It's also somewhat easy to plan a party. The problem is getting people to show up.
And a venue with big enough infrastructure to support that many people at your party. And then we get back to the staff who you usually pay…
The app isn't the secret sauce. The moderation team is. Moderation is the hard part of running a site like reddit, otherwise it will turn into a big steaming pile of porn, botspam, crypto poop and probably a whole bunch of other illegal stuff.
If Reddit had years of runway in an easy money macro climate and still can’t achieve profitability. How’s a startup/clone supposed to get up and running today?