Reddit isn’t profitable, despite having more than 50 million daily active users. In preparation for an IPO, CEO Steve Huffman put the platform’s API
Christian is not talking to Huffman there.
Also, fuck spez, but Christian looks pretty bad in that sound bite. The $10 million thing really looked like a threat, and Christian tried to back pedal only after he got called out.
I always interpreted it along the lines of
“Apollo is losing you 20m per year. Buy me out for 10m. You save 10m the first year, and 20m the following years. I make a one-off 10m, which is 50% of what you value my app to be worth per year.”
But I agree that whole exchange doesn’t go great.
Easy to misunderstand without hindsight!
However, it is quickly clarified and agreed upon (from both sides) that it’s not a threat.
So, spez takes part of that conversation massively out for context and said Christian threatened Reddit. Which isn’t in good faith
I know the full context. It doesn’t really make it any better. Bringing it up in the first place is bad, regardless of any “clarification” (a.k.a. damage control).
Besides, do you really think your interpretation wouldn’t be considered a threat? Reddit won’t say publicly they considered it as one, but it is very clear they took it that way (and, probably, correctly).
