Ohonian. T his label shows why hes importanthis website is incredibly popular used by millions including president obama, but its difficult to explain what makes it so addicting. Little more than an oldstyle computer bulletin board. Es the son of an undocumented immigrant, an entrepreneur. Hes been asked to testify before congress. Hes funded 80 startups, launched a charity but most importantly, hes one of the most humble and nicest people youll ever meet. Hes written a new book called without their permission how the 21st century will be made, not managed. Joined by Quentin Hardy of the New York Times and Colleen Taylor of tech crunch. Thanks for coming on the show. Its actually your second time. We can talk about your first time in a minute. Im now going to leave it to you to explain reddit. And as you do for someone whos ever never seen it and says am i going to watch this alexis guy on tv or not, explain it well. No pressure. No. Well, it is a platform for online communities to share links and have discussions about really whatever they want. We just broke 81 million visitors a month, and people use the platform to discuss everything from corgis to nfl to politics. Most people would be astonished to figure out how many things they see on the news started on reddit. Its kind of the birthplace, where the planets are formed for all the silly things you see. Not always just silly but oftentimes the silly things you see on newscasts. It is a truly open platform for people to find an interesting link, submit it. And if other people like that link, theyll vote it up. Yeah, oftentimes, its the launching pad for things that end up going viral on twitter or facebook or the things your parents end up emailing you a week later. Or a month. The fascinating thing that you get into in your book is how reddit succeeded even though there were other companies doing the same thing, notably dig. A lot of people probably remember dig. Its still out there. But reddit has far surpassed. Why did it win . This is a good lesson. We had just graduated college. And a week after we launched, because i did a terrible job doing competitive analysis. Dig had had been around six months, had this tech slib right founder, was in the valley. We were in the suburbs of boston. But we focused so relentlessly on building something that could be a platform for online communities. You know, whereas dig was ultimately one front page, we knew very early on that reddit had to be a place where if you loved my little pony, there would be a subreddit community. Its amazing velocity. Reddit travels at this really fast clip. You had this refresh, things moving, but what broke it off from dig and some others in some ways, it feels like a very interesting place with a sense of community and people talk about the community and themselves and their personal voch involvement in it. Now, you can say it just arose out of nowhere, but it gets engineered by user interface and participation and what you vote up. How many of that was planned and how much was signals and you ran with them . You know, i love bringing this up. Steve and i really had very little plan when we started. We really didnt. We just wanted to create a place. This is a velocity. Thats all a credit to steves engineering. We wanted to create a place that would be easy for anyone to show up, submit a good link, submit a good comment and get internet points. It didnt turn into a sewer for trolls which frequently these things can. It was a lot of we gave a lot of dams. I hope im allowed to say that. Go. We wanted to make sure that we never put advertisers above the user experience. We wanted to make sure that we always erred on the side of doing right by our user base. And i think people really respect that. One of the things i stress to entrepreneurs all over the country, for so many incumbents, theyve lost sight of treating users well. Its a huge advantage even if were two nobodies. Quentin one of the things i heard in quentins question, reddits a happy place. Even when theyre arguing. It comes across to me as a happy place. Arguably. He hasnt been two dragons. There are naughty parts to it. I am troubled by that. Dragons having sex in cars. Sex with cars. Very good. No, what i mean is your world, man. A lighthearted place. I realize there are parts of reddit that are naughty and i realize there have been controversies with reddit, but as you look at especially on the front page and you look at the comments, its not people sniping at each other, and its not youtube comments. Youtube comments are awful almost all the time. Its generally funny. Its generally clever. Its intelligent. And its it feels happy. Was that i mean, maybe this is why i always have cute mascots for all the companies. I think, look, at the end of the day, any platform is a reflection of like people. And i think the reality is, a lot of people are actually, you know, pretty happy, pretty reasonable people. I think when you start seeing stories, whether theyre at reddit or anywhere else on social media is humans being kind to other humans, its just a reflection of society. And the fact that actually that person that sits next to you on the subway probably could tell you an amazing joke. Hes just not going to do it because hes read the paper. Ebay worked out. It kind of showed people the good side. Others dont because the trolls take over. Maybe those are conscious design choices. Maybe they arent. I dont know. Clearly on page, 171 people read this being boo, you say journalists are human beings. So its clear you dont always know what youre talking about. Are they not . Well, colleen . Steve is the other cofounder. Hes an engineer. Yes, bril lant engineer. You are not. No, ive ridden his coattails for the last eight years. And you drew the mascot. Yeah. Other than drawing the mascot, what do you do with reddit . We were in the first round. Everyone used to ask me that. Everyone would come for dinner. It was a joke but i think they were kind of serious. Yeah, im being kind of serious. The role of the nontechnical founder is to do Everything Else that the engineering founder, the technical founder, isnt doing. So while shes busy building the site, youre ordering the takeout, dealing with the lawyer, doing really mundane things. You cant come into it thinking im the businessperson. Im going to do important business things. No, youre going to be doing the stuff that the other person isnt doing. You are the businessperson. Youre the public face. Youre explaining. And reddit wasnt looking for revenue in a big way. Revenue, weve got to take a commercial break, make revenue and then well talk about revenue when we come back in just a minute. Welcome back to press here. Talking with reddit cofounder and Colleen Taylor of tech crunch. Yes. You were the nontechnical founder of reddit. One thing that you say in the book, you said for years now is that everyone should learn how to code. Everyone should learn how to program. Yes. My mother is an ophthalmologist. Should she really learn how to code . Why do you say this . Wow, i dont know what an ophthalmologist is. A noncoder. Okay. Thats a whole another show. You know, the reason why i err on the side of Everyone Needs to learn how to code and i could make a case for writing basic scripts could make her job easier. Anytime you find yourself doing a repetitive task, software could do a lot better for you. Its especially important for this generation coming up. The reason i wrote this book, i wanted people to realize how much power we have if we can build things in software. Software is eating the world. Thats the an dreessen quote that i think most of us believe in. We have a huge demand already for people who can code. Every company i invest in, every company i advise is hiring developers right now. Thats amazing in this economy. And those jobs are not going away. And while this ability to, you know, innovate without permission is helping a bunch of people who can code, create significant wealth and significant value in a short period of time, in five years, can you go from starting a company in a bus station like drop box to being the owner of a multibilliondollar company. That only will happen to people who have those skills and what already exists as a gap in this country will just grow if we dont get more people access. How do you decide what youre going to invest in now . I i really because i invest so early stage, the thing that matters most to me is founders. And id be a hypocrite if i said otherwise. They rejected me and steve because our idea was so bad. But is it passion . Which by the way was not reddit. My mobile menu. Youll have to read about. I want to see some founders who i really believe in who i think they are going to do this because theyve been able to prove they can build stuff, they lunch stuff and that im a little scared of. Im a little worried that if i dont invest in her, shes going to create the next google and im going to miss that. You got paid a sum of money when you were in college by conde nast. Is there other money coming in that i mean, i dont think youre a particularly wealthy person by Silicon Valley standards. No. And youve invested in 80. Cans, right . Mmhmm. Wheres that money coming from . I mean, you guys watch breaking bad, right . Reddits not profitable, right . No. I mean, steve and i had lifechanging wealth. We became oh, no question, for college students, yeah. But, i mean, you know daush. Invest in 80 companies . It is amazing how you donate a lot of money. Some of these investments are small 25,000. But look, like by the way, not a lot of money is a Silicon Valley kind of statement. 25,000. Youve got a lot of money. And that brings me to my next point which is i live in brooklyn. I love living in brooklyn. It would make me so sad if i ever looked around and looked at some other very successful, you know, a bunch of multimillionaires and thought aww, shucks. Im not doing well enough. I know this is fortunately a thing that i dont have. But you know, look. For me, its partially an investment, but its also partially kind of karma. Why do i invent in these startups . Write this book . Go on this nationwide tour . I want more people to reach the maximum level. We were having that conversation before the show started that i think we the three of us have not been entrepreneurs. But as we meet entrepreneurs, you do get the sense that there is that hey, folks, people can do this. Yes. Theres nothing about alexis that is so incredibly special. No. That only he could have done this. Yeah. Inside themselves and delusionally believe in themselves so much that they actually achieve it. Yeah. I mean, this is such the american dream. It is. And the reason im so confident about it is i get to meet people. I go et to see people excelling not just in business but in philanthropy, in film, in music every day now because of the internet. Can you tell us a couple that have blown your mind lately . The most recent one is this wonderful web comic artist named ryan north who does dinosaur comics. Its a bunch of clip art. Theres no love making to cars. He went to his community, went to his audience and he said hey, guys, i want to do your choose your own adventure version of hamlet called to be or not to be. An interesting idea. He raised over 600,000 on kickstarter. There is no world five years ago where he would have gotten that kind of advance or gotten that book to come to fruition. And here he is an artist doing what he loves. Finally have hamlet make good decisions in his life and he can do that. Hes now connected directly to his fans and able to do his art. Its not just the zuckerbergs and the drew housens. Its artists showing up in canada doing what they love. Youre based in brooklyn, you mentioned, and youre a big proponent of the new york startup scene. Oh, yes. Some people in new york have thrown barbs to Silicon Valley. Very salty. He said i would never want to live in palo alto. How do you feel about Silicon Valley versus new york in i also i lived in San Francisco for two years. And i lived in the mission. It was wonderful. Your mexican food is much better over here. I will grant you that. But i was born, i was made, born in new york. I still have an affinity for the city. I think it makes me sad when i see the new York Tech Community or any other Tech Community trying to live in the shadow of Silicon Valley. Silicon valley is Silicon Valley. Lets not try to be silicon alley or silicon fill in the blank. Lets be our own thing. The bay will continue to be this amazing place for tech, but look, there are going to be tech i visited tech communities all over the country and arguably all over the world that are finding their own way. Because when the cost of starting this stuff is as low as it is, whats going to happen to change the future of agriculture with, you no he, technology . Startups like ag local. Theyre just friends of mine, but they started in kansas city. A startup started by a couple hipsters in skinny jeans whether theyre in brooklyn or the mission is not going to solve agricultural problems unless they spend time on a farm. But they came to Silicon Valley to get their legs. So there is a balance. Ive got to jump in as well and say that weve run out of time. One last quick question. You have an ask me feature that president obama has done. Who has not done one that you wish would . Easy, jayz. Really . Yeah. I really want jayz to do an ama. Jayz, if youre watching. Alexis, and your book is without their permission. Thanks for coming back. Thank you for having me. Youre welcome anytime. Thank you for being here. We will drone on about uavs when press here continues welcome back to press here. When you think of drones or uavs, there are two types that quickly come to mind. The first are predators and reapers which rain misery down on americas enemy. The other drone is the backyard hobbyist, the quadry copters and hexicopters. The real sweet spot will be the middle ground between the two, the ones used by farmers or Police Agencies or marine scientists if the government allows it. Jonathan downey is an m. I. T. Grad and former boeing engineer whos building the brains and the operating system of uavs. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. I should also point out had no idea when we were talking about when you were going to be on the show that alexis is one of your investors. Yeah. And you guys tend to support each other with that. Yeah, theres a Huge Community around it. Its a big part of the attraction to being part of this. Let me tell you my theory here. And that is youre not building the air frame. Youre not training the pilots. You aring do the brains of the uav itself, both the operating system and the chips thats kind of the bill gates of drones. Because bill gates was in the right spot at the right time. He didnt build commuters. He built the things that the commuters need. Yeah, im glad you made that analogy. Its in the back of our mind as well. A lot of the autopilots, its existed for the last 10, 20 years, things like the prosecute predator all have one. Theyre essentially like a black box. The mainframes of the old computer days. And now we also have these hobbyist solutions, Something Like the home brew computers. The soldered together tough. You could have accomplished kind of anything with them, but theyre very temperamental and its difficult to get them to do any one thing particularly well. Theyre fairly disparate. Theyre kind of the mainframe that runs one piece of software, you cant run it on a different mainframe. You are right in that sweet spot if the government because one of the things that happens is, there is no commercial use of uav, for instance, right . In the United States the faa said basically no commercial flights of small unmanned aircraft, but its happening a lot around the rest of the world. Yeah. There was one in australia this week. Some uav company said they would deliver university textbooks to i think up to 20 locations. Was that just a way of getting in the New York Times . Hard to know. They said we can get it to you within 20 minutes. Amazon, you can just step back. These guys are 20 minutes and 3 bucks for the delivery. Now, does that pay . I can kind of make a case where it could. I mean, that might be a lost leader to get a attention, but it suggests the world to come. How do you get them to the ground . You name an open space where you want it delivered, somewhere near you. Id imagine the reason there are regulations here in the United States, you know, there are good reasons for that. Theres safety at play. Theres security. Theres privacy. But even if there isnt a commercial business, per se, there could be certainly the cops will want them. The emergency people will want them going through fire areas or earthquake or tornado areas. We expect there to be just a huge variety of different applications. The news has already flown them through various flood zones p. What do you think is going to be the biggest customer . Wheres the sweet spot of the sweet spot . We think the variety of applications is going to be so huge, its a big part of the motivation behind there being a platform in the space which doesnt exist right now. But some of the early verticals that we think theres going to be a lot of, you no he, use for are things like agricultural applications including precision agriculture as well as infrastructure inspection so everything from pipelines, bridges, you know, power lines, levees. Do you suppose people are afraid of them, drones in general, because of the predator . Because weve been introduced to drones in a military context, or because of some sort of robotic thing . And an example i give is, you know, they say they dont want News Agencies to have drones. We have a helicopter with guys in it. You know, we can send a flying thing over your house. So does law enforcement, right . Right. So do they. Its not a whole lot different. I think people hear the word drone, and they only have one thing that comes to mind right now. Its what theyve seen on nbc or cnn. They hear about the predator, the drone, how its being used in the military which is essentially one application. I think this technology is similar to gps. Gps is a technology that was absolutely developed for the military with military funding. And if you had asked people 15, 20 years ago whether they were willing to all carry around a gps essentially tracking device in their pocket, people would have said absolutely not. Th