Alexis Ohanian: Be Awesome Without Their Permission

By: Christina Reid

On February 5, Cornellians trudged through the “snow-pocalypse” to hear Alexis Ohanian shed his awesomeness in Barnes Hall. The co-founder of the website “Reddit,” informally talked about his triumphs and failures in becoming the success that he is today. And much to everyone’s surprise, he mostly talked about his failures as being the reason he has made it so far.

He started the talk with a series of funny slides on a PowerPoint detailing his early life with the Internet. Interestingly enough, he began as a website developer for nonprofits as a teenager. He ditched what could have been a stable future with his study of immigration law and instead plunged himself into the “unknown.” (The “unknown” being the scary world of trial-and-error.) He was chosen to work with Y-Combinator, where he developed early coding skills with co-founder Steve Huffman. As budding entrepreneurs eager to dive into numerous tasks, they found themselves more often than not questioning if they were making the right choices. This hit home for a lot of the viewers in Barnes, college kids with their own personal doubts about their futures and capabilities.

Ohanian reassured us that not knowing what to do is sometimes the best option to be in. It gives you room to pursue various channels of creativity and the opportunity to try your hand at more things than one. He revealed that he was not entirely sure of the direction that he wanted Reddit to go in but he was sure of the fact that he wanted to solve problems. By focusing on solving problems for people interested in your work, execution will always follow. I must admit that I have never heard any successful person talk with such candor and willingness to admit that “failure is an option.” He even went so far to say: “Go forth and suck, Cornell!”

He ended the talk by giving examples of people who used the Internet as a tool to get the work across like Brandon Stanton of “Humans of New York.” Ultimately, Ohanian wanted to stress that he was not a lucky case of success by means of failure. He brought up Cornell alum, Michael Horn, to discuss how he went from being a law student to an entrepreneur through the open Internet.

This talk was a part of a 77-university book tour. Ohanian’s address on being awesome without anyone’s permission is something that anyone who is feeling stifled creatively should definitely hear. Ohanian remarked that “you never forget your first.” He went on to say was that one never forgets his/her first life-changing moment. His epiphany came to him while eating waffles. Somebody in the crowd at Barnes may have even had their own epiphany that night.

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