“The internet, like your mom, is fickle and ruthless.”   Wise words coming from the cofounder of one of today’s hottest social news and entertainment sites: Alexis Ohanian of reddit.com.   Of all the entrepreneurs that I have been researching for this blog, Ohanian seems to be the  most in touch with the six senses that Pink mentions in his book “A Whole New Mind.”   “You’ve absolutely got to make something people actually want or they’ll never stick around, let alone come back,”  declares Ohanian, drawing on his knowledge of the quirky culture that has evolved around social websites on the internet (think 4chan).   The internet is nothing if not high impact, and delivering a product to such a market requires some significant time investment into zeroing on the problem before developing your idea on how you would solve that problem.

Ohanian, a son of mixed Armenian/German parents, has degrees in History and Commerce from the University of Virginia.   He began development on reddit with co-programmer Steve Huffman after graduating, identifying the need for a social community/entertainment site and acting to solve that problem through code.   Reddit was released soon after his graduation, received initial funding from Y Combinator, and was eventually aquired by Conde Nast Publications for millions of dollars.   It is now the 86th most popular website in the world, being named one of the hottest San Francisco companies of 2010, as well as drawing in hundreds of millions of visitors per day.

What exactly is reddit?  The site name is a portmanteau of the words read/edit, which summarizes much of the site’s functionality.   Marketed as the “front page of the internet,”   reddit is a collection of subreddits, or bulletin boards grouped around categories of interest, on which users can post text and links as well as comment on those posts.   The upvote/downvote system regulates visibility of posts, while other site features integrate social networking with group discussion to deliver the unique experience that is Reddit.

What does Ohanian have to say to up and coming entrepreneurs seeking to emulate his success?  For one, he tells people to go ahead and try, whether their idea succeeds or fails.   “Just do it,”  he states, citing the vast range of problems that need to be solved through entrepreneurial innovation.   Looking around at the daily problems that “annoy you,”  Ohanian says, can lead to the next big thing.   He accurately points out that “So many successful companies start out like this: the founders were having a problem, and they found a way to solve it.”