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Snoop Dogg was one of Reddit’s earliest investors.
The social news website and forum was created in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian while they were college students at the University of Virginia. Their idea was supported through startup incubator Y Combinator, which gave them access to $12,000 in funding for their vision to build “the front page of the Internet,” The Street reports.
The company would grow as users were able to create a slew of subreddits that encompass a range of topics. Six years from Reddit’s inception, it became a major player in the social media sphere, boasting 35 million visitors and 2.8 billion pageviews, Ohanian wrote in Fast Company. In 2014, the company attracted the support of Snoop Dogg, who participated in a $50 million seed round led by Sam Altman, now OpenAI co-founder and CEO.
“I worked my way in. You understand me? I didn’t mean to tell everybody, but I’m a part of Reddit too,” Snoop Dogg said in a 2017 interview for “GGN News.”
The investment made sense for the rapper and serial entrepreneur, who had already established popularity on Reddit through leading “ask me anything” discussion forums.
“He’s like a Reddit superstar. The site loves him,” Altman said of Snoop Dogg in 2014, per The New York Times.
For these reasons, Altman was looking to involve Snoop Dogg in the funding round.
“Snoop was high on the list,” Altman said, per the outlet. “We asked him to invest, and he said yes.”
Ohanian, who resigned from Reddit in 2018 and later left its board by 2020, as per TechCrunch, recently took to X, formerly Twitter, to reflect on Snoop Dogg’s involvement. At the time, Ohanian wanted to highlight the significance of recognizing those who have been with the platform since its early days.
“Beautiful day in LA. I appreciate this city so much. Got to catch up with a lot of friends. Some of you may know @SnoopDogg was one of our earliest investors at @reddit during our spin-out & turnaround. Very few people wanted to invest in us back then. Snoop did. And ya never for get your Day Ones,” Ohanian wrote on X.
Beautiful day in LA. I appreciate this city so much. Got to catch up with a lot of friends. Some of you may know @SnoopDogg was one of our earliest investors at @reddit during our spin-out & turnaround. Very few people wanted to invest in us back then. Snoop did. And ya never for… pic.twitter.com/Sr3aqumag6
— Alexis Ohanian 🇦🇲 (@alexisohanian) May 6, 2024
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