Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, the husband of tennis star Serena Williams, said Wednesday that he plans to step down from full-time work at the company and focus full-time on the venture capital fund he created.
He plans to stay on Reddit’s board of directors, but said he wants to create a better world after the birth of his daughter with Williams.
Becoming a father has given him new perspective, he said.
Dad duty while Mom worked this weekend.https://t.co/9WvXSQmqQn pic.twitter.com/yXoy0Lb2rF
— Alexis Ohanian Sr. (@alexisohanian) February 12, 2018
From Moneyish. Story by Katerina Ang.
While the 34-year-old tech executive will rechannel his energy as a full-time general partner at a venture capital fund he created, Ohanian also wants to spend more time doing things important for his young daughter with tennis champ Serena Williams.
“I came back from parental leave at the start of January, and really started thinking about where I wanted to be, what I wanted to be doing,” he told the Wall Street Journal. In a online post announcing his plans, Ohanian added that this meant helping “the entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow building companies that truly matter,” something he aims to do at Initialized, his VC firm.
Ohanian, who married Williams late last year, has become an icon of sorts for new fathers in Silicon Valley thanks to his advocacy of parental leave. Reddit offers 16 weeks of paternity leave— one of the more generous packages in Corporate America —and Ohanian says that his mentees feel like he’s given them “permission” to take time off to care for their kids. “I was a believer before, but now I whole-heartedly believe that every single dad should take it,” he told Fortune. “That really put into perspective how important these policies are.”
https://twitter.com/SuperTennisTv/status/962779865295544320
https://twitter.com/all_serena/status/962464087916638213
Reddit is owned by media giant Advance Publications. Ohanian told the Journal that revenue increased fivefold in the three-plus years of his latest stint with Reddit, which he sold to Advance in 2006 for a reported $20 million. The company’s latest fundraising round valued it at $1.8 billion.
Read more at Moneyish.
