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Reddit cofounder walked away with $10 million after his dog died and his mom was diagnosed with brain cancer—but he’d be sharing $38 billion if he held out

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With over 110 million daily active users and a market cap of nearly $40 billion, Reddit is a giant in the social media world. But unlike Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Spiegel, Reddit’s cofounders never became billionaires alongside their creation.

That’s because just months after University of Virginia roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman launched the company in 2005, they sold it to Condé Nast for just $10 million. 

Looking back on how successful the platform is now, it might seem astounding for them to have sold so prematurely —and Ohanian even admitted he was a bit naive. But the then-23-year-old’s life was nothing short of complicated. His girlfriend at the time had fallen into a coma, his dog died, and his mom was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

“As a first-time CEO fresh outta college, you’re feeling invulnerable, feeling really good about building this business,” Ohanian recalled to Wired in August. “And then all of these things happen. And in particular when my mom was diagnosed, it really framed mortality for me in a new way.”

Plus, at the time, $10 million also felt life-changing for the young adults. Ohanian had seen Zuckerberg turn down Yahoo’s $1 billion bid for Facebook and thought it was “preposterous” to walk away from that kind of money. For Ohanian, the idea of creating millions in value in a short period of time was more than enough.

“If anything, I was very naive,” Ohanian said. “You have to consider $10 million of value creation in 16 months. When we first got the offer, I’m thinking: It’s been not even a year. This is more money than my parents will earn their entire working lives.”

Ohanian and Huffman have become well off regardless and redefined what success means

Even without billionaire status to their name, Reddit’s founders have nonetheless found new pathways to success.

Huffman eventually returned to Reddit and has led the company as CEO for the past decade. Ohanian, meanwhile, has become a prominent tech investor and advocate for women’s sports.

Beyond money and career milestones, Ohanian has spoken about a new generation of CEOs who don’t regret missed business opportunities as much as missed time with their families. “I wish I’d spent more time with my kids,” he recalled them saying.

“CEOs around me are starting to understand this and want to be amazing leaders, partners, and dads,” he added.

Even Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI—the world’s most valuable private company—recently echoed that sentiment after becoming a father. “It is the best, most amazing thing ever,” he told Bloomberg. “And it totally rewired all of my priorities.”

The startup dilemma: cash out or hold on?

The Reddit founders’ decision to sell early is far from unique: it’s a familiar crossroads in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs must decide between a guaranteed payout or risking it all for potentially far greater rewards.

YouTube is another example. Just over a year after its creation, cofounders Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim took an offer from Google to buy out the video sharing platform for $1.65 billion. However, with its valuation today being closer to $550 billion, YouTube has grown some 333x (unadjusted for inflation).

Instagram, too, sold less than two years after its founding. Facebook offered some $114 billion for the photo-sharing app, divided between its two co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, as well as investors and less than a dozen employees. 

And while the payday was substantial, it was not as rewarding for the cofounders as they anticipated.

“I think the biggest lesson… coming into a fair amount of money pretty quickly, was that money itself is no end,” Systrom said at SXSW in 2019. “It doesn’t make you happy. It doesn’t solve health problems. It can help in those things.”



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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe has a ‘real problem’

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.

“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”

While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.” 

Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”

On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.

“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”

He said the US should help.

“We need a long-term strategy to help them become strong,” Dimon said. “A weak Europe is bad for us.”

The administration of President Donald Trump issued a new national security strategy that directed US interests toward the Western Hemisphere and protection of the homeland while dismissing Europe as a continent headed toward “civilizational erasure.”

Read More: Trump’s National Security Strategy Veers Inward in Telling Shift

JPMorgan has been ramping up its push to spur more investments in the national defense sector. In October, the bank announced that it would funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the next 10 years — as much as $500 billion more than what it would’ve provided anyway. 

Dimon said in the statement that it’s “painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing.”

Investment banker Jay Horine oversees the effort, which Dimon called “100% commercial.” It will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and frontier and strategic technologies. 

The bank will also invest as much as $10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing.

Separately on Saturday, Dimon praised Trump for finding ways to roll back bureaucracy in the government.

“There is no question that this administration is trying to bring an axe to some of the bureaucracy that held back America,” Dimon said. “That is a good thing and we can do it and still keep the world safe, for safe food and safe banks and all the stuff like that.”



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Hegseth likens strikes on alleged drug boats to post-9/11 war on terror

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying President Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” to defend the nation.

Hegseth dismissed criticism of the strikes, which have killed more than 80 people and now face intense scrutiny over concerns that they violated international law. Saying the strikes are justified to protect Americans, Hegseth likened the fight to the war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”

The most recent strike brings the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. Lawmakers have sought more answers about the attacks and their legal justification, and whether U.S. forces were ordered to launch a follow-up strike following a September attack even after the Pentagon knew of survivors.

Though Hegseth compared the alleged drug smugglers to Al-Qaida terrorists, experts have noted significant differences between the two foes and the efforts to combat them.

Hegseth’s remarks came after the Trump administration released its new national security strategy, one that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

During the speech, Hegseth also discussed the need to check China’s rise through strength instead of conflict. He repeated Trump’s vow to resume nuclear testing on an equal basis as China and Russia — a goal that has alarmed many nuclear arms experts. China and Russia haven’t conducted explosive tests in decades, though the Kremlin said it would follow the U.S. if Trump restarted tests.

The speech was delivered at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event which brings together top national security experts from around the country. Hegseth used the visit to argue that Trump is Reagan’s “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy.

By contrast, Hegseth criticized Republican leaders in the years since Reagan for supporting wars in the Middle East and democracy-building efforts that didn’t work. He also blasted those who have argued that climate change poses serious challenges to military readiness.

“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building,” he said.



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