> Why do you feel they need to either be a top 10 YC company or they should just be a foundation?
The history of reddit shows that its growth doesn't depend on a constant technological innovation, and that it can be successfully supported by a small number of technical employees.
Building an ad company requires a huge number of sales and support people, which significantly increases spending without adding anything to the product itself.
> Seems like if they can make a few hundred million an year they can just be an ongoing business.
That would be fine, but reddit is not Craiglist, which never took any money from the outside. They have raised money at $3 billion valuation, and they will have to IPO – or get acquired by a larger company, again.
If reddit becomes a publicly traded company, it will have to demonstrate the growth in revenue every quarter. A failure to do so might result in the heads of the company being replaced, and its direction becoming unpredictable.
> “Just a CRUD app” is not a good analysis because very few of the companies on this list are based on technological breakthroughs. They are mainly B2B SaaS apps.
SaaS companies are making money by solving easily measurable problems of their customers. Reddit is not.
> SaaS companies are making money by solving easily measurable problems of their customers. Reddit is not.
I derive a lot of obvious value from reddit that's not their explicit goal. It's the best review and recommendation platform on the web for any random product category I can think of, for example.
Reddit is still majority owned by Advance Publications, no? They’ve had 3 fund raises since Advance Publications spun out reddit as an independent company. That’s up to 30% taken by investors. The only other shareholders are employees from the spin out. Reddit can still go another 1-2 rounds before Advance Publications doesn’t own more than 50% of reddit. Maybe the latter two rounds have deals that will force an IPO sooner, but otherwise it seems Reddit doesn’t have the same pressure as your average startup that has raised $500M+.
The history of reddit shows that its growth doesn't depend on a constant technological innovation, and that it can be successfully supported by a small number of technical employees.
Building an ad company requires a huge number of sales and support people, which significantly increases spending without adding anything to the product itself.
> Seems like if they can make a few hundred million an year they can just be an ongoing business.
That would be fine, but reddit is not Craiglist, which never took any money from the outside. They have raised money at $3 billion valuation, and they will have to IPO – or get acquired by a larger company, again.
If reddit becomes a publicly traded company, it will have to demonstrate the growth in revenue every quarter. A failure to do so might result in the heads of the company being replaced, and its direction becoming unpredictable.
> “Just a CRUD app” is not a good analysis because very few of the companies on this list are based on technological breakthroughs. They are mainly B2B SaaS apps.
SaaS companies are making money by solving easily measurable problems of their customers. Reddit is not.