Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Kerry Ohanian (Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor.

He is best known as the co-founder and former executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz.

He also co-founded the early-stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk, and started the social enterprise Breadpig.

He was also a partner at Y Combinator.

Ohanian is based in Florida, where he lives with his wife, former tennis player Serena Williams, and their daughters, Alexis Olympia Ohanian and Adira River Ohanian.

, Forbes estimated Ohanian’s net worth as $70 million.

Alexis Kerry Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York City.

His paternal grandparents came to the United States as refugees of the Armenian Genocide.

Ohanian's mother was an immigrant from Germany.

He went to Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, where he gave the student address for his graduating class in 2001.

Ohanian says his obsession with technology started in middle school when he got a 33.6k dialup modem.

He spent time on message boards learning how to code and build websites.

Eventually, he began to make websites for nonprofit organizations for free, by "trick[ing]" them, hiding behind his email to disguise the fact that he was a teen doing this from his parents' basement.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian and his friend Steve Huffman pitched the idea MyMobileMenu to Y Combinator.

The company passed on the idea but encouraged the duo to come up with another idea it could potentially fund.

They later came up with reddit.com with the goal of it becoming the "front page of the Internet".

Reddit joined Y-Combinator's first batch of start-ups in the summer of 2005 and was later acquired by Condé Nast in 2006 for an undisclosed amount between $10 million and $20 million.

Ohanian continued to work closely with Reddit as a member of its board of directors.

In 2007, Ohanian launched Breadpig, an "uncorporation" that produces geeky merchandise and gives the proceeds to charity.

In 2009, Ohanian spoke at TED about a whale named Mister Splashy Pants.

After leaving Reddit in 2010, Ohanian spent three months working in microfinance as a Kiva fellow in Yerevan, Armenia.

Ohanian helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk in 2010 and now acts as an adviser.

In June 2010, Ohanian announced the launch of his company Das Kapital Capital, which focuses on start-up investing, advising, and consulting.

Ohanian was given the title "Ambassador to the East" by the early-stage venture firm Y Combinator.

In this position, he meets with East Coast applicants, mentors New York YC founders, and is a general representative for the company.

Ohanian co-founded Initialized Capital in 2010 and made seed investments in start-ups including Instacart, Zenefits, Opendoor, and Cruise.

It has had three funds, totaling over $500 million under management.

As of 2012, he is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of Breadpig.

In 2014, CB Insights analyzed all the investors in tech, ranking Ohanian number one for network centrality, the breadth of connections an investor has with other investors in the ecosystem, and the quality and depth of those links.

Ohanian returned to Reddit full-time with co-founder Huffman in July 2015 to lead the now-independent company.

He also held the role of part-time partner and full-time partner at Y Combinator before leaving in 2016 to help launch the third Initialized Capital fund with Garry Tan.

He stepped back from the company in February 2018 to return to focusing on investing.

In 2019, Ohanian stated that "no one in their right mind" would build a company in San Francisco citing high cost of living and a high cost of doing business.

He also believes that young people are more likely to create remote businesses.

On June 5, 2020, Ohanian resigned from Reddit's board, asking to be replaced by a black candidate in response to the murder of George Floyd.

On June 10, 2020, it was announced that Michael Seibel, an African-American entrepreneur, was named a Reddit board member.

On July 21, 2020, Ohanian was announced as the lead investor in a primarily female group that was awarded a new franchise in the National Women's Soccer League, the top level of the sport for women in the U.S. The new team, later unveiled as Angel City FC, started playing in 2022.

The ownership group, in which women hold a majority interest, includes 14 former members of the U.S. women's national team, Oscar-winning actor Natalie Portman, and many other prominent actors, entertainers, media personalities, and sportspeople, among them Ohanian's wife, Serena Williams.

In June 2020, Ohanian ended his role as Managing Partner at Initialized.

In June 2021, Ohanian announced a new venture capital firm he is leading, named "776".