The acquisition by Condé Nast in 2006 was a crucible moment for Reddit, providing liquidity but also revealing the differing priorities of team members after the acquisition.

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.

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.

In 2006, major tech companies like Google and Yahoo began expressing interest in acquiring Reddit, highlighting its growing presence in the online space.

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

One mistake during the acquisition was assuming that advertising would transfer easily to Reddit, which was a very different product compared to others like style.com.

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.

At that time, there wasn't a clear monetization route for Reddit; we didn't have advertising or any real way to generate revenue, so we operated as a lean startup to survive with scarce resources.

Returning to Reddit in 2015 was the hardest decision I've ever made, as I had to leave Hipmunk, but I felt a strong responsibility to help the company I co-founded. Reddit is more important to the world than many realize, and it would be a shame if it didn't live up to its potential.