Only social media platforms with ‘real humanity’ will survive, investor and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says

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Transcript:

Alexis Ohanian: In America, you know the “Ball Don’t Lie” moment is in the revenue—the dollars—and you’d be laughed out of a room for saying people don’t care about women’s tennis because the money says you’re an idiot, that’s wrong.

Diane Brady: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next. The podcast about the people…

Kristin Stoller: …and trends…

Brady: …that are shaping the future of business. I’m Diane Brady.

Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.

Brady: And this week, Kristin, one of my favorite people to interview, Alexis Ohanian.

Stoller: Yes, the cofounder of Reddit, but now so much more. He is all about investing in women’s sports. We interviewed him at our Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh, and he told us a lot about the expansion of women’s sports, not only in the US, but globally and in the Middle East too.

Brady: And let’s just level-set. One of the reasons [that] I think he’s so interested in women’s sports is he has a much more personal connection now with Serena Williams, who’s also investing in this area. And he has been an investor. This is a man who’s been very successful with Instacart, Coinbase, Opendoor. So as an investor, he’s very successful. He’s a man to watch. And of course, he’s an entrepreneur.

Stoller: He is. I think one of the most interesting things he told me that week when we were there, is that he believes we’re going to see a billion dollar women’s team within the next five years. He is very excited. He launched this new women’s track and field competition Athlos, which just took place in Times Square in October, and he is confident that women’s sports is just around the corner from being as profitable as men’s.

Brady: He talks about that. He talks a little bit about his own leadership philosophy, which has changed over the years. And he also talks about some of the activism that he’s done. I knew him originally from his battles over net neutrality, internet freedom. Obviously, we’re now at a whole new dawn of what’s going to be happening with AI. so we got into that as well.

Stoller: Some spicy hot takes too.

Brady: Yeah, very much so. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alexis Ohanian. I hope you do too, and we’ll be right back after the break.

Brady: Cities are home to the majority of the world’s population and account for 80% of global GDP. That makes the health and sustainability of our cities critical to creating a prosperous future. And of course, business has a role to play. Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US, is the sponsor of this podcast, and he joins us now. Jason, great to see you. 

Jason Girzadas: Great to see you, Diane. Thanks for having me. 

Brady: So, how should businesses play a role in creating more vibrant and sustainable cities?

Girzadas: It’s clear to me that the health of cities is inextricably linked to business’s viability and success. I think it starts with an awareness or a recognition of that mutually dependent reality. I think the how is around collaboration. It’s bringing to bear the capabilities of businesses to support cities’ renewal and innovation. To understand the criticality of cities’s role around economic prosperity, innovation, as well as cultural exchange.

Stoller: Jason, could you give us some examples of successful urban transformation projects that have been driven by these innovative business practices?

Girzadas: I’m proud to say that Deloitte, back in 2023, we started an effort called Yes SF. Here in San Francisco, where I live, the launch of Yes SF, with other business collaborators, has brought together our competencies around stimulating interest amongst innovators to bring sustainability and technology innovation to benefit the city itself.

Stoller: Excellent. Well, that sounds like a very cool project. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. 

Girzadas: Thank you.

Brady: Thanks, Jason.

Stoller: Alexis, thank you so much for joining us here at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh.

Ohanian: Thank you for having me.

Stoller: Of course. So I want to start with—you are wearing so many hats these days. You’re a founder, investor…

Brady: I thought you were going to compliment his suit actually. Wearing so many hats and a nice suit.

Stoller: You’re a founder, investor, you’re an owner, you’re a dad. Where are your priorities out right now? Give us a taste.

Ohanian: Literally this week, my priorities—I’m not being the best dad, but I promised my girls, papa is coming home Friday. There might be pancakes for dinner. You know, you’ve got to spice things up when you’ve been out of town for a week. I’m spending all my time on the business side building Seven Seven Six, and that’s this venture fund that I seeded with my own capital, we also have outside investors. We’re investing in everything from Mr. Beast and Stoke Space to Angel City and women’s sports, so a little bit of everything. And every now and then I get to pretend like I’m a founder because of one of our incubations, and that’s my most fun thing at the moment.

Stoller: Once a founder, always a founder, though.

Brady: I think it goes back to your roots. You know, this is your first time in Riyadh. I want to talk about that a little bit. What’s your impression? I know it’s early days. And what brought you here in the first place?

Ohanian: Well, you know, I’ve been in the region for a minute. I started doing business with the Emiratis probably a decade ago. So I’ve spent a lot of time there in the Emirates. And probably in the last five years, I started to see more and more of my peers from tech coming over here, raising money here, spending time in Saudi. And I was hesitant at first, honestly. And one of the things, especially in the last five years, that I’ve had a lot of success in, has been emerging sports, and specifically women’s sports. And for all that work, which is very intentional work—I believe they’re going to be billion dollar businesses that I’m building—but also things that I’m obviously very proud of for the two girls who are watching. Why Papa has to go leave, to go do work—I want it to be for a great reason. And so for all of that, I was hesitant. I wanted to make sure that when folks were inviting me out anywhere, that there’s this sort of alignment. And I have to give credit to Princess Reema in particular…

Brady: …the ambassador, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

Ohanian: And Princess Reema has done an amazing job. You know, every time I’ve met with her, she’s just very earnestly talking about not just the things she wants to do, but the things they are doing to help bring about a lot of the progress that we’d love to see all over the world, but especially here. And so she’s been an incredible ambassador, literally and figuratively, for the kingdom, and it was thanks to her that I said, All right, you know what? It’s time. I really want to see this for myself. And I’ve had such a warm welcome—again only a day in—but I’ve had such a warm welcome here and I’m excited to spend the rest of my week.

Stoller: Well, you don’t look jet lagged at all. You’re doing great.

Ohanian: That’s because of the coffee I’m hiding under the table.

Stoller: So bringing us to Athlos, which is your professional women’s track and field competition. Tell us about that. When did it start? Why did it start? We want the full story.

Ohanian: I first got into sports, and women’s sports, in particular about five years ago, when I rage tweeted about how undervalued the industry was. And in particular, women’s soccer, women’s football. And I proceeded to spend about a million dollars to buy an expansion, the NWSL Angel City, now the most valuable in the United States. And I saw an opportunity because every four years, especially in the U.S., we celebrated soccer, but it was women playing. The Women’s World Cup was a much bigger deal because the American men are not very good. That disappeared, though, outside the World Cup. And I say, well, this doesn’t make sense, because tier one brands, tier one audience, all this stuff happens every four years. Then they disappear. They’re the same athletes. Why can’t we have this year round? And what I should have done was buy the league. I didn’t and so…

Brady: You say that so casually.

Ohanian: Honestly, five years ago, $10-15 million probably would buy the NWSL. It was in dire straits. It was the third league of its kind in the US. The first two had shuttered. It was in a bad situation. So I got a second chance, because the Olympics were coming up. And I looked and I looked and I said, Okay, what are the most popular sports here that, again, have a legacy of American excellence, especially among the women, and that disappear in between. Track and field, lo and behold—legacy of American excellence, especially the women, and a fantastic product. Really engaging, really engrossing, top viewers, and then it disappears. And so last April, or actually probably a little earlier, I started talking to the fastest women in the world. They took my calls, I took notes, and asked them a lot of dumb questions. Announced Athlos in April of last year with Gabby Thomas, instantly became the biggest prize money in the history of the sport just because I doubled the top prize. And we’ve now come back around a year later. We had another meet in New York with great brands like Tiffany, Toyota, Cash App, Instacart, and I think the numbers are four, four and a half million viewers for that event. And we’re launching a full league, think like F1 for track and field, next year. So we’ll have three meets, I can’t say all the places. Obviously, we’ll come back to New York, but major global capitals, to have the fastest women in the world compete for great prizes and really make this sport into something that is not just once every four years. And to align around teams. If you think Mercedes versus Ferrari in Formula One, I want you to think, when you’re thinking Athlos, Nike versus Adidas, hypothetically. And so we’re working towards that end and really capturing what I think is an energy that just dissipates immediately after the Olympics, and it shouldn’t.

Stoller: When you spoke to the athletes—can you tell us a little bit about who you spoke to and what they were saying that they really wanted, that they don’t have currently?

Brady: As you’re talking, Alexis, about what you’re building, the hallmarks of success, to me, are reminiscent of tennis. You know, because Billie Jean King was the first to create an equal purse for women in tennis. Obviously your wife, Serena, is both a star and an entrepreneur herself. I’m just curious about any thinking that she brought to this, or anything that you’ve witnessed, that you felt this is what’s going to make it important for women to compete. I know we’re talking about something that’s once every four years, but still, you’re creating an ongoing fan base for this.

Ohanian: 100%. You know, it’s interesting. When I first told her I was investing in women’s soccer and starting a team, she actually tried to talk me out of it. In part because she had lived the other side of being an athlete in this sports and women’s sports system. And like you said, the WTA is one of the best, right? Because of Billie Jean King, you had pay equity. Because of that pay equity, you had a couple of girls in Compton decide they wanted to devote their lives to tennis, right? That’s literally the reason. So without Billie Jean King, you don’t get Serena and Venus, but without Serena and Venus, you don’t get generational talent that then takes the sport out of country clubs and makes it one of the most popular sports in the world, certainly in the United States. And it created a stage where you could have excellence. Again, because these tournaments were all at the same time, they could say, all right, fine, we’ll market the women too. Then you get this amazing talent that grows the game in such a big way. And in America, you know, the “ball don’t lie” moment is in the revenue, the dollars, and you’d be laughed out of a room for saying people don’t care about women’s tennis because the money says you’re an idiot, that’s wrong. And so that existing, and then having a front row seat to that—obviously I’m married to her—was the validation I needed to think, Well, okay, if it works in tennis, why not these other sports? And with soccer, for an American audience, there’s no concept of American soccer excellence that is not female, because the men are not excellent. So I can market excellence all day long, right? Even if you don’t watch. I never watched the sport, but I knew who Mia Hamm was. I vividly remember Chastain scoring that penalty kick, beating China, tearing off her shirt, and screaming. Those cultural moments of excellence meant I can market this sport to an American audience and have them think, Oh, sure, this is the best. And I think similarly, there’s an opportunity here with track and field, Flo-Jo. There’s a whole history of excellence in American women’s track and field, and I think it’s just a hell of a place to build. So I’m excited.

Stoller: It’s interesting that you say Serena challenged you, because I feel like a lot of the people we talk to who are husband and wife duos, who are in business together, it can be hard to work.

Brady: Good luck saying it to your daughters.

Ohanian; I stopped that one. So I rolled that one back.

Brady: Look, we’re talking right now about what you’re doing in the present. I’d like to remind people what shaped you. Talk a little bit about the genesis. I mean, obviously I know you through Reddit, Y Combinator. What got you into tech in the first place? Because you’re not a classic story. You weren’t somebody taking apart a radio and boom, here we go.

Ohanian: No, I mean, my parents made one very good decision. They spent a lot of money getting me a computer, a 486 SX that they had no idea what to do with. They just saved up a few $1,000 and gave it to me and said, just don’t break it. And if you break it, you’ve got to fix it. That was in middle school, and that put me on a very different trajectory, but I was always just an okay programmer. But what I had was grit and a resolve and a work ethic that helped a lot. And I did just well enough in school to get into UVA, I applied early decision, which helped me a lot. But I wasn’t an Ivy League kid. I wasn’t a Stanford kid. I remember, on the UVA application, there was a question, you had to check a box if you were a legacy. And I remember asking my mom, What does legacy mean? And my dad was like, Well, if we don’t know what it means, we better not check it. And so that gives you a sense. I mean, my mother, her highest level of education was a GED, and my dad went to a hippie school in Ohio called Antioch, so we were not a prototypical tech CEO type family.

Brady: You build community. That’s one motif throughout your career.

Ohanian: Yes, and that’s what’s made sports so easy to transition into, because if you could convince strangers on the internet to bond over something as inane as stapling bread to trees, which is one example of a Reddit community that’s actually pretty popular. You know, building community around a fan base, around sports is easy, right? Because we already have an understanding of the power of community in sports. It’s online, it’s offline, so it’s definitely been a cheat code, and I think that theme will continue for my whole career.

Stoller: What do you think community looks like in the age of AI right now? And how’s that going to change?

Stoller: …do you want to lead it? Do you have any ideas?

Brady: I think about net neutrality, the battles you had. I see some similarities here, insofar as, how concerned are you about the fairness factor? The ability to create the sort of startups that you created in this next iteration? You mentioned the Zuck factor. Of course, that’s one.

Stoller: I am so sad that we are coming to the end of our time here, because I feel like we barely scratched the surface.

Brady: We’ve got to give him a chance to do one word.

Stoller: I want to do underrated and overrated, both in tech and in sports. What do you want to start with, tech or sports?

Stoller: Okay, all right.

Brady; Underrated sports for $5

Ohanian: Yes, please, Daily Double.

Ohanian: Women’s sports is still massively underrated.

Ohanian: What’s overrated? Media deals. So for the Big Four, you’re seeing these billion dollar media deals. Everyone’s really hyped about that. I do think something has got to give. The fan experience has become so fragmented, right? And this is a version of what a lot of us feel with, like, how many more subscriptions do I need to watch my favorite matches? So I think the market will correct itself here. But again, it’s all the more reason why you should be excited about emerging sports, because for all of us, our goal is make it as easy as possible to watch our content. So I feel bullish for the emerging folks, but I’d say the hype around the sort of big four, those big media deals, is overrated.

Ohanian: This might surprise people. I think space tech is underrated. And as valuable as SpaceX is—I’m not a SpaceX shareholder, wish I were, though, if anyone’s trying to unload a few shares—SpaceX is an incredible company. Space tech, on the whole, though, is underrated because we are still…

Brady: …what’s space tech?

Ohanian: Anything that  goes up into space and ideally back, but not necessarily. I think the cost per kilogram, because SpaceX is the only game in town, is still so prohibitively high, and usually it takes you 12 to 18 months to even just get on the rocket. That’s still incredibly prohibitive. So I actually think the space economy is massively underrated, because we’re still seeing a world where it’s just very expensive to do a lot of stuff up there. And as that price comes down, because we love competition. Again, the free market’s going to drive prices down. SpaceX will get more effective. More competitors will show up, and you’re going to see a whole other wave of entrepreneurs now building space tech companies that wouldn’t have even a few years ago. And again, I need to stress this. I’m doing this and excited about this because it will improve society and life here on earth.

Ohanian: I do think—I’m weirdly bearish on there’s a lot of pitches right now are on AI agents. So this idea of, hey, you can use some AI to kind of move things around on your computer. Or on the screen, excuse me. And so there are two competing schools of thought here. On the one hand, it makes sense, it’s pragmatic to say, Okay, we’re going to teach AI to navigate around these UIs, user interfaces, that were designed for humans. But the sort of the other viewpoint is, why are we even building things that hack a solution for human brains, when we should just have robots talking to robots? And so there is a view…

Brady: …that is agentic. AI robots talking to robots, isn’t it? You’ve turned it into a positive. That’s great.

Ohanian: I’m a default optimist, but I think it will make it hard for a lot of these companies that believe their future is building those solutions, when in N years, maybe five years, it just makes more sense to forego that.

Stoller: Thank you so much.

Brady:Leadership Next is produced and edited by Hélène Estèves.

Brady: Our head of video is Adam Banicki.

Stoller: Our theme is by Jason Snell.

Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune‘s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcasters and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes