Who says you have to have everything perfect to make a debut?
It’s not just great advice for performing or sharing your artistic hobbies—it’s applicable to businesses too! Take Reddit for example. Despite controversy from the inside, scorn from the outside, and never having been profitable even once in almost 19 years they’re taking it public!
It’s been seven years since this publication first speculated about it happening, but the time is now.
The company’s been making moves for a few years, seeking advertising dollars and recently partnering with Google to train the megacorp’s AI on redditor input. CNBC reports a sought valuation that could top out at $6.5 billion, further stating:
“Reddit’s Wall Street debut comes during a historically slow stretch for IPO, due in part to interest rate concerns and global economic uncertainty. Reddit’s IPO will represent the first major tech offering of the year and the first social media IPO since Pinterest’s Wall Street debut in 2019.”
Keep in mind that all this is despite dropping ten spaces to #18 on the most visited websites list, and being an older newcomer! The short moral of the story is that it’s never too late.
The longer moral is about digging your heels in and figuring out how to build up to the multiple deals and partnerships that got Reddit to this point. As a user I’m not thrilled that about every 10th post is an ad (soon to go up I’m sure), but from a social media business perspective the whole point of building an audience is to blast them with whatever messaging you can monetize. And you better believe ‘Hive of Slurs: The Website’ wouldn’t have been able to do anything this serious ten years ago.
That moniker’s not wholly unfair, but it’s much easier to shrug off these days.
Now that Reddit’s proven more reliable than even Google itself for finding genuine WOM recommendations and information, the name the company’s slowly but surely constructed for itself is finally sellable for more than a ‘The Daily Show’ slam. It’s like watching the class clown become the salutatorian.
As for whether or not needing to keep the line going up for shareholders ruins the platform, we’ll see. But I can at least tip my terminally online hat to them for making it to this point in the first place.
Congratulations…M’Reddit.
You can't spell "Together" without TGOT: That Goth Over There. Staff Writer, April Bingham, is that goth; and she's all about building bridges— both metaphorically between artistry and entrepreneurship, and literally with tools she probably shouldn't be allowed to learn how to use.
