He sold about 500,000 shares. He owned, apparently, 3.3% of the 17.06 million total shares of the company, meaning he had a little over 562,000 shares. He sold almost all of his shares. That doesn’t exactly exude confidence in future growth, IMO.
The site’s audience grew rapidly in its first few months, and by August 2005, Huffman noticed their habitual user-base had grown so large that he no longer needed to fill the front page with content himself.[11][14][15] Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million.[3][16] Huffman remained with Reddit until 2009, when he left his role as acting CEO.[17]
Huffman spent several months backpacking in Costa Rica[18] before co-creating the travel website Hipmunk with Adam Goldstein, an author and software developer, in 2010. Funded by Y Combinator,[19][20] Hipmunk launched in August 2010[21] with Huffman serving as CTO.[22] In 2011, Inc. named Huffman to its 30 under 30 list.[22]
In 2014, Huffman said that his decision to sell Reddit had been a mistake, and that the site’s growth had exceeded his expectations.[23] On July 10, 2015, Reddit hired Huffman as CEO following the resignation of Ellen Pao[24] and during a particularly difficult time for the company.[25] Upon rejoining the company, Huffman’s top goals included launching Reddit’s iOS and Android apps, fixing Reddit’s mobile website, and creating A/B testing infrastructure.[3]
Since returning to Reddit, Huffman instituted a number of technological changes including an updated mobile site and stronger infrastructure, as well as new content guidelines.
I don’t think that he’s had a whole lot of faith in Reddit as a business since early-on.
They acquired Alien Blue, but what they put out under “Reddit” was not Alien Blue in the least bit. They basically bought it to kill it. I had Alien Blue. :(
My favorite way to visualize the meaning of “asshat”: the person is such a sad waste of human life that their entire upper body is effectively just a hat for their posterior.
Well, you wouldn’t expect it to in the growth phase.
A lot of consumer-facing Internet companies have a large portion of their costs be fixed costs. That is, a programmer or QA guy costs the same amount whether you have ten users or ten million users. But your revenue is linear in your userbase size. So you really don’t want to be a small company, if you fit that profile.
The idea is to burn money and grow rapidly to the point where your fixed costs are relatively small. It makes no sense to try to generate profit if you lose growth for it.
That’s especially true for social media companies, because for them, network effect is a major factor – the value of the network is something like the square of the number of users.
So you really want to be big, not small.
So the solution is to grow quickly, lose money during that period, then adjust and monetize the userbase when you can’t afford to burn money growing any more.
That transition to a profitable state after a money-losing growth state usually means that a company is gonna do something unpopular (since they’re optimizing for something other than appeal) and what Corey Doctorow was complaining about as “enshittification”.
The fact that Reddit lost money during the growth phase doesn’t mean that it was a failure – that would have been intended, part of the business model.
Now, if it’s losing money once the growth phase is done, that could be another story.
According to the second link, he sold nearly all of his class A shares, but none of his class B shares. His total share of the company went from 3.2% to 2.6%, which, is still not insignificant.
19% is still a lot higher than the “only 40mil out of a 16 bil stock” that I’ve seen mentioned and upvoted elsewhere in the thread. But yeah, not that big of a deal, I imagine. I was expecting him to sell over 30%
It doesn’t, he had like 4.6 million shares before the ipo. The 500,000 number sold is just his class A shares. He’ll still have 4.1 million shares of class b stock after this it looks like. The class b stock has ten votes compared to one vote for class a stock for any shareholder votes I believe. So selling only his class a shares won’t change the percent voting control of the company he has by much. The person you’re replying to is confused about how many total shares he has. I don’t think the class b shares are being openly traded though, I think the ipo is just offering class a shares, which is what’s causing the confusion here. He sold almost all of his class a shares, but still has plenty of class b.
Yeah, I mean ipo’s in general are definitely a rich get richer kind of thing that screw over retail traders, but I don’t think there’s anything particularly unusual about this one.
He sold about 500,000 shares. He owned, apparently, 3.3% of the 17.06 million total shares of the company, meaning he had a little over 562,000 shares. He sold almost all of his shares. That doesn’t exactly exude confidence in future growth, IMO.
Sounds like something a greedy little pigboy would do
Lol, if only someone, or like, thousands of someones, warned the others and this. Shame. Anyway…
ahahahahahahahahaha
Spez proving almost everyone else right.
On the other hand, he already cashed out once and was wrong, so…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Huffman
I don’t think that he’s had a whole lot of faith in Reddit as a business since early-on.
Mission accomplished! Those undeniably shitty apps definitely were launched.
I’ve never used them, but IIRC they acquired some third-party client and then just modified them. “Blue Alien” or something like that?
googles
“Alien Blue”, at least for the official iOS app.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Blue
I dunno what the history of the Android app is.
That being said, they’re responsible for what they acquire, just saying that a lot of that might not be developed in-house.
They acquired Alien Blue, but what they put out under “Reddit” was not Alien Blue in the least bit. They basically bought it to kill it. I had Alien Blue. :(
Hey, acquiring another app and launching it as your own app is still launching it! What would they have done without spez?
Alien Blue was fucking awesome, too. Those ass-butts.
This is redundant. That’s why we put caps on them and call em ass-hats
My favorite way to visualize the meaning of “asshat”: the person is such a sad waste of human life that their entire upper body is effectively just a hat for their posterior.
Then he wasn’t wrong. Never has made money.
Well, you wouldn’t expect it to in the growth phase.
A lot of consumer-facing Internet companies have a large portion of their costs be fixed costs. That is, a programmer or QA guy costs the same amount whether you have ten users or ten million users. But your revenue is linear in your userbase size. So you really don’t want to be a small company, if you fit that profile.
The idea is to burn money and grow rapidly to the point where your fixed costs are relatively small. It makes no sense to try to generate profit if you lose growth for it.
That’s especially true for social media companies, because for them, network effect is a major factor – the value of the network is something like the square of the number of users.
So you really want to be big, not small.
So the solution is to grow quickly, lose money during that period, then adjust and monetize the userbase when you can’t afford to burn money growing any more.
That transition to a profitable state after a money-losing growth state usually means that a company is gonna do something unpopular (since they’re optimizing for something other than appeal) and what Corey Doctorow was complaining about as “enshittification”.
The fact that Reddit lost money during the growth phase doesn’t mean that it was a failure – that would have been intended, part of the business model.
Now, if it’s losing money once the growth phase is done, that could be another story.
I ain’t broke baby, I am just in my growth phase
It’s old enough to vote. Or serve in the US military.
Or attend college as a non-genius.
I’m familiar with growth stage. 18 to 19 years seems like a long one. Web 2.0 happened years ago.
Where are you getting this info?
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/03/27/reddit-shares-slump-after-ceo-steve-huffman-sells-500000-shares.html
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024011448/reddit-sx1a2.htm#i1b9a579e78a34dfa99f7f26daeec195b_100
According to the second link, he sold nearly all of his class A shares, but none of his class B shares. His total share of the company went from 3.2% to 2.6%, which, is still not insignificant.
yeah but
your*OP’s statement ‘he sold almost all of his shares’ isn’t really accurate as he really only sold 19% of his shares19% is still a lot higher than the “only 40mil out of a 16 bil stock” that I’ve seen mentioned and upvoted elsewhere in the thread. But yeah, not that big of a deal, I imagine. I was expecting him to sell over 30%
Thar wasn’t me.
oops, my mistake. added correction
I thought they paid him like $200M last year? How does that work out with only half a million shares?
It doesn’t, he had like 4.6 million shares before the ipo. The 500,000 number sold is just his class A shares. He’ll still have 4.1 million shares of class b stock after this it looks like. The class b stock has ten votes compared to one vote for class a stock for any shareholder votes I believe. So selling only his class a shares won’t change the percent voting control of the company he has by much. The person you’re replying to is confused about how many total shares he has. I don’t think the class b shares are being openly traded though, I think the ipo is just offering class a shares, which is what’s causing the confusion here. He sold almost all of his class a shares, but still has plenty of class b.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024011448/reddit-sx1a2.htm#i1b9a579e78a34dfa99f7f26daeec195b_100
Those numbers add up a lot better than the guy I replied to. Thanks.
If the people in this thread could read this and understand it that would be amazing. This isn’t some gotcha moment…
Yeah, I mean ipo’s in general are definitely a rich get richer kind of thing that screw over retail traders, but I don’t think there’s anything particularly unusual about this one.
they paid him a million and change iirc, the rest was stock options
Yeah, that was my point. The $16.7M he sold is way less than they reportedly gave him last year.
oh, i misunderstood
That’s weird, I thought the majority of the $150m or so he got last year was in stock. And this says he barely cleared 1/10th of that with this sale.
Edit: nevermind, explained in other comments