Alexis Kerry Ohanian is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor also known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social news website Reddit.
Early life and education
Alexis Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 24, 1983, to a German-born mother, Anke, and Armenian descent, Chris Ohanian. Ohanian’s father came to the United States as a refugee.
Ohanian graduated from Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, where he was a brilliant student and was chosen to give the graduate student address of his class in 2001. Ohanian attended the University of Virginia, where he met Steve Huffman, and in 2005, he achieved a degree in commerce and history. Ohanian worked as a waiter at Pizza Hut after graduation during initial days and then contemplated becoming a lawyer.
Ohanian’s destiny suddenly changed when he went to Cambridge with Huffman to attend a lecture on How to Start a Start-up by Paul Graham.
MyMobileMenu
After college, Ohanian and his friend, Steve Huffman pitched the idea MyMobileMenu to Y Combinator. His first venture was to sell the idea of an online food-delivery app. However, this idea has already existed back then and failed to gain any sponsors for Ohanian. The company passed on the idea but urged the two to derive with another one that could potentially fund. The duo subsequently came up with reddit.com with the objective of it becoming the front page of the Internet. It was to be a media aggregator and social news where registered members could submit content. The name derived from the phrase read it.
Living in Boston at the time, they were less than a month into development when Ohanian heard the news that his girlfriend had fallen from five stories and was in a coma. Soon after, his father phoned Ohanian to tell him that his mother has an inoperable tumor.
Reddit was accepted as a startup by ‘Y Combinator’ in 2005 and was sold to the mass media company ‘Conde Nast’ in 2006 for an undisclosed sum between $10 and $20 million. Ohanian remained to work closely with ‘Reddit’ as a co-founder with Huffman on July 10, 2015, to lead the now-independent company and continued a member of the board of directors. Ohanian also entered several new ventures at the same time.
Ohanian launched ‘Breadpig’ in 2007. The company produces “geeky” products. They sell the products and donate their earnings to the charity. Ohanian sets up the company and now is running on its own, without the need of his day to day involvement.
Ohanian spoke at TED in 2009, about a whale named Mister Splashy Pants. In 2010, after leaving Reddit, Ohanian spent working in micro-finance for three months as a Kiva fellow in Yerevan, Armenia. The project targeted to help people to develop self-reliant and oppressed poverty. In 2010, Ohanian helped launch travel search website Hipmunk and now represents as an adviser. In the same year, Ohanian revealed the launch of his company Das Kapital Capital, which centers on startup investing, advising and consulting.
In the late 2010 and early of 2011, Ohanian voiced out against Congress’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act. Ohanian helped manage the Internet-enabled campaign that ultimately overturned the two bills. Ohanian spoke to members of the Congress, helped release the national anti-SOPA/PIPA protests that took place in January 2012, and spoke at the rally in New York that was prepared by NY Tech Meetup.
Ohanian teamed up in October 2012, with Erik Martin, Reddit’s General Manager and embarked on the Internet Bus Tour from Denver, Colorado to Danville, Kentucky to campaign for the open Internet. In May 2014, Ohanian began lobbying the FCC to support net neutrality, culminating with a day-long phone-a-thon into the FCC and Congress in January 2015.
The company became independent in 2015 under Ohanian’s guidance and leadership. He administered the company until February 2018 and then shifted his focus to investing. Ohanian was instrumental in the launch of the third ‘Initailized Capital’ fund with Garry Tan that completed seed investments in startups such as Instacart, Zenefits, Opendoor, and Cruise.
Initialized Capital
In 2011, Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan founded another venture capital called Initialized Capital and headquartered in San Francisco. In its first fund, they were able to raise $7 million. It filed its Form D notice of an exempt offering of securities in February 2012. In its second fund, it raised $39 million in August 2013. The firm announced a $100 million target in June 2016, for its third fund, and then closed $125 million. It raised a $225 million fund in late 2018. While its founders came from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital is was never associated with Y Combinator in any way.
Initialized Capital concentrates on seed and early-stage venture investments. Its goal is to look for high-quality founders first and then aims to visualize if it can benefit or understand the market a company is attacking in any way.
As of 2019, Initialized Capital has raised over $500 million in funds.
Personal Life
During Ohanian’s early career, he went through a lot of stressful times, from his then-girlfriend who fell from the fifth story building and slipped into a coma to his mother with an inoperable tumor. However, Ohanian recovered from his trauma and continued to do well.
Ohanian became engaged to Serena Williams, a tennis player on December 10, 2016. After dating Williams for 15 months, their daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian was born on September 1, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Florida. Ohanian and Williams got married in New Orleans on November 16, 2017.
Ohanian has been a successful person in his life and has accumulated a net worth of $10 million.