I think the one advantage to a failed - recovering, but a pretty broken - economy, and a lot of broken promises, is that we've pulled the veils from our eyes way earlier than most people do, and realize "Hey, you know what, maybe I should try do this thing that I really care about, and why not spend the time now during my best years to get into knitting, or coding, or swamp boat sailing." And there's this resource called the Internet that's going to provide you with a stage and a library for all of those things.
Alexis OhanianThe surveillance state has run amok. Technology that's enabled us to send selfies 24/7 - not that valuable - has also enabled us to be spied upon us 24/7.
Alexis OhanianNot everyone is going to end up being a founder of a company, but the skill of being entrepreneurial, having ideas and going through with them - that skill is so important. Everyone should be imbued with it. Because once you have that, once your brain has been wired for that, all these problems, obstacles, all these things start looking like things you can hack.
Alexis OhanianBeing effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar.
Alexis OhanianThe best part of being an angel investor is seeing these kids coming up with companies that get way more traffic than Reddit had when we sold it. I think, 'Are you kidding me? They're just kids, and they've done so much.
Alexis OhanianI don't have a crystal ball, but if you can ever put yourself in a situation where you are indispensable - where you aren't part of what looks like a fad, but you actually are a company, a brand that people trust and go to - at this point, you could put some of the mainstays of tech on anything, right?
Alexis Ohanian