Startup founder and investor Alexis Ohanian spoke to University of Wisconsin-Madison students, community members and chronic procrastinators Thursday as part of his “Epic Book Tour.”
Ohanian, co-founder of the popular social news website Reddit, is currently touring 77 universities to promote his new book, “Without Their Permission.”
He uses anecdotes and lessons from entrepreneurship in his book to inspire students to spread their ideas through the Internet. Ohanian said the lesson from his book is to get out and start failing.
“Serendipity is not going to happen to you, it’s going to happen because of you,” Ohanian said.
He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005 and immediately joined the inaugural class of Y Combinator, a Boston program funding startup Internet companies. With the program’s help, Ohanian and his best friend created Reddit.
Since its creation, Reddit boasts over 112 million readers. Ohanian has also launched two other successful startup websites, Breadpig and Hipmunk. Ohanian said he builds websites for the pride of having his work seen, not for money.
“I thought, there’s another person in the world seeing what I made,” Ohanian said. “It felt so empowering.”
Through memes and other visual aids Ohanian showed how influential the Internet is in everyday life. He argued coding is the most valuable skill of this century, with the bonus of being extremely accessible. Internet fluency, including coding, is an asset and strength of the current generation, according to Ohanian.
“When I got that Internet connection, I felt like a god among men,” Ohanian said.
Ohanian compared his experiences with listening to dial-up when he first logged onto the Internet to today’s modern connection.
“The first version of everything is janky,” Ohanian said. “Just start with solving a problem for 10 people.”
Ohanian said the most important advice he has for college students is to focus less on planning in the long term.
“No one knows what they’re doing. Life is not a paint-by-number, we’re all figuring it out. I still don’t know what I’m doing most of the time,” Ohanian said. “Anyone who fronts to you like they have it all figured out is either lying to you or they’re delusional.”
