That was a beautiful post and really hit home in a weird day. Both my parents are getting old enough for me to worry about their health and I feel like I still haven't accomplished anything worthwhile. Sure I have a house/car/career etc. but just for once, I want to make them proud by doing something big. I've had about 3 hours of my 15-minutes of fame but nothing solid to rely on, like a stable startup or research career. The weird part is I feel a large part of my motivation comes from my desire to prove to them that they raised a good kid. I can't even imagine pushing myself to accomplish something if they aren't there to witness it. I just lost my grandpa last month and my dad expressed a very similar sentiment about him always trying to be the best son to his dad.
Thanks Alexis for sharing this. You're a good man.
I thought you were exaggerating. You were not. Thanks for sharing this Alexis, I'm in rather similar position right now, except only my dog died. Girlfriend's mom has MS and is paralyzed from neck down for the last two and a half years and recession hit so hard I can barely pay bills. I'll keep calm and carry on.
Alexis, this was an incredible post -- tremendously moving. You deserve some big props for sticking it through all that and achieving what you did. My mother had an aneurysm just as I was making a big move at work, and that kind of thing really puts things in perspective -- as your post did. Bravo.
After focusing so much on the ones and zeroes, posts like this snap us back to all that really matters: other people.
In the past year, I have made dramatic changes in my life, both personal and business, for one reason: so that I can spend time with my mother who is suffering from severe dementia. We watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night together. I yell out all the answers and she laughs, not caring whether they're right or wrong.
Before she started slipping away last year, she told me 2 things:
"From the moment I first saw you, I knew I would love you unconditionally forever."
Wow...I watched the same two shows with my mom. She spent much of her last year in the hospital. Except for an ice storm and one or two other days, every evening she was there, so was I.
I can tell you from experience that after she's gone, you will be very, very glad that you took the time.
Amazing. The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises.
Pretty counter-intuitive. One would think that having more stability and security in the background would free up one's mind to be able to help and cope and the like. But it makes a lot of sense that the opposite is true. Even in the midst of crises, you don't want your life to be entirely about crisis management. A large dose of of independence and drive helps a lot with that. Being able to travel and still work helps. Feeling like you're still doing something that matters to you helps even more.
It no doubt depends on the person, but for a community of startupfounders (or aspiring ones) I hope it resonates. There are surely examples of "big scary generic companies" handling this kind of ordeal (when it happens to their employees) well -- what's worth noting is that I didn't need an income to support either of my parents. None of us took any salary until reddit was acquired, so it'd have been much more difficult if my mother didn't have great health insurance (she worked at a hospital within the Johns Hopkins administration and had fortuitously recently signed up for the premium plan).
As an interesting comparison, my dad's a small business owner (travel agency, where he's had 1-2 employees) in a rather unsexy industry, but having a rockstar employee meant he could make every trip to the hospital with my mom.
I got so much of my independence because my dad was able to be the advocate & caretaker for my mom (not enough is said about how much these people go through - obviously it's not as awful as being the victim, but it's still incredibly trying). But I'm certain being his own boss (and having a fantastic team) made his awesomeness for my mom possible.
"If you've worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness -- something that's only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up. And you'd better fucking believe that when you come home to a mother battling brain cancer and a father spending every waking hour taking care of her and running his own business, you don't complain, you don't cower, and you most certainly don't quit."
I'm currently in a situation where I have such a person close to me. It was very helpful to have that pointed out again.
I've managed to work 2 hours on my startup idea this evening. Whereas I otherwise probably would've given in to the demons ("it's 20:40 already.. too late to get anything useful done, I'll just play some videogames the rest of the evening").
"The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you better at weathering crises."
In this case yes, but it's anecdotal evidence to say the least. He was involved in a rapidly growing, popular and revenue-generating start-up, this last point being the key. If you're involved in start-up that's struggling or pre-rev, then I imagine the story would be quite different.
My dad died of Glioblastoma when I was a teenager. He first noticed it as a sudden worsening of vision, followed by a breakdown of spatial relationships. My mom's boyfriend's best friend died of it too.
It's a horrible disease and the worst part about it is that it always comes back. Surgery and treatment might buy you 5 good years if you catch it early and it isn't as malignant. But it will always come back and kill you.
If anyone has any illusions that human personalities are made of more than the meat in our heads, watching someone die of a brain tumor will disabuse you of them. Bits of them disappear, and the remaining bits misfire and overcompensate for the bits that aren't there.
For anyone reading this, if your vision suddenly gets worse, don't just get new glasses. Go see a doctor. Most of our brain is devoted to visual processing, and if something isn't right it usually manifests there first.
Thanks for the advice. My vision suddenly dropped out about two weeks ago. Hopefully I'll have health insurance in the next month and will be able to go to the doctor.
I've never met Alexis in person but I E-mailed him for startup advice several times over the years (including the tough months that he mentions in this post).
He always responded with a chipper E-mail and very helpful advice on everything from accounting to licensing agreements to acquisitions.
Only you never listened to me when I advised you to give me 51% of the equity in fleaf[l]icker!
But seriously, that's the magic of email, right? I'm just glad I was helpful. I only wish I had little elves who could help me get through my email faster...
I just wanted to mention that "ficker" is the German version of the word "fucker", so if you ever get that equity, you might want to be careful about expansion
I know this because my mom is German and my dad American and there is an anecdote from their early years related to this. They used to speak in half-English, half-German when they were first together. My dad came home one day and said to my mother "Ich habe ein gift fur dir" ("I have a gift for you")-- everything in German except the word 'gift'. She wondered what she had done that he would wish to poison her.
On topic: I'm pretty open about my medical situation in online forums but most folks at work don't know about it. I'm getting well, so I can't really relate to the stories that end more tragically. It always leaves me ambivalent about bringing it up at all around people who are battling such situations. On the one hand, I would like to help. On the other hand, I rarely seem to be able to do much good in such situations, which frequently leads to hard feelings.
I only ever interacted with Alexis on a pre-reddit gaming forum and we didn't get along at all. All I've seen of reddit-founder Alexis suggests he's a standup guy though.
I may have been a little too self-righteous back then. Sorry!
Wow! Stroker Ace - nice to see you again. Yes, I did have an internetargument (tm) with quite a few folks on that board :-/ I feel like it was political? (2000 election maybe?) but I still remember when Paul (sgt!oink) and I started the original Nocturnal clan for Half-life. No hard feelings.
My uncle, who was like a second father to me, died from a class IV Glioblastoma multiforme a few months ago. I spent about a week in the hospital with him and the family (we spent xmas in the hospital, actually). He was 60, played hockey every week, super healthy, super smart, loved life.
Within two months of being diagnosed he was dead. He first had a seizure playing hockey and evrybody thought it was a stroke or an aneurysm. A month later he lost control over half of his body, then went in and out of coma for the final week... I had a chance to talk to him and hold his hand, tell him how important he was for me and all that stuff that we never tell each other. He could understand what we said, but had a hard time communicating... And then he was gone.
Terrible disease.
I'm getting married in 4 days, and we've decided to give money to charities working on cancer in the name of the wedding guests. We figured it was better than spending the money on chocolates or whatever (though we also have some of those).
Are you working with NIH by any chance? I obviously really appreciate the research you're doing (and as far as cancers go, I know there are much more significant ones - from a statistical pov - but your work is very much appreciated by the Ohanian family). Any not-for-profits you'd recommend for exceptional work? ABTA.org has been our goto thus far.
I'm part of a research group at UMASS that has close collaborations with MGH and two cancer centers in The Netherlands (where I'm originally from). Concerning the statistical significance you are right, breast tumors are probably having an impact on more families around the world. However, we are trying to develop strategies that work for all cancers so with a bit of luck we will help other patients and families too.
The work we do is financed by multiple sources. I am not too familiar with specific charity organizations since I am not from the United States. I will ask around in the lab(s) what people believe are the best organizations to donate to in you want to help Glioblastoma Multiforme research.
My dad died of a Glioblastoma Multiforme. So thankyou for choosing that field to study. It must be a pretty daunting area of research though. The first thing you do as a loved one is research it like crazy, and then you lose all hope.
Answering this question will require multiple pages so I will just stay with the work I am doing: gene therapy. Some new strategies seem to be relatively successful. For instance my group has developed a way to target the healthy surrounding area of the tumor to start "attacking" the tumor. Read this if you're interested in this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2863297/?tool=pu...
As for the challenges the blood-brain barrier makes reaching the brain difficult. And even when we reach the brain its size makes it hard penetrate it deeply. However new research is coming out every month that one by one solve these obstacles. There is a long road ahead though.
This very much echoes my own personal experience. My father was diagnosed with a terminal disease when I was high school. At the time he was given two years to survive. But my father is a fighter and he found a cocktail of food supplements that has allowed him to survive for 17 years now. After college, I have found that startup life provided both an outlet when I needed to hide from the world and offered the flexibility to be there for my family when that was required -- with all the overtime I normally put in no boss I've ever had gave me crap about taking time away or working remotely when needed.
I'm really happy to see this subject getting attention in the tech community. Caregiving is hard and can be a huge strain on families and caregivers. That's why I became the first employee at caring.com when the opportunity came my way. Being able to apply my technical expertise to such a personal subject and hopefully help make some peoples lives go a little smoother during one of the roughest periods of their lives is immensely satisfying.
Throws into sharp relief the regular stories we see of startups floundering after a few weeks/months for "personal reasons".
One takeaway from this that I saw was that having awesome co-founders is a must (as in the case of Reddit). Obviously this was a terrible time for Alexis; but I imagine it was a bit scary for the co-founders as well - not knowing if he would be about and in what state.
Not knowing anything about your problems, please don't consider my one story as a litmus test for 'life problems.' Everyone has them and mine look petty in the light of most people's (thinking on a global scale here). Just know that having something/someone you can invest your time & energy into can be incredibly fulfilling (and distracting, when you need it).
Alexis, I always felt that even though you weren't the coder, your personality was critical to Reddit's success and is indelibly stamped all over the site's comments and their sense of humour. Just as PG formed the soul of news.YC, so you and Steve formed the soul of Reddit.
To know that you managed to imprint the humour and affection that I see there now through all of this only makes me more impressed.
"If you happened to meet me during that time, you probably wouldn't have known it."
Had no idea. Later when I read about this (mentioned on some earlier post too) and the scaling issues the team was battling with at the time, I came to appreciate getting the chance to visit Reddit even more.
This is a truly valuable contribution to the startup community--as inspiring as it is devastating. We should all aspire to such courage, motivation, and good intentions in the work we do ourselves.
Man that hurts, it reminds me of 'The Boxer' by Simon and Garfunkel. Much respect for hanging in there, and just when I was thinking you should post a picture of your mom you did.
This has been said before and better here and elsewhere, but thanks for sharing your story Alexis, very inspiring and moving. Perseverance like yours is sensational.
That iconic photo of the London library after a Blitz attack was a postcard I bought many years ago while studying abroad in the UK. I don't recall why I bought it, but I've kept it on the wall at my desk everywhere I've gone. There's something so wonderfully powerful about seeing these men calmly perusing the library stacks amidst ruins from what was then a fairly routine bombing run at a time when it was far from clear that "the good guys" would win.
It's such a splendid 'fuck you' to the Nazis (or whomever your 'enemy' may be) to carry on living your life just as you were planning -- or better yet, enjoying it even more than you'd planned because it's in spite of the circumstances.
I've never been bombed, nor will I probably ever be, so it's always pretty easy to realize what kinda of life lottery ticket I've ended up with.
It's pretty amazing, but people do rapidly adjust to bombing or other high-ambient-threat environments, possibly overly much so. Still obviously worth avoiding.
Am I the only one who wishes all this personal stuff had nothing to do with the business?
Is it some new rule these days that startup founders have to prove they are 'real people' by sharing all the details of their lives? I mean, sure .. its sad to have to go through all that, but that stuff is personal.
This story really has very little to do with reddit, other than to serve as a social means of establishing 'personality' behind the scenes of the service.
Downvote me into oblivion, but I really have to say - fair enough, dude. You had a rough time. But that is life, you know? Need the whole world know you are suffering the normal, perfectly mundane, plain ol' human condition?
I suppose in these techno-fuelled racey days of million-dollar teenagers it helps to have a little soap opera, to keep the balance, eh ..
I didn't write it for pity and I hope it didn't come across that way. I left reddit nearly a year ago now. And I thought the one thing missing from the multitude of 'reasons to start a startup' posts was that it could actually be an incredibly beneficial personal decision - especially in times of dealing with the "normal, perfectly mundane, plain ol' human condition" that affects us all.
I also don't think I'd have done nearly as many of those alien doodles or invested nearly as many hours as I did in reddit and the community had it not been an outlet for everything else. In that regard, I think it has a lot to do with reddit.
Starting a startup with Steve was one of the best decisions I could've made, just for a very unexpected reason. I hope it convinces a few others that it's worth taking the plunge.
I just don't see how its applicable to connect your experience with the fact that you started reddit .. I mean, fair enough, you have a lot of Internet celebrity credits, but you're spending them by telling the world details about your life that have no real bearing on your profession.
The moral of the story? I guess it is that you should always try to persist in life no matter what gets thrown at you. I just found myself realizing, in the middle of your post, that I was spending my life reading about someone I don't even vaguely know, talking about how sad they were that their dog died. Is this really what its all about?
I am just really cringing for you right now... I know you don't really mean this, you just picked a bad article to quit reading right in the middle of before making a comment.
Edit: per the commenter's followup, I withdraw my benefit-of-the-doubt.
His personal life very much had bearings on his professional life. People are very much affected at work by what they do outside of it, and vice versa. Positively speaking, the tough times in his personal life may have proven to be the sort of motivation that inspires people to do great things. Negatively speaking, perhaps if he'd been able to spend more time working on Reddit at the start, they'd be in an even better off position than they are now. But we'll never know.
Regardless, while it is more extremely apparent in a startup, people's personal lives leak into their professional lives and vice versa. Something as small as the breakfast that you ate (or didn't) this morning affects your decisions and capabilities. When it comes to the bigger events in life, like family deaths, the repercussions in people's professional lives are quite significant. Hell, studies have shown that when men perform jobs that are too easy for them, their testosterone levels drop. That's a clearcut case of seemingly insignificant professional decision leaking into your personal life as testosterone levels affect so many personal choices.
Is it what it's all about? Hmmm. Did you take anything away from reading it that will help you in the future?
If so, context doesn't matter much, but you gained something positive, no matter how small.
Maybe you realized that everyone has hard times, and you don't feel it merits public discussion. However, it got you to read the post and not only that, but to comment on it as well. It's undeniable the post impacted you in some way. You will take something new away from that post, be it good, bad, or indifferent. Either way, in an ever so small way, you have been changed. What you do with that change is up to you, but in most cases I find it leads to positive change.
Are you disillusioned with the current status of programming/IT/tech in general?
I cant say if I'm reading this right, but it really sounds like you're suffering a crisis of confidence in your decision to spend your time / career in tech (tech just being a broad catchall). I might be making a leap, but to me your tone of frustration and harshness ring familiar and its an open secret that a lot of us hit this brick wall at one point or another.
Cliche as hell but, "everything happens for a reason", or at least, it tends to work out that way.
I'm truly sorry for the troubles you experienced; I'm truly jealous of the positive aspects that resulted from your troubles.
I have a feeling you wouldn't change a thing given the opportunity. I don't sense much regret in your post; that's an amazing position to have been able to get to.
Good luck with everything you embark on in the future.
Please don't say "everything happens for a reason". It's a worthless post-hoc rationalization. There is no conceivable outcome that could be worth watching someone go through shit like that.
I don't know what the GP meant by it, but "everything happens for a reason" can be of comfort when people are going through hard times. Connecting to purpose of some kind can help people find strength. It might not resonate for you, but it doesn't mean it can't help someone, sometime.
You are correct, it does not resonate with me. But even worse, it makes me think you (the rhetorical you, of course, not YOU personally) are trying to invalidate the anger/sadness/grief that I feel. People go through some incredibly shitty times, and for you to walk into that and say "hey, look for the bright side!" is not helpful.
> Connecting to purpose of some kind can help people find strength.
Sure, it can, but I doubt they need you to point it out. The reason it's a cliche is because everybody's heard it before.
So, OK, there's a chance you might say it to someone and it genuinely comforts them. But there's also a pretty good chance you're just going to alienate them. Up to you.
I get where your coming from. I think a lot of people find it therapeutic to write some form of journal. It's probably the number one thing any psychiatrist/psychologist will ask a patient to start doing.
That has moved to the web, where everyone has a "journal", only they call em blogs now; and there is no "psychological trouble" requirement to write a blog.
In this case, I think much of the same is happening. An individual is writing in his/her journal. Hundreds of thousands of people do so so every day.
The only difference here is this blogger/journal writer happens to have an audience. I suspect he would have written it anyway, sans the audience, sitting on a failed startup, and without a known name in the industry.
So I see where you are coming from, though I do think it's a lot less calculated or routine or par for the course as you feel.
The only difference here is the audience. Somewhere out there, there is a guy like me, wanting a startup, without a name for himself, who has been through a bit more in regards to some struggles of life/human condition.
Do I blog about it? Yup. Does anyone read it? Nope. Would I continue to blog about it were I a publicly known figure? Perhaps.
Some stuff is private to a point, where I do desire others to read it in hopes it may help them. However, put me in a position of notoriety and my opinion may change.
Right now, I like knowing that those very few who read my stuff don't know me, and I don't know them. It's a nice unspoken agreement of my blog and my position in this field.
Give me success and a little fame, and you may be right; less appropriate a forum to be talking about those things. At the sane time, if that blog post helps only one person gain perspective and get through another single day of personal anguish, all the downsides are irrelevant to me, and I'm sticking with it being a good thing, as it helped one single person get through their own personal hell for that day.
Commiseration can be your best friend in tough times. Just because you happen to have become noteworthy doesn't negate the power and value in knowing you are not alone.
It's funny, we all know how non-unique our situations are. Everyone has been there, or similar. Yet as much as we know that, the second something goes wrong, we feel alone and unique in our situation. Blogs seem to help get our brains out of self pity and loathing and more in tune with the fact none of us are alone, and someone else has been there already, more than likely under worse circumstances. That can be very powerful medicine.
That was a beautiful post and really hit home in a weird day. Both my parents are getting old enough for me to worry about their health and I feel like I still haven't accomplished anything worthwhile. Sure I have a house/car/career etc. but just for once, I want to make them proud by doing something big. I've had about 3 hours of my 15-minutes of fame but nothing solid to rely on, like a stable startup or research career. The weird part is I feel a large part of my motivation comes from my desire to prove to them that they raised a good kid. I can't even imagine pushing myself to accomplish something if they aren't there to witness it. I just lost my grandpa last month and my dad expressed a very similar sentiment about him always trying to be the best son to his dad.
Thanks Alexis for sharing this. You're a good man.