Business origin stories that'll make you want to run through a brick wall. Released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enjoy.
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Today’s Freshly Squeezed Story starts with—you guessed it. Two college roommates. This time, the college is UVA, and the roommates are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian...  What’d they make? Here are a couple hints: 1. This dynamic duo is responsible for GameStop’s price per share hitting $483 during history’s most wild short squeeze. 2. Thanks to Steve and Alexis, we can find free live streams of sporting events with ease. That’s right. UVA’s Myers Briggs personality test paired up two 18 year old strangers, stuck them in an old dorm room, waited nearly 4 years, and out popped “Reddit”. For Steve and Alexis’ last ever spring break (during their senior year), they decided to do something unusual. While everyone else was headed to Florida to do keg stands, the pair drove 11 hours up to Boston to attend a speech called “How to Start a Startup”. The talk really got them going. They were hooked. They wanted to start a company of their own—but, what did the world need? Google just wasn’t doing the trick (as anything other than a “searching tool”) back in ’05. Steve and Alexis settled on creating a website—a website that would serve as the “front page” of the internet. That way, when you opened “Internet Explorer” (RIP) or “Safari”, you’d have highlights from all over the internet right at your fingertips. Eventually, they ended up with the world-famous landing page, “Reddit”. All in all, Reddit is a community. It’s a place where the people, who didn’t have a voice before, have a voice now. Not everything on reddit is all butterflies and rainbows, but a whole lot of good has been started deep in the Reddit abyss. For example, Reddit helped Greenpeace name an endangered humpback whale in the South Pacific Ocean “Mister Splashy Pants”. Alexis even gave a ted talk on it. Check it out here. Anyway, the moral of the story is that instead of going to Panama City Beach for Spring Break next year, go watch a Ted Talk. Take care. **To keep reading, check out these resources: this video, and this wiki page. **For more FS Stories, click here. If you liked reading this article, you might also like The Wedge: a quick-to-read weekly e-mail newsletter with awesome business stories that'll increase your creativity and resourcefulness just by reading them. Learn more and sign up here. Comments are closed.
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