In our blog, we also want to host successful entrepreneurial stories. Of course, not all of the opinions and decisions of the entrepreneurs reviewed here necessarily represent our own. But we do believe that a storehouse of success stories helps us to learn about other visions and to expand the sources of inspiration of other entrepreneurs. We started this series with Alex Ohanian, co-founder of, among others, Reddit, a social bookmarking website and news aggregator where users can leave links to content. In addition, other users can vote for or against the links, making them appear more or less prominent. Reddit records no less than 2.4 billion monthly visits. One of Ohanian's most striking traits as an entrepreneur is his vision of marketing. The American is committed to marketing that does not interrupt the consumer's life, with fast executions, high user participation and budgets that are not too high. These are the marketing strategies of Reddit and other projects in which Ohanian participates, such as the flight comparator Hipmunk or the solidarity initiative Breadpig.For example, Hipmunk promoted an action on Twitter on Mother's Day in which the user should participate with the phrase “I love Hipmunk.com, but I love my mother more because...” The mothers of the authors of the three best phrases would receive a gift worth 100 dollars, and the gift was chosen by the winner. A gift that could very well be from another brand, since Ohanian believes that a brand doesn't have to be in everything it does. El branding It came even later: the great impact of the action clearly recognized the Hipmunk brand as a driving force. In 2009, Ohanian gave one of the talks with the most repercussions of all those of TED. Some of the opinions he gives in his speech are:
- You can't control the Internet user's voice; democracy, on the Internet, doesn't wear a suit and tie (Ohanian uses an illustrative example of a whale in “wet pants”).
- Uploading content to the Internet is not expensive, and it's also a fantastic experience to learn from mistakes and analyze the effect that such content generates.
- The honesty of a company is more recognizable on the web. If you're not transparent, you're not respected.
- Ohanian takes the iron out of even losing control of the reach of the content a company creates. In general, he says that outcomes cannot be predicted when power is held by millions of people. On social networks, the message does not circulate from top to bottom, but rather “spreads like a pool of water”.
Photo: Forbes
