Photo: Platon
Alexis Ohanian was barely out of college when he founded Reddit with Steve Huffman in 2005. A year later, the social news site was sold to Condè Nast (which also owns this magazine), and Ohanian eventually moved on to advise and invest in other startups. In his new book, Without Their Permission, he exhorts other younglings to follow in his footsteps: Find an unmet need, write a little code, stump for server fees, and maybe make the world a better place in the process. It sounds so easy! We talked with Ohanian to find out if the world really needs more would-be entrepreneurs.
WIRED: Who's your target reader?
Alexis Ohanian: There are more and more talented but frustrated recent graduates who may not be aware just how much opportunity there is. The book is what I wish I had in college—when I had unparalleled freedom to be curious, to explore, to meet new people.
WIRED: Well, some big-shot technologists say that people shouldn't go to college at all.
OHANIAN: Peter Thiel!
WIRED: I wasn't going to mention him by name.
OHANIAN: Oh, I'll call him out.
WIRED: Nonetheless, you say people can just teach themselves coding. So why go to school?
OHANIAN: It's important to call college into question. Thiel's solution is great for kids who are four or five standard deviations from the mean in the first place. They're going to be fine. But if I hadn't gone to the University of Virginia, I wouldn't have met Steve and I wouldn't have started Reddit.
WIRED: But your solution is, in a way, equally simplistic: "Just put the server fees on your credit card and start your company."
OHANIAN: Look, what I'm proposing isn't for everyone. But every startup I know is hiring developers. There's an amazing demand for arguably the most valuable skill of the century: writing code. And the development languages can all be learned for free online. Yet we can't get enough people writing code. And we're not talking about menial jobs. We're talking six figures coming out of college to go work in San Francisco or New York at a company where you can wear sandals and eat M&Ms whenever you want.
WIRED: What if you have an idea for a new kind of solar power tech—more of a moon shot?
OHANIAN: I look at things like the Pebble watch that were unthinkable a few years ago. Now there are investors who do have the appetite to invest in hardware. And I hope the entrepreneurial mentality will infect other industries, because that kind of resourcefulness is valuable anywhere. Even in an employee — it's something you love to see as an employer.
WIRED: OK, so, innovation is obviously important. What do you see that threatens it?
OHANIAN: We don't have enough people in government who understand the Internet and how much Americans care about Internet freedom and digital privacy. But there are things we can do to change that: Part of it is fixing a political system that seems to operate largely on returning favors. Part of it is electing more people who understand this technology. I'd like to see more nerds in office.
- ### Dropbox has a Radical Plan: Become the Portal to your Digital World
