The Reddit funding was led by Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator which had originally helped in launching Reddit. Other investors included singer and actor Jared Leto, rapper Snoop Dogg, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, Eventbrite executives Kevin and Julia Hartz, Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner, Minted CEO Mariam Naficy, Y Combinator founder Jessica Livingston and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong.
Wong revealed that the investors have proposed to give 10 percent of their fund shares as a reward to the community in recognition of its role on helping Reddit to reach its success. Reddit leaders have been finding a way for the community to earn some ownership of the site.
Sam Altman explained in a blog post his decision to invest in Reddit.
"Reddit is an example of something that started out looking like a silly toy for wasting time and has become something very interesting. It's been an important community for me over the years - I can find like-minded people that I can't always find in the real world...There are lots of challenges to address, of course, but I think the Reddit team has the opportunity to build something amazing," said Altman.
Reddit, which was established in 2005, is said to attract around 133 million users every month. It is the type of site where people would post stories, gifs, images and other types of content. These posts get voted by the community which gives it either an up vote or a down vote. When a link becomes prominent, it earns a massive amount of referral traffic.
Reddit is popular for its 'Ask Me Anything' threads. Every type of individual, whether ordinary or famous, as long as he has an interesting career or story to tell, can invite the community to quiz them. Some of its popular users include Jared Leto and Snoop Dog. When the latter joined the site in 2012, he remained glued and would send posts daily.
Reddit explains in its own blog what it plans to do with the funding.
"We're planning to use this money to hire more staff for product development, expand our community management team, build out better moderation and community tools, work more closely with third party developers to expand our mobile offerings, improve our self-serve ad product, build out redditgifts marketplace, pay for our growing technical infrastructure, and all the many other things it takes to support a huge and growing global internet community," says Reddit.
