Reddit Raises $50 Million In Funding, To Offer 10 Percent Stake to Community
Reddit, the social news sharing site, raised $50 million in funding from various investors.
The lead founder is Y Combinator president Sam Altman, one of the original investors of Reddit along with rapper Snoop Dogg, Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, and venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Ron Conway.
This latest infusion of money will raise the valuation of Reddit to $500 million. Around 10 percent of the shares will be up for grabs for the Reddit community members this time. The specifics of the offerings are still to be worked out.
Altman said in a blog post that he was personally putting money into the company.
"I was probably in the first dozen people to use the site, and I shudder to imagine the number of hours I have spent there," Altman said, reports Agence France Presse.
Reddit chief executive Yishan Wong said in a blog post that the new funding will be used to hire staff, expand the management team, build better tools for the website and work closely with third party developers to offer content tailored for mobile devices.
He writes, "We intend to work on our new AMA app, improve our self-serve ad product and build out redditgifts marketplace."
Reddit was started in 2005 and acquired by Conde Nast Publications, which later spun it off as an independent division while still retaining a large stake .
On Reddit, shared news' popularity is driven by the community which pushes it 'up' or 'down'. It has another popular feature - Ask Me Anything (AMA) - an online chat forum where influential or well-known figures and celebrities field questions from the community in real time . Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and US President Barack Obama have appeared online on this forum.
