SAN FRANCISCO — Reddit and its eclectic bazaar of online communities is ready to plumb high-stakes territory — the stock market.
The interest surrounding Reddit stems largely from a large audience that religiously visits the service to discuss a potpourri of subjects that range from silly memes to existential worries, as well as get recommendations from like-minded people.About 76 million users checked into one of Reddit’s roughly 100,000 communities in December, according to the regulatory disclosures required before the San Francisco company goes public. Reddit set aside up to 1.76 million of 15.
By the tech industry’s standards, Reddit remains extraordinarily small for a company that has been around as long as it has.With its stock priced at $34 per share, Reddit will have a market value of $6.4 billion. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms — who biggest social media service Facebook was started just 18 months earlier than Reddit —- boasts a market value of more than $1.2 trillion. Meta also generates annual revenue of $135 billion while Reddit’s remains below $1 billion.
Not long after it was born, Reddit was sold to magazine publisher Conde Nast for $10 million in deal that meant the company didn’t need to run as a standalone business. Even after Conde Nast parent Advance Magazine Publishers spun off Reddit in 2011, the company said in its IPO filing that it didn’t begin to focus on generating revenue until 2018.
Reddit also experienced tumultuous bouts of instability in leadership that may scare off some prospective investors. Company co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian — also the husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams —- both left Reddit in 2009 while Conde Nast was still in control, only to return years later.
“The list of our mistakes over the years is long, and so is the list of challenges we’ve faced,” Huffman wrote in 2021. “We lived these challenges publicly and have the scars, learnings, and policy updates to prove it. Our history influences our future. There will undoubtedly be more challenges to come.