Alexis Ohanian
| Alexis Ohanian | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Alexis Kerry Ohanian April 24, 1983 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Residence | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Virginia |
| Known for | entrepreneurship, startups, social marketing, open internet activism |
| Notable work | Reddit, Initialized Capital, Small Empires, Without Their Permission |
| Partner(s) | Serena Williams (e. 2016) |
| Website | Alexisohanian.com |
Alexis Kerry Ohanian (born April 24, 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor of Armenian descent, known for co-founding the social news website Reddit, where he is currently serving as executive chairman. He also co-founded the early stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk, and started the social enterprise Breadpig. Ohanian is based in San Francisco, and was a partner at Y Combinator.
Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Chris Ohanian, an Armenian-American whose grandparents came to the US as refugees, and a German-born mother, Anke, who worked as an au pair and overstayed her visa when she began a relationship with Ohanian's father. He went to Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, where he gave the student address for his graduating class in 2001.
After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian and friend Steve Huffman pitched the idea, My Mobile Menureddit.com to Y Combinator. The company passed on the idea, but encouraged the duo to come up with another idea it could potentially fund. They subsequently came up with reddit.com with the goal of it becoming the "front page of the Internet." Now living in Boston, they were less than a month into development when Ohanian learned that his girlfriend had fallen five stories and was in a coma. Shortly after, his father called him to tell him that his mother had been diagnosed with an inoperable tumor. They joined the first batch of Summer 2005, and were later acquired by Condé Nast in 2006 for an undisclosed amount between 10–20 million dollars. Ohanian continued to work closely with Reddit as a member of its Board of Directors. He returned to Reddit full-time with co-founder Huffman on July 10, 2015, to lead the now-independent company.
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