Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed

by Alexis Ohanian

  I breathlessly shared the story of Greenpeace’s dogged efforts to raise online awareness of their effort to stop Japanese humpback whaling expeditions. They wanted to track one particular whale on its migration and humanize it with a name chosen by their online community. Greenpeace staff chose about twenty very erudite names—like Talei and Kaimana (which means “divine power of the ocean” in a Polynesian language)—and then there was Mister. Splashy. Pants.

  I enunciated each word one at a time for full comedic effect. Laughter. They’re not hating this.

  Once a reddit user discovered the poll and submitted it to reddit.com, a surge of votes flooded in for this obvious favorite. Who doesn’t want to hear a news anchor say “Mister Splashy Pants”?

  Greenpeace wasn’t pleased. They insisted on rerunning the voting process, which only galvanized us. I changed our reddit logo from a smiling whale to a more combative version.

  For any scientists reading this:

  This time, polls closed with Splashy having an even more commanding lead.

  Oh no, I’m running out of time. Please let them be gentle.

  Eventually they relented and let the online favorite win (sometimes you just have to let yourself be disrupted, remember), but at this point they’d inadvertently created a brand that excited far more people than just Greenpeace fans—the message had spread far beyond whale lovers. In fact, the Japanese government actually called off the whaling expedition.

  Everyone who creates something online has lost control of their message but in the process has gained access to a global audience. Mister Splashy Pants is a story about the democratization of content online—starring a whale—and it demonstrated how little control we have over our brands. It turns out we never had control, only now we realize it. Before the social web, we had little idea of what people actually thought about us—now we know, and when like-minded people band together, they wield a really big stick.

  The talk is over. Applause. Even a few “Woo!”s from the crowd.

  Nailed it. I’d given a few non-CompUSA talks before then, but once the video of my TED talk hit a million views and was front-paged on reddit,4 I became a known “public speaker.”

  I have a lecture agent now and get paid more for a speaking gig than I did for an entire year’s work at Pizza Hut. It’s a little bit insane, but then I remember that I’m still getting paid less than Snooki,5 which makes me really question things.

  I still get nervous before I get onstage—I just know how to better handle the nerves now. In truth, it really is all about practice. Once you’ve been onstage enough times and make sure you’re always well rehearsed and armed with the feeling that you really know what you’re talking about, it then becomes all about polish. Listen to yourself. I listen (not watch; I want to focus on the words) to every talk I give once afterward to see where the “ums” and “you knows” crept in. I’ll pay attention to jokes that didn’t work and others that worked better than expected—was it the joke or the delivery? Then I put that talk out of mind. Test, analyze, and repeat.

  The Internet offers a wealth of great speeches, all freely available with just a few keystrokes. Find your favorite speakers and study them. I notice the way Jon Stewart disarms an interview subject with a joke before hitting him with a knockout punch. President Obama really knows how to hit the Pause button at the right moment for maximum impact. When used well, silence is powerful. And when I learned that Louis C.K.—easily one of the best comics of our generation—trashes all his material every year and starts anew,6 I knew I needed to keep from getting lazy and recycling entire talks. Louis does it because, he says, “The way to improve is to reject everything you’re doing. You have to create a void by destroying everything; you have to kill it. Or else you’ll tell the same fucking jokes every night.”

  Being a stand-up comic is infinitely harder than giving a talk or a speech, so if he can stay that on top of his game, why can’t I?

  There Are Much Harder Things in Life Than Being an Entrepreneur

  Growing up, I had the words LIVES REMAINING: 0 written on the wall of my room. If life were a video game, that’s how it’d indicate this is the only chance left.

  I’m lucky because I got that lesson when I was twenty-two years old and just a month or so out of college, feeling about as immortal as someone could.

  But then everything changed with a phone call.

  Why’s Mom calling me? She should be getting ready for her vacation trip to Norway.

  She’s crying.

  Max, our wonderful mutt, had to be put down.

  Because I’m an only child, Max became my mother’s favorite when I left home for college—a position in her heart I could never reclaim. She absolutely adored him, and our family did everything we could to help him fight the Cushing’s disease that had finally taken its toll.

  My mother was understandably distraught. I told her I loved her. I understood why she had to do what she did to our beloved dog and, although it didn’t work out that I could be there, I was grateful that she was. She had some more errands to run before meeting up with Dad and heading to the airport. She’d try to get through them the best she could, but I knew it was going to be hard for her to go on vacation.

  At least it happened before she got on the plane.

  My dog had just died. It was going to be a rough day in Boston. Startup life is extreme enough—every morning one wakes up thinking today’s the day you’re conquering the world—or today’s the day you’re doomed.

  I got through that awful morning. I don’t remember what I was doing at the time, but my phone started buzzing again in the late afternoon.

  Why’s Dad calling me? He should be at cruising altitude with Mom.

  They’re in the hospital.

  Howard County General.

  On any other night Mom would be working there; she’d been a pharmacy technician there on the night shift for the last seventeen years.

  Now she was missing the vacation she and my dad had planned for years.

  She’d had a seizure in the dressing room of a department store, and an attentive clerk had called 911.

  At least it happened before she got on the plane.

  The initial brain scans revealed a tumor. The culprit in her skull was an insidious monster called glioblastoma multiforme. Such an ugly name. They were going to keep her overnight for more tests. She’d likely have surgery soon thereafter. I never should have done the Google search, but I needed to know what my parents would inevitably struggle to tell me.

  I bought a ticket for a flight down first thing the next morning, but until then I was stuck in Boston.

  That night Steve and I tried to get our minds off things and went down to a local bar to watch our favorite team play their archrivals on Monday Night Football. Our Washington Redskins versus the Dallas Cowboys.

  It was a really boring game. And we were losing it. So much for even a brief respite from the shittiest day of my life.

  By the fourth quarter, there weren’t many TVs with the game still on (we were in Boston, after all). Back in Columbia, Maryland, my dad had already called it a night. He didn’t need any more heartache.

  Steve and I had nowhere else to go and needed distraction—any distraction—so we kept watching. It was fourth and fifteen, and we were down 13–0 with less than four minutes left (non–football fans: just know that this means an exceptionally dire situation). Just then, Mark Brunell, a quarterback not known for his arm strength, hurled the ball downfield more than fifty yards to Santana Moss in the end zone.

  It was 13–6!

  But no one on the field was celebrating—and with good reason. There was hardly any time left, and we were still losing. Even the Cowboys’ mascot was taunting us with a dramatic look at his wrist to remind us that there wasn’t enough time left for our touchdown to matter.

  But Steve and I kept cheering. What the hell. They had finally given us something to cheer about. That was our first touchdown of the season! And we’d
been drinking, which always helps. We made the extra point, and it was almost a ball game. But that jerk in the Cowboys costume had a point.

  Dallas ended up punting quickly, thanks to a stingy Skins defense, and we had the ball again (football novices: that’s our time to go on offense and score points).

  First and ten from our own thirty-yard line. One of the commentators, John Madden, couldn’t even finish his run-on sentence before Brunell threw the exact same pass fifty-plus yards down the field right back to Moss, who again beat the coverage.

  “And Santana Moss for a touchdown! Wow!” Al Michaels couldn’t believe his eyes as Moss hustled into the end zone.

  At this point Steve and I were screaming. We were also the only two people still watching the game, I think.

  Suddenly it was 14–13 and we were winning.

  Winning? What?

  Even when all hope seemed lost—see what happened there?—we had to keep hoping, because that was all we had. As much as I wish I could affect the outcome of sporting events from my seat, there’s nothing I can do but cheer at the right times.

  But it wasn’t over. Life isn’t a storybook. And what happened next is going to be exceptionally difficult to describe for non–football fans.

  The Cowboys weren’t about to be upset so spectacularly in their own house on national TV. They briskly marched down the field, nearing field-goal range as the time kept ticking down. They didn’t need to reach the end zone; they needed to get just thirty-five yards or so from it. As long as they could kick a field goal, they could walk off the field as victors and dash our hopes.

  They were that close, but only for a second.

  A third-down completion to Patrick Crayton secured a first down and also put the Cowboys in field-goal range. Crayton got a step beyond the marker and then… contact.

  BOOM!

  You could hear the pop on the television broadcast.

  Sean Taylor, a lean and hungry safety, delivered a brutal—and legal—tackle that popped the ball loose, resulting in an incomplete pass.

  BOOM!

  I started yelling. Spilling beer. Probably also spitting a little. It was obnoxious because they kept replaying that hit and I kept yelling BOOM! louder with every replay.

  Steve was yelling, too. Everyone else in the bar was hating us. We didn’t give a damn.

  Later, I got my hands on the high-def footage of Taylor during and after that hit. He pops up, electrified. That fire. That heart. It’s something awesome when you watch a human—just another carbon-based life-form—doing what he does so well. And loving it.

  That hit took all the air out of Cowboys Stadium, from the fans to the field. The Cowboys turned the ball over on downs, and Redskins players poured Gatorade on Coach Gibbs. Not a typical week-two celebration, but we thought it was appropriate.

  Steve and I went home singing our fight song, and I had the joy of surprising my dad with the news the next morning. He’d never walked out on a game before and never would again.

  I don’t believe in signs, mostly because I don’t think I’m worth all the trouble. But I was inspired.

  Sean Taylor saved the day that night, doing what he loved and doing what he was so clearly talented at. It gave me a little bit of happiness on the saddest night of my life and confirmed that it’s never over until it’s over.

  So I’d better not give up. And if I can find something I’m good at and love doing, I’m going to put everything I have into it.

  Sean Taylor died two years later. He was shot by an intruder while at home with his girlfriend and daughter. He was twenty-four; just a few weeks older than I was at the time.

  We often use words like bipolar and all-consuming to describe startup life. Fools compare it to combat, and over drinks even the more reasonable among us still veer into hyperbole about how hard it is to face the day some mornings. I’ve never lain in bed in self-pity, though. Even after that night I didn’t, because I knew back in Maryland my mother and father were dealing with a very different kind of morning. Perspective. My mom, the kindest person on earth, had been told she would die before seeing her grandchildren, and yet the first words out of her mouth when she saw me were “I’m sorry.”

  That’s the kind of person she was. I knew I’d lived a rather stress-free life until that point, and I knew that that would have to change. I just didn’t think it’d happen all at once.

  My mom came to this country when she was twenty-three because she was in love with my dad. After a few years of living together while she was still an undocumented alien, they secretly married at City Hall in lower Manhattan, and only later did they have the “public” wedding for their families (surprise, Grandpa!). Eventually the cost of trying to raise a child in New York City (even in the boroughs—Brooklyn and then Queens) proved to be too much, and my parents moved to the suburbs of Maryland, where my dad’s modest income could go much further.

  My father had a degree in urban studies and architecture from Antioch College, and my mother wound up getting her GED in 1980, just three years before I was born. She went on to work night shifts as a pharmacy technician, sleeping only a little so she could be present for more of my waking hours.

  After all that, my mother—who had supported me my entire life, filled me with confidence, and loved me dearly—was telling me she was sorry she’d inconvenienced me by getting terminal brain cancer because it was something else I’d have to deal with?

  Being an entrepreneur was the best decision I could’ve made, because not having a boss gave me the freedom to make my family a priority without compromising my work. I got a lot of use out of that 3G USB stick and laptop. As long as I had those two things, I was in the office, whether it was bedside at Hopkins or in the reddit headquarters in Somerville.

  I write this all as a precursor to my story—to hell with chronological order—because as empowering as the Internet is (and boy, is it empowering), we must all still succumb to a common mortality.7 I would trade anything to have my mom back, but in lieu of that, I can only work to honor her a little bit more every day.

  To be reading this book, thinking about how to use this great platform, the Internet, to share your world-changing ideas, ideally from a comfortable seat somewhere, is itself a great luxury. We’re living in a time of unprecedented opportunity across the globe that happens to coincide with a time of tremendous misfortune.

  Let’s make the most out of this great hand we’ve been dealt, eh?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Story of reddit from College to Condé Nast

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

  Thomas Jefferson, United States Declaration of Independence

  Jefferson’s vision is taking a bit longer than expected to become a reality. The American dream is rooted in a country where anyone with enough talent and enough determination can accomplish whatever she or he wants. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet, but a pair of undergraduates at the University of Virginia once got lucky on spring break during their senior year, inadvertently playing a small part in the reboot of that dream, at least on the Internet. The dream that motivates people to create something online isn’t limited to a single nationality—America’s dream, while still very much a work in progress in this country, is largely a reality on the global World Wide Web. My own part in that story started when I met Steve Huffman, realized how much I liked waffles, and started building the front page of the Internet.

  When we left off in chapter 1, Steve and I had just met. We spent most of our free time together in college playing video games or pranks on one another (I ended up on the receiving end most of the time). I’d had ambitions to study computer science because of how much I enjoyed it during high school, but that all changed once I met people like Steve and realized I’d better nurture my computer talents as a hobby only. I became a history major and told
myself I was going to study law and become an immigration lawyer. I suddenly became an overachiever who cared too much about his GPA because I knew, as an out-of-state student, that my parents wouldn’t have been able to afford UVA if it weren’t for a generous gift from my great-aunt Vera (great and great, for which I’m endlessly grateful). She made sure I never had to take out a student loan, and for that reason I wanted to get the most out of my four years—that’s why I majored in history and business (graduating with high honors) and minored in German.

  By my junior year, however, I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer. This epiphany came while I was with my friend Jack Thorman at a Waffle House, which I highly recommend for both the epiphanies and the waffles. Steve had already gotten a job offer from a small software company in Virginia. I myself had waffled (puns!) about becoming an immigration lawyer until I’d realized that Saturday mornings are better spent enjoying breakfast. At that point I abruptly walked out of the Kaplan LSAT prep course I was taking.

  Something happened in between those syrupy bites; I needed to know why I had wanted to spend three very expensive years getting a piece of paper that would make me a lawyer. In truth, I didn’t know. Steve and I had had far too many great brainstorming sessions over beer and pizza for me to give up on turning one of those ideas into a reality.

  One of these discussions started because Steve hated having to wait while he finished pumping his gas at Sheetz before going inside to order his sub. They’d already made ordering more efficient by using touch screens at the counter, but why not take the order before that, via mobile phone? As Steve told me this I thought about all the implications mobile food ordering would have for any take-out order you’d normally wait in line for. You’re going to get the same Frappuccino you always get, so why not place the order with a couple of clicks so it’ll be ready when you walk in? This just might work, Steve….