Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, expressed that the origin story of Nvidia Corp. at Denny’s, leading to a trillion-dollar enterprise, outshines his billion-dollar Reddit launch at Waffle House.
Exploring Humble Beginnings: Ohanian shared his views on the matter via X (formerly Twitter) in response to a tweet by Jon Erlichman, highlighting Nvidia’s founding story at Denny’s.
Erlichman detailed, “Nvidia was founded during a breakfast meeting at Denny’s. Today, Nvidia makes more money in four hours than Denny’s makes in a year.”
Reflecting on this, Ohanian noted, “OK, that’s better than my @WaffleHouse + @reddit story.”
Ohanian traced part of his Reddit inspiration back to a visit to a Waffle House restaurant, stating, “If you know my story, you know that if I hadn’t walked out of the LSAT to get WH, I’d be a lawyer instead of starting Reddit,” in a 2022 Instagram post.
In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Ohanian revealed his initial aspirations to assist immigrants in securing citizenship but pivoted after realizing his passion lay elsewhere while dining at a Waffle House, proclaiming, “It was at a Waffle House I realized I wanted to start something.”
Similar to this, in 1993, friends Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem convened at Denny’s to discuss creating a chip to enable lifelike 3D graphics on home computers.
Relevance in Today’s Landscape: Ohanian’s acknowledgment coincides with Reddit and Jensen Huang-led Nvidia making notable progress in their respective sectors.
Reddit recently filed its IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, scheduling its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange for March, an event highly anticipated as the year’s significant tech IPO debut.
In a 2021 funding round, Reddit achieved a $10 billion valuation, with its expected share sale valuation yet to be determined.
On the other hand, Nvidia, a premier AI entity, reported exceptional fourth-quarter results that surpassed optimistic projections, registering a 22% revenue increase from the third quarter and an impressive 265% year-over-year growth, with a current market cap of $1.97 trillion.