Alexis Ohanian: Keeping It Real – How to Start, Run and Sell a Web 2.0 Startup

At BoS 2008, Alexis Ohanian’s alter ego, Pierre Francois, won the Pecha Kucha with a talk about how to start, run and sell a web 2.0 startup.

Enjoy!


Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Ohanian is a startup founder and investor in Brooklyn, NY.

After graduating from UVA in 2005, Alexis and his co-founder Steve Huffman started reddit, a top 50 US website.

Now a reddit board member, Alexis focuses on social enterprise Breadpig, publishing authors like xkcd and SMBC — with profits donated to worthy causes.

Alexis helped launch Hipmunk and ran marketing/pr/community before becoming an advisor and joining the fight against SOPA & PIPA.

He invests and advises over seventy tech startups. He’s Y Combinator’s Ambassador to the East, co-founder of the non-profit IHAS, and wrote a national bestselling book, Without Their Permission.

He’s also got a show on The Verge called Small Empires about NY tech startups — the founders who create and the people who use these digital platforms.

Along the way, Alexis spoke at TED, volunteered in Armenia as a Kiva Fellow, and was named on Forbes 30 Under 30 list two years in a row (and then turned 30).

He proudly doodled the logos for all three of his startups and loves his cat, Karma.

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