- Company
- 776 / Reddit
- Role
- Co-Founder & General Partner
- Est. Net Worth
- $200 Million (Est.)
- Stage
- Established
- Industry
- Finance
Alexis Ohanian
Co-Founder & General Partner at 776 / Reddit
About
Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit in 2005, helping build it into one of the most influential platforms on the internet — a community-driven forum that now reaches over 1.5 billion monthly visitors and has become the de facto town square for communities ranging from technology and finance to gaming and mental health. After Reddit's sale to Condé Nast and his subsequent return to help lead the company through its next phase of growth, Ohanian left the board in 2020 and founded Seven Seven Six (776), a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in technology companies. 776 has invested in over 200 companies, and Ohanian has positioned himself as a new kind of venture capitalist — one who leverages his social media presence (millions of followers across platforms), his experience building communities at scale, and his personal brand as a founder-investor who understands what it takes to build products that people love.
Current Company
776 / Reddit — Co-Founder & General Partner
Co-Founding the Front Page of the Internet
Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit in 2005 during the first Y Combinator class — a program that would go on to produce Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox but that was, at the time, a speculative experiment in a cramped Cambridge apartment. Reddit's concept was deceptively simple: a platform where anyone could post links and the community would vote on what was interesting, creating a democratically curated front page of the internet. What made Reddit extraordinary was not its technology but its culture — the platform developed a voice and identity that was irreverent, nerdy, passionate, and fiercely protective of free expression. By the time Condé Nast acquired Reddit in 2006, the site was already a cultural force; by the time Ohanian returned to help lead the company through its growth phase, it had become one of the most visited websites in the world.
Ohanian's role in Reddit's success was primarily cultural and strategic rather than technical — he served as the community's ambassador, advocate, and spiritual leader, defending the platform's commitment to free expression while gradually implementing policies to address the harassment, misinformation, and toxicity that thrived in the absence of moderation. His decision to step down from Reddit's board in 2020, specifically requesting that his seat be filled by a Black candidate, reflected his evolution from a libertarian-leaning tech founder into a more nuanced thinker about the responsibilities that platform creators bear for the communities they enable.
776 and the Reinvention of Venture Capital
Ohanian's venture capital firm Seven Seven Six (776) represents his attempt to build a different kind of investment firm — one that leverages the founder's personal brand, community-building experience, and social media fluency to provide value to portfolio companies beyond the traditional VC offering of capital and board seats. 776 has invested in over 200 companies, with a portfolio that spans consumer technology, fintech, healthcare, and creator economy businesses. Ohanian's investment thesis is shaped by his Reddit experience: he looks for founders building products that create communities, generate network effects, and become more valuable as more people use them.
His public profile — amplified by his marriage to tennis champion Serena Williams and his active social media presence — has made him one of the most visible venture capitalists in the world, a distinction he has used to advocate for issues including parental leave (he was one of the first prominent male tech executives to take extended paternity leave), immigration reform (his family is of Armenian and German descent), and the democratization of venture capital. Ohanian has argued that the VC industry's concentration in a few firms and a few zip codes produces not just social inequity but investment mediocrity: by funding only founders who fit the narrow profile that Silicon Valley historically rewards, the industry systematically misses the majority of the world's entrepreneurial talent.