I Am Sam Altman, Reddit Board Member and President of Y Combinator. AMA

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cudmx/i_am_sam_altman_reddit_board_member_and_president/

by sandmansandine • 11 years ago

65 24 11 years ago

ThomPete8• 11 years ago

reddit has more than $50MM in the bank, which will last many many years. At some point the business needs to be profitable. Monetizing AMAs does not seem like the right way to do it to me, but again, Steve's call. Ads will work but it'd be great to figure out something better that actually makes reddit better.

What worries me is the trend of Silicon Valley darlings like Reddit, Uber and AirBnB that aren't profitable but still in business.

From a monetization point of view Reddit isn't going to be different than any other news channel out there. It's not a question of quality and never really have been. Not enough people pay for quality content. Yet newspapers and VCs keep this illusion alive.

It seems like lots of VCs trying to milk companies that aren't making any money.

There is probably something I am not understanding but it seems like the emperor gas no clothes and it's only a question about when the boy is going to say the obvious.

Whats going on?

hn9780470248775• 11 years ago

I find it hard to believe that Airbnb is not profitable; they have a well-defined monetization and are wildly popular.

ThomPete8• 11 years ago

Well maybe they are, but not enough to not need more funding.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/airbnb-2/

Think about that valuation, think about Uber that makes 400m a year and looses the same. How many years do they have to be in business to make those money back and ever honor that valuation?

It's completely absurd IMO, but as I said there might be something I am not understanding.

zaidf• 11 years ago

You can be raining money but if you spend more than what you're making, you're not profitable. Of course, it is not a bad thing to be unprofitable for a period of time. In AirBnb's case, it is almost certainly better for them to NOT be profitable and instead to spend ever potentially profitable dollar on getting more marketshare.

mmanfrin• 11 years ago

Amazon isn't profitable.

I think for Uber and Airbnb, it's not that they can't achieve profitability, it's that they choose to funnel all that revenue in to expansion.

Reddit, though, I think is on the same boat as Twitter: all those views, but not a clear way to monetize without ruining the original experience.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Amazon could easily be profitable if it wanted to be. If you're gunning for "the Walmart of the Internet", it's reasonable to take your time and get it right. It took decades for Walmart to perfect the formula.

ThomPete8• 11 years ago

Yes I understand the Amazon strategy of replacing growth with profit and it has kept them alive for a long time now. I do question whether they can maintain this forever though and I do question whether their venture into delivery is the right one as they seem to be loosing more and more there.

mythz• 11 years ago

"I receive about 1200 and send about 200 (emails per day)" - Wow, not sure how he gets anything done with that amount of context switching.

cj• 11 years ago

Delegation.

Einstalbert• 11 years ago

In a world where crowd sourced moderation is the norm, why they don't hire some dependable, low-paid college kids to help triage that amount of communication is so very strange to me. You do realize these people work for near "resume boost" only, right?

I suppose the biggest issue isn't in a 20-something intern being able to field thousands of words a day, but rather in trusting them not to leak anything or generally tow the line.

Personally, I hope voat.co focuses more on the community rather than the sum of a few corporate-bound individuals.

tzs• 11 years ago

A large number of emails does not necessarily imply a large number of context switches.

caminante• 11 years ago

On a meta note, I'm curious what parameters are ideal for AMA's. I say this as Sam's AMA has been up for 3 hrs, has ~1k comments, yet you have to scroll past a drove of noisy, repetitive posts. Forgive me for overgeneralizing, but I seem to get turned away as the audience for these things increase.

werid• 11 years ago

The android AMA app is decent. Website, not so much.

bsilvereagle• 11 years ago

Check out r/tabled, it really helps cut down on the clutter

PopeOfNope• 11 years ago

Does anybody else find it weird that he kept asking about an android app when there are many reddit android apps that work just fine? I'd like to know what he's looking for in an android app that he hasn't seen yet. I personally use 'reddit is fun'.

I Am Sam Altman, Reddit Board Member and President of Y Combinator. AMA

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