# Alexis Ohanian on Reddit (u/kn0thing)

Part of Founders and CEOs on Reddit, researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-07. Interactive version: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/founders-on-reddit/alexis-ohanian

Alexis Ohanian: Co-founder of Reddit.

- Reddit account: [u/kn0thing](https://www.reddit.com/user/kn0thing/) (Personal account)
- How we know it's theirs: [His 2012 r/IAmA AMA, posted from this account](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/vfosl/)
- Where they post, in the records we retrieved: r/pics (9), r/blog (7), r/AskReddit (6), r/IAmA (2), r/videos (2), r/tennis (1)
- Known activity in the posts we found: 2010 to 2020
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Ohanian

## Moments

### u/kn0thing in r/pics, May 23, 2017 · Early days

Replying to a redditor:

> @GRINNP0P is her twitter that she wanted me to put on here. That is the number 0.

> As Snoo's creator, it makes me so happy to see fan-art, especially really good fan-art like this. After all, I created Snoo while I was bored in class. There's a great tradition of doodling while bored in class. Maybe you'll be working here one day!

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6cvaau/i_told_the_student_who_drew_methe_math_teacher/dhy0f6g/ · 916 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/kn0thing in r/IAmA, Jun 22, 2012 · Early days

Replying to a redditor:

> Hi. you have done a great job with Reddit. Reddit is unique and has raised a very outstanding community which can be never found in the internet. And I love it! What made you start a website like this? what was your inspiration? What do you think about the current Reddit…

> Thank you. But to be fair, this thing has grown far beyond what Steve and I started in that Medford apartment with. Sure, we can take credit for starting the planter box, tilling the soil, adding seeds, and watering, etc, but it's since grown into a freaking ecosystem.
>
> Hopefully that metaphor wasn't too strained and you catch my drift.
>
> Steve and I had applied to the first round Y Combinator with a different idea (Steve wanted to be able to order fastfood from his cellphone and pick it up when he walked in and I thought it could be a brilliant business). We were rejected from YC, but the next morning PG called my cell and offered us the chance to come back as long as we changed our idea.
>
> We jumped at the chance, took the next train back to Boston and met with him for about an hour. He pushed us to drop mobile (it was 05) and think about a web app that we'd personally want to use every day. We left that meeting with a phrase in our heads that PG crafted "front page of the internet." Then it was just up to me and Steve to make it.
>
> At the time, we were intrigued by delicious/popular, which was an interesting byproduct of their bookmarking service. Incidentally, we didn't learn about digg until weeks after we launched. It goes to show how much our ignorance helped, because you may remember all the blatant digg-clones that came and went before digg did -- Steve and I weren't trying to just copy, we were thinking about solving this problem from a clean slate.
>
> I need to get better at distinguishing between the many varied reddit communities. The culture & community on r/NBA is very different from the culture on r/aww and reddit is just the platform that enables such varied discourse. Steve and I always debated about subreddits vs tagging and I'm happy he won, because although it's taken longer to grow and develop, it's resulted in this marvelous variety in communities all using this common platform. So in a way, all of these varied communities are what we'd hoped for, but we've still got a ways to go until the reddit platform really is the ubiquitous way online communities share and discover content.
>
> Subreddits for all the things!

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/vfosl/comment/c542jo3/ · 197 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/kn0thing in r/AskReddit, Aug 18, 2010 · Early days

Replying to the post "What's the story behind the Reddit alien?".

> Steve and I knew we were doing something community-news-related for Y Combinator (at that point, we were still finishing college and hadn't moved to Boston for YC). I was hellbent on having a mascot, because I wished more websites had them. I was bored in marketing class (go figure) and doodled up the alien for no other reason than I thought it looked neat.
>
> Plus, if we had a futuristic time-travelling alien mascot, it implies that the site couldn't fail (because how else would the alien have travelled back in time?).
>
> This story came after the mascot, which PG wasn't a huge fan of, but I wasn't going to relent and it was our startup anyway; though I think that time-travel backstory was Steve's idea.

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d2afb/comment/c0x4j13/ · 17 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/kn0thing in r/mildlyinteresting, Jul 25, 2017 · Funny

Replying to the post "Found an old broken car with an old Reddit sticker on my hike in Croatia.".

> THAT is a vintage sticker. Nice find. I remember making those. Disappointed it didn't hold up as well as the Apple sticker...

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/6pg53q/found_an_old_broken_car_with_an_old_reddit/dkp9uws/ · 475 points as of Nov 7, 2026