Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Kerry Ohanian (born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor, known for co-founding the social news website Reddit, where he is currently serving as executive chairman. 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. Ohanian is based in San Francisco, and was a partner at Y Combinator. 2Early life Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Chris Ohanian, an Armenian-American whose grandparents came to the US as refugees and Armenian Genocide survivors, and a German-born mother, Anke, who worked as an au pair and overstayed her visa when she began a relationship with Ohanian's father. He went to Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, where he gave the student address for his graduating class in 2001. 2Career After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian started reddit.com, with co-founder Steve Huffman. Reddit initially received funding from Y Combinator after Ohanian and Huffman were rejected for their initial idea, My Mobile Menu. They joined the first batch of Summer 2005 and were later acquired by Condé Nast in 2006. Ohanian continued to work closely with Reddit as a member of its Board of Directors. He returned to Reddit fulltime with co-founder Huffman on July 10, 2015, to lead the now-independent compan