I'd say your logic is a bit flawed if you think that the logic for what to do when reaching 15K signups needs to be identical to the logic for what to do when reaching 1M signups. The reasoning for each goal can be totally different.

That said, personally I'm not going to use a site branded around the name spez.

I agree. This is absurd. A reddit clone is a few hours work. The technology is not the difficult part, and they haven't even done it?

Anyway the idea as a whole is stupid, because the problem with reddit is not its CEO but its entire design. It was an interesting idea, but it has failed. People are upset because third party mobile apps will be gone, but the site as a whole was far better before the influx of phoneposters anyway! Phoneposting is fundamentally incompatible with text beyond a couple of sentences. Phoneposters want - and get - short, easily consumed memes, photos, and videos.e They post short, easily consumed, low-value comments. Phoneposters have turned reddit from "the front page of the internet" into a site dominated by screenshots of tweets.