Reddit is now one of the biggest websites on the internet with hundreds of millions of users, but when it started out, most of the content was being put out by its two co-founders.
In a candid revelation, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian admitted to a strategy that many would find surprising: the platform’s early content wasn’t organic at all. Speaking about the social news site’s humble beginnings in 2005, Ohanian disclosed that he and co-founder Steve Huffman essentially manufactured the appearance of an active community before one actually existed. The confession offers a fascinating glimpse into the lengths entrepreneurs will go to solve the classic chicken-and-egg problem faced by social platforms.
“We basically faked our first users by submitting under different usernames,” Ohanian explained. When asked how many submissions were fabricated in this way, his response was striking: “For the first few weeks of Reddit, I’d say 99% of submissions were either me or Steve under different usernames.”
The two founders didn’t even have the comment feature implemented at the time, which made the deception easier to maintain. By creating multiple accounts and populating the site with links and content themselves, Ohanian and Huffman were able to give the impression of a thriving community to the few real users who stumbled upon the platform. This artificial activity served a crucial purpose: it demonstrated what Reddit could become and gave genuine users something to engage with when they arrived.
The strategy, while unconventional, highlights a common challenge in building network-effect businesses. Without users, there’s no content; without content, there’s no reason for users to join. Reddit’s founders solved this paradox through sheer determination and a willingness to do whatever it took to get their platform off the ground. The approach worked remarkably well. Once genuine users began contributing and the community reached critical mass, Reddit evolved into the sprawling ecosystem of thousands of communities it is today.
Reddit’s growth hack is far from unique in the tech world. PayPal famously paid users to sign up and refer friends in its early days, spending millions to build its user base. Airbnb founders personally photographed listings to improve quality, scraped Craigslist to find potential hosts and sold cereal to find customers. Tinder launched at college parties where everyone was encouraged to download the app simultaneously, creating instant local communities. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would ring a bell in the office every time a sale was made in the company’s early days—when sales were rare enough that this was possible. These tactics share a common thread: founders doing unscalable things to create the initial momentum that algorithms and organic growth can later sustain. What distinguishes successful startups isn’t just the quality of their ideas, but the creativity and persistence founders demonstrate in those critical early stages when the platform is still proving its value to the world.