response gave him unshakable determination to make Reddit succeed. He recalls telling her, "You should not be apologizing to me right now. Focus on yourself. You owe me nothing. You've already given me everything."

For the next decade, he used work as therapy, focusing intensely on his professional goals without processing the emotional impact of these events. While he acknowledges this wasn't ideal, he now sees compartmentalization as both helpful and harmful. He believes there's value in "having some stuff in boxes" but also in occasionally opening those boxes to "rearrange some stuff, to sort through some stuff, to organize it."

3. The myth of work-life balance

Ohanian challenges the concept of perfect work-life balance, stating bluntly: "There's no such thing as balance. You've got to figure it out. You're always never doing enough." He acknowledges that modern women have struggled with these competing demands for generations, and only recently has this become a topic of discussion for fathers.

The entrepreneur describes his approach as making clear promises about presence. He commits: "When I'm on the clock for work, I'm going to show up here the best way that I can. When I'm on the clock for my family, I'm going to show up there the best way that I can." This perspective rejects the idea that excellence in career and family are mutually exclusive.

Ohanian gets frustrated when people misinterpret his social media presence (making pancakes for his daughters, smoking meats) as suggesting he isn't serious about business. He argues there's nothing wrong with striving to be exceptional both professionally and as a parent, even while acknowledging the difficult tradeoffs involved.

4. The importance of male friendships

Ohanian identifies his relationships with longtime male friends as an area he's sacrificed but values deeply. These friends provide essential humility, treating him the same way they did before his success and fame. He appreciates the genuine nature of these decades-long friendships where "it's 100% genuine" unlike some relationships that form after achieving success.

After losing one of his closest friends to a sudden heart attack, Ohanian gained a new perspective on health and mortality. This friend, who was "the most fit out of all of us," died unexpectedly while training at the gym. This loss prompted Ohanian to take his health more seriously, getting comprehensive medical tests and adopting more disciplined health habits.

He observes that as they've grown older, these male friendships have deepened beyond conversations about "football or video games or girls" to include more vulnerable discussions about life and feelings. He advocates for normalizing emotional vulnerability between men, saying: "Normalize telling the men in your life that you love them, whether that's your father, your brother, your best friend... you will not regret it."

5. Supporting founders' wellbeing drives better returns

Drawing from his own difficult experiences while founding Reddit with limited resources, Ohanian built founder wellness into his venture firm 776. Unlike his experience at Y Combinator where he agonized over a $200 plane ticket to visit his ailing mother, his firm provides founders with resources for "wellness, development, and caregiving needs."

This approach isn't just altruistic—Ohanian believes it leads to better business outcomes. "I actually think it will drive better outcomes. It will mean better leaders, better managers, better founders, which will lead to healthier organizations, which I think will lead to more returns." He sees this as both the morally right approach and the strategically smart one.

Ohanian acknowledges that founders set the culture of their companies whether intentionally or not. "Even just the way you show up on a zoom call... you are dictating so much of how other people are going to move." By addressing their personal challenges and working on their wellbeing, founders can create healthier company cultures and avoid passing their "baggage" to their teams.

6. The pendulum swing back to human artisanship

Despite being a tech optimist, Ohanian predicts a cultural pendulum swing toward valuing human-created experiences and products. As AI and robotics make perfect, commoditized versions of goods widely available, he believes people will increasingly seek out and value the human touch in various domains.

He offers several examples to illustrate this concept. Even when robots can make perfect, affordable croissants, some people will still seek out human artisans. Similarly, while AI may transform screen-based entertainment, Ohanian predicts live theater "will be more popular than ever" because people will crave the authentic human connection of live performance.

Ohanian extends this thinking to sports as well: "No one's going to pay money to cheer for and cry for a robot kicking a soccer ball. We need humans doing that. We need to feel their pain and their success and their triumphs." This perspective offers optimism about the continued value of human creativity and connection in an increasingly AI-driven world.

7. Failure to lead versus failure to execute

Ohanian shares a pivotal learning experience from his early career at Reddit. After the company was acquired, instead of "resting and vesting" like many acquired founders, he continued innovating. When trying to develop a mobile app for Reddit in 2009-2010, the engineering team resisted changing their browser-focused approach.

Rather than doing the harder work of leadership—building consensus, making the case, and getting buy-in—he bypassed the team and hired freelancers to build the app. While the app (named "I Reddit") launched successfully, it died a year later after Ohanian left because "there was no one left to support it and there was no institutional buy in."

When he returned to Reddit in 2014, he faced the same resistance to mobile development, forcing him to recognize his leadership failure: "I failed. We had this five years ago and yet here we are." This experience taught him that relentless execution without proper leadership and team alignment ultimately limits what can be achieved sustainably.

8. Finding partnership with shared understanding

Ohanian's marriage to tennis champion Serena Williams benefits from their mutual understanding of ambition and high achievement. He explains that in previous relationships, his intense drive often created friction: "The general theme was I knew I was super ambitious. I was very up front about it. But it still doesn't really land until three months in, six months in... and you realize, oh this guy's not going to change."

What attracted him to Serena was that she inherently understood ambition due to her own extraordinary career. "We would never have this conversation about like, 'Well, why do you have to do this thing?' or 'Why is this so important?'" Their shared understanding eliminates common relationship tensions around career priorities.

Ohanian appreciates witnessing Serena's transition from "winning Grand Slam after Grand Slam" to "making cinnamon rolls for the second grade class." He sees her enjoying aspects of a normal life she never had growing up as a tennis prodigy. Their relationship works because they recognize and support each other's different life phases rather than expecting the other to match their current priorities.

9. The future of skills in an AI world

Regarding career advice in the age of AI, Ohanian has shifted his perspective. Ten years ago, he advised college students to learn programming. Today, he acknowledges that while coding skills remain important, AI tools will dramatically increase individual productivity, making other skills more valuable.

He emphasizes building "skills that I know are going to be durable" over the next decades. Empathy stands out as critical: "Empathy is a skill that I think will be the last bastion of AI." He believes professions requiring deep empathy, physical dexterity, creativity, and problem-solving will maintain their value even as AI advances.

Ohanian encourages adaptability above all: "The more comfortable you can be in the discomfort of constant change, the better." Rather than fearing technology's impact, he sees opportunity in developing uniquely human capabilities that complement rather than compete with AI. This perspective offers a roadmap for thriving in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

10. The responsibility in building online platforms

Ohanian's experiences at Reddit shaped his views on platform responsibility. He describes resigning from Reddit's board in 2020 after disagreements over content moderation, particularly around communities sharing videos of deaths and content built on racism. He found himself "the only person out of five who was advocating for banning" harmful content.

He articulates a nuanced perspective on internet freedom, acknowledging that all platforms make moderation choices: "We've all agreed that spam does not matter. We are all okay impinging on the free speech of a spammer... So if we agree on that, then now we just need to agree on where we draw the line." He argues that completely unmoderated spaces don't exist and platforms inevitably shape what content thrives.

Looking at the next generation of social media, Ohanian sees positive signs. He observes newer platforms moving away from the "internet popularity contest" model toward more authentic connection. He believes "the culture has already now built up enough of an immune system" that younger users are pushing back against older social media models and seeking healthier online relationships.