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Comment by sinnerswing | Hacker News Reader

I thought pg gave you the idea to start reddit?

"Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, rejected their original idea: a mobile food ordering service called MyMobileMenu. Instead, Graham told them, "You guys need to build the front page of the Internet.""

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-...

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I think PG told them to work on (what became) the reddit idea instead of the food ordering idea. The redditors came up with both ideas.

This is correct. Masters of Doom made me want to be an entrepreneur.

What career path did you have your sights on before wanting to become an entrepreneur?

This is quickly turning into a book press stop! I wanted to be an immigration lawyer -- obsessing over my GPA for the first couple of years at UVA. It all changed when I walked out of an LSAT prep course one Saturday morning to get waffles at Waffle House instead.

>Nevertheless, this book convinced me to consider starting a company.

the title is misleading then.

edit:

birth of reddit the idea started with pg, etc.

birth of reddit the company started with alexis, etc.

imo conception starts with the idea.

You brought up an interesting point about the idea for reddit, but you're wrong about the title of this thread.

My understanding is that Reddit would not be Reddit without Alexis. He came up with the name and (I believe) the alien/branding. But more importantly, he fostered a culture of doing the right thing over making an extra dollar, which ultimately enabled Reddit to beat Digg and become a core part of the culture. I wouldn't downplay his contribution to the "birth of Reddit."

There was a mother and a father - I'll let you decide which role was fulfilled by me and Steve.

This sounds like a loaded question. ;-) But in all seriousness, I think one of Steve's big contributions was rejecting the constant calls for tags, and opting instead to implement subreddits. (I'm just a guy watching from the sidelines; I could be wrong on some of these details.) It's a good reminder that listening to your users is not always the right way to make something they want.

Totally right. In fact, I was fighting with him during our YC summer about implementing tagging (which I also wanted, because we'd be able to spin up new verticals much much faster than trying to build new communities in new subreddits). I'ts a very good thing he won. More on this in Without Their Permission....

Curious: anyone here ever have http://linuxhomepage.com as their "front page of the Internet" before reddit existed?

I did.

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