In 2010, we launched Reddit Gold as a subscription service out of desperation to generate revenue since advertising wasn't sufficient, and it surprisingly raised more money in one day than we made in ads that month.

We chose to pursue advertising as a business model to keep Reddit free and open, aligning with our values and community expectations.

With my return, we redesigned the site, moved Reddit onto mobile, and focused on building a sustainable business model.

After being rejected by Y Combinator with their initial idea, we were invited to join the program under the condition that we work on something else, which led to the creation of Reddit.

By the time of the acquisition discussions, I was working 16-hour days, balancing my responsibilities at Reddit with my graduate studies, which was a challenging period for me. When I received an offer to sell Reddit for $10 million, I realized I could make life-changing money in just a year of work, which was more than my parents would earn in their entire lives.

Reddit's growth from $15 million to $456 million in revenue by 2021 demonstrates the success of our business model and community engagement.

In 2008, with the market collapse, we realized we needed to start making money, so we focused on monetizing our site and cutting costs.

In 2011, Condé Nast spun Reddit out into an independent company again, which is rare in my experience, allowing us to fundraise and bring in new talent like CEO Yishan Wong.

We didn't take the approach of getting a billion users and figuring out how to make money later; we focused on how to monetize if we could get to 100 million monthly active users.