Alexis Kerry Ohanian (Armenian: Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983)[1] is an American internet entrepreneur and investor.

[6] Ohanian attended Howard High School in Columbia, Maryland and delivered a commencement address in 2001 at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

[12] He would go on to double major in history and business commerce and minor in German and has said, in retrospect, that he should have stayed with computer science given his work in technology.

[14] With the support of his parents, he took computer programming classes at community college,[6] and he spent time on message boards learning how to code and build websites.

[6] Eventually, he began to make websites for nonprofit organizations for free, by "trick[ing]" them, hiding behind his email to disguise the fact that he was a teen doing this from his parents' basement.

[14] At one point, Ohanian planned to become an attorney but instead walked out of a LSAT prep course and went to a local Waffle House in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[15] After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history, Ohanian and his friend and college roommate Steve Huffman pitched the MyMobileMenu, a food ordering application, to Y Combinator.

[21] In June 5, 2020, Ohanian resigned from Reddit's board, asking to be replaced by a Black candidate in response to the murder of George Floyd.

[24] After leaving Reddit in 2010, Ohanian spent three months working in microfinance as a Kiva fellow in Yerevan, Armenia.

[26] In June 2010, Ohanian launched Das Kapital Capital, which focuses on start-up investing, advising, and consulting.

In this position, he meets with East Coast applicants, mentors New York YC founders, and is a general representative for the company.

[33] Ohanian co-founded Initialized Capital in 2010 and made seed investments in start-ups including Instacart, Zenefits, Opendoor, and Cruise.

[38] The following day, a moderator of IAmA posted that "Chooter (Victoria) was let go as an admin by u/kn0thing [Alexis Ohanian]",[39] an assertion that was not widely reported on.

[42] In 2017, Pao criticized Ohanian for avoiding the fallout by attending Wimbledon in the days immediately following Taylor's firing.

[43] Ohanian has created all of the mascots for the companies he started: Reddit alien "Snoo", Breadpig pig with bread wings, Hipmunk chipmunk "Chip", and Initialized Capital honey badger.

According to Fast Company, Ohanian aimed "to prove that there are new, sustainable funding opportunities for artists now thanks to platforms like Kickstarter".

[69] In June 2019, Ohanian announced his plans to bring the pledge to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in late 2019 to push for passage of federal paid family leave legislation.

He stated that "I hope to be meeting with many senators, representatives, plenty of dads on both sides of the aisle, in both houses of the Legislature, who want this to be the law of the land".

Ohanian published a book titled Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed on October 1, 2013,[80][81] which ranked fourth on The Wall Street Journal's best sellers list for Hardcover Business.

[87] Guests on the show have included Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, Carter Cleveland (founder of Artsy) and Cameron Russell.

The podcast features a segment called Office Hours, in which aspiring entrepreneurs can apply to work through an idea with him.

From businessdad.initialized.com, January 2020: “In a new podcast from Initialized Capital, Alexis Ohanian (cofounder of Initialized + Reddit) opens this question up to some of the most successful men across business, sports, entertainment, and more, for candid conversations about what it means to be a father in today’s world and how they balance their careers and family.” Ohanian was featured on a livestream broadcast on January 28, 2021[90] on Twitch.