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Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Kerry Ohanian Sr. (Armenian: Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան Ավագ; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and former executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. He also co-founded the early-stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk and started the social enterprise Breadpig. He was also a partner at the startup accelerator and venture capital firm Y Combinator.
Ohanian is based in Florida where he lives with his wife, former tennis player Serena Williams and their daughters, Alexis Olympia Ohanian and Adira River Ohanian.
As of 2024[update], Ohanian’s net worth is estimated at $150 million.
Ohanian's paternal grandparents came to the United States as refugees of the Armenian genocide. His mother, Anke, was an immigrant from Germany who worked as a pharmacy technician and would speak German to Alexis as a young child. Ohanian's father, Chris, worked as a travel agent. He is his parents' only child.
Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York City and the family moved to a Maryland suburb during his youth. Finding themselves the only Armenians in the neighborhood, his parents sent Alexis to an AGBU-sponsored summer camp to maintain ties to their culture. Ohanian attended Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland and delivered a commencement address in 2001 at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
With thoughts of becoming a computer programmer, Ohanian took the only computer science class offered in his high school. However, he lost confidence in the major once he arrived at the University of Virginia. He would go on to double major in history and business commerce and minor in German and has said, in retrospect, that he should have stayed with computer science given his work in technology.
Ohanian says his obsession with technology started in middle school when he got a 33.6k dialup modem. With the support of his parents, he took computer programming classes at community college, and he spent time on message boards learning how to code and build websites. Ohanian's parents also bought him his first computer—a 486 SX—which he took apart and put back together. Eventually, he began to make websites for nonprofit organizations for free, by "trick[ing]" them, hiding behind his email to disguise the fact that he was a teen doing this from his parents' basement.
At one point, Ohanian planned to become an attorney but instead walked out of a LSAT and went to a local Waffle House in Charlottesville, Virginia. While seated there, he realized that he wanted to start a company instead. After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian and his friend and college roommate Steve Huffman pitched the MyMobileMenu, a food ordering application, to Y Combinator. The company passed but encouraged the duo to come up with another idea it could potentially fund. They later came up with reddit.com, an online bulletin board, with the goal of it becoming the "front page of the Internet".
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Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Kerry Ohanian Sr. (Armenian: Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան Ավագ; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and former executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. He also co-founded the early-stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk and started the social enterprise Breadpig. He was also a partner at the startup accelerator and venture capital firm Y Combinator.
Ohanian is based in Florida where he lives with his wife, former tennis player Serena Williams and their daughters, Alexis Olympia Ohanian and Adira River Ohanian.
As of 2024[update], Ohanian’s net worth is estimated at $150 million.
Ohanian's paternal grandparents came to the United States as refugees of the Armenian genocide. His mother, Anke, was an immigrant from Germany who worked as a pharmacy technician and would speak German to Alexis as a young child. Ohanian's father, Chris, worked as a travel agent. He is his parents' only child.
Ohanian was born in Brooklyn, New York City and the family moved to a Maryland suburb during his youth. Finding themselves the only Armenians in the neighborhood, his parents sent Alexis to an AGBU-sponsored summer camp to maintain ties to their culture. Ohanian attended Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland and delivered a commencement address in 2001 at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
With thoughts of becoming a computer programmer, Ohanian took the only computer science class offered in his high school. However, he lost confidence in the major once he arrived at the University of Virginia. He would go on to double major in history and business commerce and minor in German and has said, in retrospect, that he should have stayed with computer science given his work in technology.
Ohanian says his obsession with technology started in middle school when he got a 33.6k dialup modem. With the support of his parents, he took computer programming classes at community college, and he spent time on message boards learning how to code and build websites. Ohanian's parents also bought him his first computer—a 486 SX—which he took apart and put back together. Eventually, he began to make websites for nonprofit organizations for free, by "trick[ing]" them, hiding behind his email to disguise the fact that he was a teen doing this from his parents' basement.
At one point, Ohanian planned to become an attorney but instead walked out of a LSAT and went to a local Waffle House in Charlottesville, Virginia. While seated there, he realized that he wanted to start a company instead. After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian and his friend and college roommate Steve Huffman pitched the MyMobileMenu, a food ordering application, to Y Combinator. The company passed but encouraged the duo to come up with another idea it could potentially fund. They later came up with reddit.com, an online bulletin board, with the goal of it becoming the "front page of the Internet".