Reddit doing things that don't scale

In the world of startups, there’s a well-known piece of advice from Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: “Do things that don’t scale.” This counterintuitive wisdom suggests that in the early days of building a company, founders should embrace labor-intensive, manual processes that could never work at scale—but might be exactly what’s needed to get initial traction. Few companies embody this principle more vividly than Reddit, the “front page of the internet” that grew from a handful of fake accounts to one of the most influential websites in the world.

The Accidental Pivot

Reddit’s origin story begins not with a vision for a content-sharing platform, but with a rejected idea for mobile food ordering. In 2005, University of Virginia seniors Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend a talk by Paul Graham about how to start a startup. Impressed by their energy and intelligence, Graham encouraged them to apply to the first-ever Y Combinator batch.

Their initial pitch was for “My Mobile Menu,” a way to order fast food on your cellphone via text message. This was before smartphones, and the idea would have required making deals with both cell carriers and fast food chains just to get launched. It was, as Graham later described it, “not going to happen.”

Y Combinator rejected their application, but Graham saw something special in the founders themselves. He called them while they were on the train back to Virginia and offered to fund them if they’d work on something else. Huffman and Ohanian got off at the next station, boarded a train back to Cambridge, and by the end of the day were committed to working on what would become Reddit.

The new concept was inspired by del.icio.us/popular, a page on the bookmarking site Delicious that showed the most-saved links. Graham had noticed that people were using this page as a de facto news aggregator and suggested that Huffman and Ohanian build something similar, but designed specifically for sharing links rather than having it be a byproduct of saving them.

With $12,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator, the pair moved to Massachusetts and began building their new platform. They launched just three weeks into the first Y Combinator batch—remarkably fast for a new website, even by today’s standards. But launching a platform was only the first step. The real challenge was getting people to use it.

The Empty Restaurant Problem

Reddit faced what’s often called “the empty restaurant problem.” Just as diners are reluctant to enter an empty restaurant (assuming the food must be bad), users are hesitant to join an empty platform. For a content aggregation site like Reddit, this created a particular challenge: without users, there would be no content, and without content, there would be no users.

This chicken-and-egg problem is common to many platforms, but Reddit’s solution was uncommonly direct. As Steve Huffman later revealed in a lecture for the online education platform Udacity, in the early days, he and Ohanian created tons of fake accounts to populate the site with content.

“The first users of Reddit were…us,” Huffman explained. The founders would submit links they found interesting, then switch to different accounts to upvote those submissions and comment on them. They created the illusion of activity and engagement, essentially playing all the roles in a community that didn’t yet exist.

This wasn’t just about making the site look busy. By controlling these fake accounts, Huffman and Ohanian could shape the tone and culture of the platform. They could model the kind of behavior they wanted to see: sharing interesting links, having thoughtful discussions, and upvoting quality content. They were essentially creating a template for how Reddit should work, establishing norms that would influence real users when they eventually arrived.

As Huffman put it, “You need to seed it with good content. You need to give people a reason to come to your site.” By carefully curating the initial content through their fake accounts, the founders ensured that when real users did show up, they would find a site worth visiting.

Building the First Community

The first genuine users of Reddit beyond the founders were their Y Combinator batchmates and college friends. This small group, combined with the founders’ multiple accounts, was enough to begin collecting a decent list of interesting links. As Paul Graham noted, “It turns out you don’t need that many users to collect a decent list of interesting links, especially if you have multiple accounts per user.”

This initial community was crucial for Reddit’s development. The site’s early users were predominantly tech-savvy, intellectually curious individuals—people much like Huffman himself, who Graham described as having “vacuum-cleaner curiosity” and being “interested in ideas for their own sake.” This shaped Reddit’s emerging identity as a place for thoughtful discussion and the sharing of interesting, often obscure content from around the web.

The founders were actively involved in this community-building process. They didn’t just create fake accounts and walk away; they were constantly engaging, submitting content, and participating in discussions. This hands-on approach allowed them to guide the community’s development and ensure it was moving in the direction they envisioned.

As the site grew, they gradually added features that would become central to the Reddit experience. The upvote/downvote system allowed users to collectively determine which content rose to the top. Comments enabled discussions around shared links. And eventually, subreddits—topic-specific communities within the larger platform—allowed users to create and moderate their own spaces focused on particular interests.

The Power of Fake It Till You Make It

Reddit’s strategy of using fake accounts might seem deceptive at first glance, but it’s important to understand the context. The founders weren’t trying to trick investors or inflate metrics for a funding round. They were solving a genuine bootstrapping problem: how to create enough initial content and activity to attract real users.

This approach falls squarely within Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale” philosophy. Creating and managing multiple accounts, manually submitting links, and engaging in discussions across these accounts was incredibly labor-intensive. It’s not something that could or should be sustained as the platform grew. But in those crucial early days, it was exactly what Reddit needed.

The strategy worked because it addressed a fundamental truth about online communities: people want to join active discussions, not start them. By creating the illusion of activity, Huffman and Ohanian lowered the barrier to participation for real users. New visitors didn’t have to take the risk of being the first to post; they could simply join conversations that were already happening.

This “fake it till you make it” approach has parallels in the offline world. Restaurants sometimes seat staff members at tables visible from the street to make the establishment look busy and attract real customers. Nightclubs employ similar tactics, having friends of the owners arrive early to create the appearance of popularity. These strategies work because social proof—the idea that we look to others to determine what’s correct or desirable—is a powerful influence on human behavior.

In Reddit’s case, the fake accounts provided social proof that the platform was worth using. New visitors saw an active community sharing interesting content and engaging in discussions, which made them more likely to participate themselves. As real users began to join and contribute, the need for fake accounts gradually diminished.

The Transition to Authentic Growth

As Reddit began to gain traction, the founders were able to rely less on their fake accounts and more on genuine user activity. Slowly but steadily, the site’s traffic grew. At first, as Paul Graham recalled, “the numbers were so small they were hard to distinguish from background noise. But within a few weeks it was clear that there was a core of real users returning regularly to the site.”

This transition from artificially generated activity to authentic user engagement is a critical phase for any platform using the “fake it till you make it” approach. The goal isn’t to maintain the illusion indefinitely, but to create enough initial momentum that the platform can begin to grow organically.

For Reddit, this organic growth was driven by several factors. The site’s focus on user-submitted content meant it was fresher and more current than competitors like Slashdot, where stories were chosen by human moderators. As Graham noted, “News there was newer, and users will always go where the newest news is.”

The platform’s design also encouraged participation. The upvote/downvote system gave users a simple way to contribute to the community even if they weren’t ready to submit links or comments. The karma system, which tracked users’ contributions through points, added a game-like element that incentivized participation.

Perhaps most importantly, Reddit benefited from network effects. As more users joined, the quality and diversity of content improved, which attracted even more users. This virtuous cycle is the holy grail for platform businesses, and Reddit’s initial strategy of using fake accounts helped kickstart this process.

Expanding the Team and Vision

As Reddit began to grow, the founding team expanded. Chris Slowe, who was finishing his PhD in physics at Harvard, and Aaron Swartz, a college freshman known for his brilliant mind and anti-authority stance, joined from the same Y Combinator batch. This small but exceptionally talented team continued to develop the platform, adding features and addressing challenges as they arose.

The site’s growth attracted attention from larger media companies, and in October 2006, just 16 months after its founding, Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast for a reported $10-20 million. The acquisition provided resources for further growth but also marked the beginning of a complicated corporate chapter in Reddit’s history.

Huffman and Ohanian continued to work at Reddit for a time after the acquisition, but both eventually left to pursue other ventures. The site continued to grow in their absence, though as Paul Graham observed, the management strategy during this period “ranged from benign neglect to spectacular blunders.”

Despite these challenges, Reddit’s fundamental utility as a platform for sharing and discussing content kept users coming back. As Graham put it, “Reddit the site (and now app) is such a fundamentally useful thing that it’s almost unkillable.” This resilience speaks to the strength of the foundation laid by the founders in those early days, including their unscalable strategy of seeding the site with fake accounts.

The Return and Renaissance

In 2015, after nearly a decade away, Steve Huffman returned to Reddit as CEO. His return marked the beginning of a renaissance for the platform. With Huffman back at the helm, Reddit began to address long-standing issues, improve its technology, and expand its business model.

The site introduced new features, enhanced its mobile experience, and began to explore new revenue streams beyond traditional advertising. In 2021, Reddit raised $250 million in funding, valuing the company at $6 billion. And in 2023, the company filed for an initial public offering, marking a new chapter in its evolution from a small Y Combinator startup to a major player in the digital landscape.

Throughout this growth and transformation, the core of what makes Reddit valuable has remained consistent: it’s a place where people can find and discuss content that interests them, organized into communities around specific topics. This fundamental value proposition was present from the very beginning, even when much of the activity was generated by the founders themselves.

Lessons from Reddit’s Unscalable Beginnings

Reddit’s journey from fake accounts to a platform with hundreds of millions of users offers several valuable lessons for entrepreneurs:

1. Focus on the founders, not just the idea. Y Combinator rejected Reddit’s original concept but funded the founders anyway, recognizing their potential. This founder-centric approach has since become a cornerstone of Y Combinator’s investment philosophy.
2. Be willing to pivot. Huffman and Ohanian’s willingness to abandon their original idea and embrace a new direction was crucial to their success. Sometimes the best path forward is a completely different one.
3. Do things that don’t scale. Creating and managing fake accounts was labor-intensive and unsustainable in the long term, but it solved a critical early-stage problem. Don’t be afraid of manual, unscalable solutions if they address immediate challenges.
4. Shape the culture early. By controlling the initial content and interactions on Reddit, the founders established norms and expectations that would influence the platform’s development for years to come. The early days of a community are disproportionately important in determining its long-term culture.
5. Build for genuine value. Despite management challenges and periods of neglect, Reddit continued to grow because it provided real utility to users. Building something people genuinely want is the best insurance against other problems.

The Legacy of Doing Things That Don’t Scale

Today, Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly active users across thousands of communities. It has become a cultural force, influencing everything from politics to entertainment, and has even been credited with moving financial markets through communities like r/wallstreetbets.

This massive platform, with its global reach and influence, began with two founders creating fake accounts to seed content and discussions. It’s a powerful reminder that even the largest and most successful companies often start with scrappy, unscalable tactics.

As Steve Huffman reflected in his Udacity lecture, “You need to give people a reason to come to your site.” By creating the illusion of an active community through fake accounts, Huffman and Ohanian gave those early visitors a reason to stay and participate. This unscalable approach laid the foundation for what would become one of the internet’s most vibrant and influential platforms.

In a digital landscape where the “chicken-and-egg” problem of building a platform without users is increasingly common, Reddit’s story offers both inspiration and a practical example. Sometimes, the path to building something that scales begins with doing things that don’t scale at all. For Reddit, those fake accounts were the seeds from which a global community grew—one upvote at a time.