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Reddit closes $50M financing round, valuing it at $500M - so will it have to grow up no... - 0 views

gigaom.com/...so-will-it-have-to-grow-up-now

reddit financing revenue

shared by ecwesche21 on 22 Jan 15 - No Cached

, has closed a $50-million Series B financing round that includes leading venture-capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.
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in an interesting move befitting the company’s overall approach, 10 percent of the shares issued in the financing round will be given to Reddit users.
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money will likely intensify the pressure on the site to moderate its freedom-loving ways.
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round is being led by Sam Altman, the CEO of Y Combinator, the startup incubator where co-founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman first launched Reddit in 2005 — and among the individual investors who are participating in the financing are two Y Combinator partners: founder Jessica Livingston and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit (Ohanian recently became a partner at Y Combinator).
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individual investors in the round include early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, actor and singer Jared Leto, Eventbrite co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz, Minted CEO Mariam Naficy and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong. Previous investors in an angel-only Series A last year included Ohanian, Reddit executive Ellen Pao, YouTube founder Jawed Karim, former Square COO Keith Rabois and Marc Andreessen.
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gives Reddit more financial freedom than it has had in the past as a unit of Advance Publications, the parent company of the Conde Nast magazine family. Advance acquired the company in 2006 and spun it out three years ago as an independent entity, but retained control over its finances (and still owns more than half the shares, according to one report).
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Reddit also convinced all of the investors in the financing to give 10 percent of their shares to users, “in recognition of the central role the community plays in reddit’s ongoing success.
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crypto-currency that would be exchangeable for shares in the company
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one of the most significant challenges for Reddit as it tries to justify the valuation it has been given is the tension between wanting to grow and reach a broader audience — and, most importantly, to reach advertisers who can help monetize the site — and the nature of the community itself.
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One of the most powerful things about Reddit as a community is the freedom that it gives users, and especially the freedom to create forums on whatever topics someone happens to be interested in, including disturbing content like pictures of female corpses and links to bestiality.
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Ohanian has talked in the past about the importance of Reddit’s commitment to free speech, even uncomfortable kinds of speech, and its commitment to anonymity
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$500-million-plus valuation
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need to attract advertisers and large media brands
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desire to become more of a journalistic entity by giving users tools such as the live-reporting feature Reddit launched earlier this year
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