Alexis Ohanian on Colbert Report [video] | Hacker News Reader

Alexis Ohanian on Colbert Report [video]

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Canadian mirror: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?videoP... - forward to part 3

Thanks! Glad one even exists lol. Last I checked, Comedy Network hadn't even uploaded any South Park.

Man... geo restrictions... man oh man :(

There's something weirdly effective about reducto ad absurdum arguments meant to prove the opposite.

In the beginning, Colbert was saying "but don't we need gatekeepers to tell us what's right?", which is obviously a bad argument. Him making the bad argument did a better job of illustrating the good arguments point, than the good argument itself.

As a guest I can tell you it's a giant mindjob to be interviewed like that.

I watched the latest episode of Small Empires yesterday about Kitchensurfing and was very impressed. I definitely recommend the show if you are interested in startups and Alexis Ohanian http://www.theverge.com/video/small-empires

Thank you! Very proud of that series. You know, I foolishly tried pitching it for a couple years to traditional publishers, getting told "we love you, this idea, but we just need to change a few things..."

Inevitably I'd pass and then finally came to my senses and approached The Verge after appearing on [On The Verge.](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/25/3114567/on-the-verge-007-l...) Their setup was so impressive that I realized I needed to work with them.

The rest is history! We're already figuring out Season 2 and some other fun things... as I've traveled across the country on the Without Their Permission book tour, loads of people have asked for Small Empires: Their City (we're NYC for season 1). I've got a plan for scaling the project. Stay tuned and thank you so much for all the support.

What's the point of an interview like this honestly? It was just filler.

The segment was an advert for a book and Samsung Galaxy Gear.

Well it seems like a significant majority of people may not understand what crowdsourcing and a minority not even know what reddit is just got a chance to hear about it.

Even people I know who are in Engineering programs do not know what reddit is and generally how Internet technology could benefit them.

I don't know if you are from SV, but it seems like someone is stuck in a classic SV bubble.

Besides you never hear about the work people in tech do especially on Colbert and Daily Show. I have watched these shows religiously for many years and the only thing on peoples minds are Healthcare(US) and Rob Ford(I'm from Toronto ;).

Honestly I thought that was a better-than-average Colbert interview. Sometimes his gags and non sequiturs completely derail the topic but this one stayed pretty focused and Alexis did a good job of getting his message across.

'twas straight nerve-wracking!

This was way less interesting than I had hoped for. Although I do love the giant up vote cut out.

You should've seen what we did off-camera with those upvotes and John Lithgow.

I saw Alexis talk at a Google authors talk recently. He is a great speaker and his book is a good read.

Why thank you! That was a fun Q&A. Here's that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsdYblcTHCk

I met him pretty recently at Compute Midwest, super nice guy. He gave a passionate talk about the same things. The book is a quick and very interesting read, as a budding entrepreneur (haha ;)) I found it pretty inspiring.

Thanks, wf! I didn't want to waste anyone's time with the book and I write like I speak -- that is, conversationally -- so you can get the info you need and get back to changing the world!

For viewers outside the US using Chrome, Media Hint (https://mediahint.com/install_chrome.html).

I'm curious regarding his advice to potential founders that was mentioned in the interview. Is this available online in a concise format?

I'm sure someone has written a TL;DR for the book...

I also believe quite a few of the college stops have been recorded, but here's the entire tour schedule (the events are nearly all open to the public) http://withouttheirpermission.com/tour-dates

been waiting to read his book, but unfortunately its not available in australia yet (kindle format)

Yeah, that's annoying. Sorry, I'm sure you can find it somewhere....

Wait, who? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001864/

Alexis (http://about.me/alexis) is more Josh Radnor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Radnor) if anything.

Yeah. I even had an exchange on twitter w Radnor and he confirmed it.

The Kim Kardashian of Silicon Valley.

People whose job is to be seen more than to, you know, build something.

Jealous much? I've seen his sex tape and it makes Kim's look PG13.

Reddit just seems like one of those projects that got really lucky. Digg was making its users upset, slashdot was too nerdy, and metafilter too hard to get into due to $5 cost. Early reddit was kind of a mess too. Congrats on his success, but its always odd to hear people give advice or talk about their projects when there's a large element of luck involved.

To be fair, this may be true of all successful projects.

I don't think reddit got lucky because even after becoming mega successful, it's still almost impossible to spam the site. And their "hot" algorithm is an amazing way to always provide fresh content (unless you spend hours on the site). Their luck did come though, from Digg's failure. I forget the number, but they almost doubled their page views the week after Digg's infamous update.

Reddit was popular but still very niche pre-Digg 4. Not unlike Slashdot. Digg's collapse rapidly transformed Reddit into something completely different, exemplified now by the celebrity AMAs and godawful crap on the front page.

Reddit did get a number of things right, but it still won't last. They may look back at killing /r/reddit.com as a huge mistake; once upon a time, people did really talk about Reddit as one big community, and there was some sense of that. That's not the case anymore.

The reason digg died and we've thrived is because a month in, we realized being a platform for people to create their own subreddits (and thus many community forums) was the only way we'd scale. At some point if there were only one front page, we'd hit a ceiling, whereas as a platform, we can scale forever.

That's just not true. We saw a big bump the week after digg v4 (which more than a few of us saw coming) http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose but it was not a doubling of pageviews.

reddit's traffic has consistently doubled every year for the last 6 years.

Spoiler: anything that ends up being successful is going to involve a non trivial amount of luck.

It seems like you realized this by the end of your comment but it didn't dissuade you from hitting 'reply.'

Hardly. That's like saying Peter Thiel's job is to sit back and lazily give people money rather than build something. They both have incredible success under their belt and choose to provide value in new ways. All book tours are shameless self promotion so you should expect that.

He left reddit in 2009 FYI http://images.nethosting.com/reddit-timeline.jpg

I don't think that timeline is accurate. For one thing, Gold wasn't launched until 2010[1], not 2006, which is a huge difference. Additionally, while Alexis did move on to also doing other things, he never really left reddit. He's still on the board, for instance.

1: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html

False. I left in 2010 - this was the last thing I did: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/apnsu/helping_haiti_be... I left to go volunteer for Kiva in Armenia and stayed on as an advisor and eventually board member.

Built: reddit, hipmunk, breadpig

Wrote: 2 books

Invested: in dozens of companies

Advised: hundreds of founders as a partner in YC

Alexis is an investor in 42Floors. Easily one of the nicest, most supportive, most helpful investors/peers/role models I've ever come across. And yes, he's an activist! So he self-promotes. Explicitly for the cause of an open internet. And I'm so incredibly grateful that he promotes a cause I care so much about, but over which I have so little influence.

Correction: hipmink (advisor) breadpig... and that's notable? reddit, what was it by the time he left? It took off long after he left.

Investor, yes indeed.

Do you have a point? Sounds like you are looking to berate.

Oh he did actually build some stuff? But it doesn't meet my arbitrary criteria for notability/novelty!

You make some great points, Elon.

> reddit, what was it by the time he left? It took off long after he left

1. That just isn't true

2. If it were true, you don't think that early investment (in time, energy, ingenuity, whatever) pays off later? That you need a good foundation to build a house?

Source: I was at reddit until 2011.

This all sounds very personal, do you know Alexis?

So which one of your start-ups is one of the top 100 websites in the world?

I've got a lot of respect for people who have built something. I've built stuff, seems like he did too. I'm sorry, don't know who you are, have you built something? No offense intended, just trying to figure out who you are.

Why you gotta bring another Armenian into this?

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