Read 06.08.2019

The Start-Up Journey

It always begins with an idea. You’re sure it’s the next big thing. The more you invest time and effort, the more promising it seems. You might even considering dropping out of college in pursuit of it. It’s the same pattern— the same question. Is this path worth taking?  

The Start-Up Journey is a risk. It challenges the conventional entry into adulthood, specifically of job security. What is the opportunity cost of your venture? Pragmaticism becomes your worst enemy. They say 99% of start-ups fail. What makes you so special? Maybe you can maintain a full-time job and nurture your brain child from the sidelines. That seems about right, if you’re trying to minimize risk. But the romanticist in you begs to take a leap of faith.

We Are The Nerds tells the tale of Reddit’s rise into internet stardom. From conception to development, its story captures the rollercoaster of personal, technical, financial, and foundational challenges. As a community-oriented platform, Reddit highlights the balance that must be maintained between consumer and supplier. Although I myself am not a successful start-up entrepreneur, I believe We Are The Nerds would be a great supplementary reading for anyone interested in taking a leap of faith themselves.

Below, I revisit two themes discussed in the reading.

Community Values

As a forum based platform for public discussion, positive user reception was critical for Reddit’s success. Unfortunately, what executives would describe as significant improvements may not resonate with the user-base. Reddit itself experienced multitudes of backlash against executive decisions, even for those related to internal hiring/firing policies. With such an intimate relationship with its users, Reddit relied on clear and open communication to create an understanding. CEOs held AMAs (Ask Me Anything!) where everyday users could directly interact with management. If you’re a Reddit user, this wouldn’t sound unusual at all, but how many other companies do you know that opens such channels of communication?

As a Redditor myself, I would summarize Reddit as a very personalized experience. With hundreds of thousands of sub-Reddits that cater to your specific needs, there is no lack of opportunity to express yourself as an individual on the internet. Unfortunately, with millions of users that are just as individualistic as the next, it becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy everyone’s demands. You can imagine how this could evolve into a huge problem.

Politically Oriented Organizations and Content Regulation

With a growing number of privately run services that cater to public discussion (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit) we are now faced with a couple complexities. The first being that these services thrive on user engagement. Considering that users voice approval for things they agree with and actively challenge things they disagree with, in hindsight, it seems inevitable that such services create ideological bubbles as well as widen the ideological disparity between said bubbles simultaneously.

Second, as ideologies grow and stem off into their own moderate or radical variants, companies are tasked with determining the boundary within which the given content is appropriate for consumption. These standards are not simply constitutive of a moral or ethical rubric, but also under scrutiny of advertisers that fuel the companies’ longevity.

As a result, companies are tasked with appeasing both its users and its advertisers. Who is more important? Users that engage with the service to produce ad-revenue or advertisers that provide the revenue in the first place? There’s no easy answer.

The Future

Facebook’s role in the 2016 election, YouTube’s ad-pocalypse(s), Reddit’s banning of specific sub-Reddits, Twitters supposed silencing of “inappropriate” content. As a consequence of these events, content on the internet has never been as regulated as they are today. Of course, some of these content are justifiably banned. It’s just really difficult to draw the line agreed to by all of internet’s inhabitants. How companies attempt to tackle this problem is a mystery to us all. Whatever it may be, it’s most likely going to face some severe criticisms from all sides of the political spectrum.