Hey, Axe Files listeners, as I mentioned last week, we're going to take a few weeks off, but we want to share some shows that we think you may enjoy. First up, We Have "Imposters," a weekly show hosted by Alex Lieberman, who is the co-founder of Morning Brew. Alex speaks to world class executives, athletes and entertainers about their personal struggles and how overcoming those challenges helped shape their careers and lives for the better. In this episode, Alex speaks to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and the current head of the VC firm Seven Seven Six. Alexis speaks to Alex about his decision to leave Reddit after the Black Lives Matter marches in 2020 and the controversial stance Reddit took to protect the hate speech on its platform. You can listen to impostors every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.

I had a girlfriend at the time, had a very serious accident. She was in a coma for a number of months and this is all during the first three months of YC. And my mom gets diagnosed with brain cancer. And, you know, as a first time CEO, fresh out of college, I really had an awakening to how fragile life was with some pretty big gut punches.

Welcome to Imposters, the show where I talk to world class execs, athletes and entertainers about their personal challenges and how overcoming those challenges has shaped their careers and lives for the better. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. My guest today is Alexis Ohanian. Alexis is best known as the co-founder of Reddit. In 2006, Alexis and his co-founder, Steve Huffman sold Reddit to Condé Nast for $10 million. And in 2014, he returned as executive chair to help lead the turnaround of the company. But in 2020, following the death of George Floyd, Alexis publicly resigned from Reddit's board as an act of protest and requested that the company fill his seat with a person of color. We talked about everything that led him to that decision in the episode today. Alexis then proceeded to found his current company, the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six with the aim of investing in startups and founders who are making a positive impact on the world. We talk about what that really means and how it is possible to be a good business person, turn a profit, and still focus on reshaping the world for the better. We also get into his personal life, his marriage to tennis legend Serena Williams, and what it's like raising a daughter while leaving behind a legacy that she can be proud of. My full conversation with Alexis Ohanian right after this quick break. Alexis Ohanian, thank you for joining Imposters.

Thanks for having me, Alex.

So there are a number of ways to describe your story. One of the co-founders of Reddit, a descendent of refugees, the founder of Seven Seven Six. You're a father to a daughter, husband to one of the greatest athletes of any sport. But before we track to the beginning, how would you describe your journey and how would you list who you are today?

How would I list who I am today. I like this this business dad thing that I invented. I really, I want, I aspire— those are the two, I think the strongest parts of my identity. And I spent most of my life really focusing on just the career part. The first part and then, you know, four years ago became a dad. Things shifted. And that is the lens through which I look at basically every decision professionally is like, I want to be doing my absolute best work for however long I can so that my daughter can see me doing it, doing it in a way that I'm proud of, that she's proud of doing it in a way where it's the best of the best but aligned with values. And starting Seven Seven Six was in many ways the embodiment of that, especially because it came in the wake of, you know, resigning in protest from Reddit and also splitting the previous venture firm I had started initialized. And I plan on spending the rest of my life building Seven Seven Six the venture firm as well as the foundation, the sort of sister foundation to it. And it's wild because I have many of my childhood friends are still my best friends to this day. And these are guys who have literally know me since kindergarten in a few of their cases, and they're like, Dude, why don't you just retire, man? Why don't you just relax. And one, because I know I don't know what I would do with myself, but two, I really want Olympia to see me working, to see me building. And I also think it's part of my responsibility as a dad and a role model. Like I want her to see me put in work and something I really care about and doing it on my terms. I'm spending all of my time building what we're doing here at Seven Seven Six and trying to be the best business dad I can because because right now my daughter just thinks I make pancakes for a living.

Which you also do.

Which I do. It's my Sunday, it was my COVID skill that I picked up. I have a very particular set up with squeeze bottles and everything else. But anyway, I just did it again this Sunday. I had to do Dolores from Encanto.

I still haven't seen Encanto, but I've heard people are obsessed with it.

I really thought we were going to miss that trend. And then the songs started to invade and then now it's just on all the time. But yeah, so that was her request this Sunday.

So just to tie a bow in that, when you think of this phrase "business dad," which again you've created and I like the terminology. To you, does it basically just mean, you know you love business, you know you love building businesses and investing in great entrepreneurs and that the connection of business and dad is how do you do that in a way that you feel really proud of, the way in which you did it, and know that Olympia one day is going to feel really proud about it also?

Yeah, yeah. And it's it's I guess normally be businessman and and acknowledging that fatherhood, and being a husband, but family, let's say is, is not something that I can separate from my identity, nor is it something that I would want to. And I don't think they are mutually exclusive. It's consistently a struggle, but I do think it is absolutely possible to aspire to be the very best at what you do for work and the very best at what you do for your family. And that's something that I think historically it has not been as public a conversation for men as it has been a struggle really for women. And I've come to the conclusion that these are really important things for me. I've spoken to so many, much more successful, much older businessmen who, you know, they're dads, they're granddads now. And every single one of them talks about how much they either appreciated or regretted time either spent or not spent with their children, especially during those early years when they're just sponges for information and attention and they're— it's fleeting time. And so I had enough people who were smarter than me, older than me saying like, hey, this really matters. And I spent my whole career paying attention to people who are smarter than me. And I figured, you know, this is a priority and I'm just going to try my best to do the work to make it so. Because at the end of the day, I do think that a generation of business dads who are just as gung-ho, just as audacious, just as motivated in their career or their work life, but also in their their family life, are going to have a much bigger impact.

You know, it's interesting because I can even say as someone who looks to you as a role model in entrepreneurship and also consumes a lot of your content on Twitter, I think actually some of my favorite content that you put out has nothing to do with business. It's your content with Olympia, it's your content with making Encanto pancakes and your dog. And I'll tell you why. Because a really difficult thing that I've had to try to mentally reconcile is after building Morning Brew, selling the business and thinking about- while still being involved in the company- but thinking about what's next. I am constantly stopped by the idea of how can I do something again for the next 7 to 10 years? Because I want a family and I'm going to have children. I so deeply fear that they are mutually exclusive, that I can't be an amazing father while potentially building something new. And I start to fear that I saw so few examples of amazing entrepreneurs who could also be great family people and have that balance. And so part of me is like, do they exist? So I think in so many ways, just showing that it is possible. It's crazy how few examples there have been of that. And I think by you doing it, it shepherds other people who actually do have that balance and simply haven't shared it before.

Well, I'm happy to hear that. And I need to clearly take more photos of my dog and pancakes. To be clear, you're going to have to ask Olympia in 15 years what kind of a dad I am, right? I am consistently feeling like I'm not doing a good enough job in both my work life and my family life. And so to be clear, like I'm dropping balls all over the place, I think the biggest advantage that has come from trying to sort of navigate this world out is actually one that previous generations of CEOs didn't have. And everything about Seven Seven Six has been built over just the last year and change in a remote-first world. And so everything about the org design is created selfishly so that the firm can run as asynchronously as possible, which has advantages, not the least of which is, you know, I think half our team are parents on different time zones and it allows for in almost as the default use case in the org async work on your terms whenever you do it best. It means way more flexibility to make a commitment to your kid or your partner to say, hey, 6:00 is dinner time. I almost every night, 6:00 dinner time. My wife, my daughter know I'm coming in the door. I mean, it helps that my office is a few feet away or a quick drive away, but I make sure calendar wise everyone knows, like from 6 to 7, I'm I'm at the dinner table and that's really sacred, important time. So this is a new experiment, but I know more and more organizations, including probably the next one you're going to start, are going to be built with a mindset towards a just different way of work than previous generations had. And that, even that fundamental difference, I think, just helps. It helps a ton because you get to more easily make commitments to spend time and be locked in, but then also make commitments for work to spend that time and be locked in. And I think that's a 90% of it is showing up and being present, whether it's for a work relationship or whether it's for a personal relationship. And let's make this high value for everyone.

And to be honest with you, as you say it, it kind of sounds so obvious, yet it's been so antithetical to how companies have always operated. But to your point, it's one of those things where if you are right, it's going to quite literally, not only is it the right way to operate, it's going to become a competitive disadvantage to not operate in that way.

For sure. And certainly for any business where you're operating in electrons and not atoms and where you can do the work with an Internet connection, it- I hope I hope it really is that obvious. And it leads me to believe that if if it continues to work, those organizations will be able to attract and retain even better people as a result. And for me, that's where I mean, 99% of it ends up being.

There's no question that Alexis is passionate about being a present father for his daughter, Olympia. And it's clear he's dedicated to creating a world in which people can be successful in business as well as be present for the people that they care about. In fact, last year, Seven Seven Six announced it's 2% growth and caregiving commitment, which gives 2% of every check Seven Seven Six writes to be used for the founder's benefit, anything from personal wellness to child care, to even travel tickets, whatever they need to help take care of themselves and the people that they love. But Alexis has also been open about the fact that he was a proponent of bad work habits as well, especially while starting Reddit. His wife Serena once told him that he's the hardest working person she knew and that that wasn't a good thing. But Alexis has found a way to reconcile that.

It all comes from the same place. And, you know, even when I was railing against hustle culture or hustle porn, the most frustrating critics were the ones who were like, this dude works really hard, builds a successful business, and tells people, don't work hard. It should be table stakes for anyone to realize working hard is a requirement, is a prerequisite for outsized success. It's like an intelligence test. Like if you don't think that that is possible, then you shouldn't play this game. Like entrepreneurship is not for you, right? Or anything. I mean, literally anything. Just just scratch lottery tickets because that's your, that's what you think is the only way. And this is the lesson that I got from my own wife, which was the biggest thing that I missed, especially early on, was not realizing my own diminishing marginal returns on output, where it just felt really good to be the only one up at 4 a.m. working and sending emails and doing stuff because I was like, Man, I'm getting a fucking edge on everyone else, even the people on my team because they're asleep right now and I'm I'm going and I'm getting in extra time and doing an extra work. And I, in hindsight, realized there's a certain point, like, we are still human. We're not robots at the end of the day where the extra n hours of work you're putting out and output versus just going to bed and then doing that work the next day, the equation just makes no sense to keep working because the quality of the work, the speed at which you're producing that work, like at some point the human body just starts to degrade in terms of output. And then when you look to the folks who have the only objective work that is athletes, every single one of them will tell you that to be the best at what you do, you have to be resting and recovering as well as you are working. And it would be preposterous to think that you could just keep going and going and going and going and going and going and not have a recovery period. It's impossible. And so hearing that from her really helped solidify like, damn, okay, I need to make sure that when I'm off, I'm actually off because otherwise I'm not really recovering. I'm not actually able to perform at my best. And that is really what I want. And so she's got like a switch in her brain where when she's not on the clock, she is off. She is not thinking about tennis or business or fashion or anything. She is she's, it's it's date night or it's Olympia time. It is off. And I'm certain that is a muscle. She's had exercise her entire career. But I've watched this and I've seen this. And I realize when Katelin and I were getting the firm started, we were like, okay, let's just try to look at all this from first principles. We know early stage investing is our bread and butter, so we know that there is amazing value in supporting our founders and our CEOs, especially at this early stage, because these small investments can turn into multibillion dollar companies. And when they're at this stage, they really are just the founder. Like there's not really a product, there's not really much of a team. It's just the founder. That's who we're investing in. So what else can we do to fortify our investment? So if we invest $3 million, let's say, in a firm 2% of that money, which is $60,000, is set aside and we pay that out of half of that comes out of our budget, and then the other half is actually matched by our investors. The founders have $60,000, six zero thousand dollars to use for whatever they need along the spectrum of development, family, anything. So it could be we've had founders use it for a vacation. We've had founders use it for therapy, for coaching. We've had them use it to pay for a babysitter and date night with their partner. We've had them use it to help move in-laws into their home. Like anything related to your personal development, your family needs any of those things because those are fundamental to who you are as a human. And if we believe that you are capable of building a multibillion dollar business and at these earliest days, everything rides on you and you don't have a huge budget, you're going to take care of yourself last. And the bet is if we give you access to these dollars, you will not only take care of yourself and perform better and generate bigger returns. You'll also have that mindset as the company grows and does better to take that forward to your own team, which will result in more productivity and more success out of them, and scale beyond even our own initial investment. And frankly, this was something I wish I had had when I was starting Reddit and in that first batch of YCombinator, I had a girlfriend at the time have a very serious accident. She was in a coma for a number of months and this is all during the first three months of YC. And my mom gets diagnosed with brain cancer. And, you know, as a first time CEO, fresh out of college, I really had an awakening to how fragile life was with some pretty big gut punches. And it was hard. We'd only I think we'd raised $72,000 total. It's very different, YC. And so, you know, we're sharing a two bedroom apartment, we're eating spaghetti, we're lean, right? And so I didn't feel good even using our money for flights home or flights to see them. And so I paid for that out of pocket and I had some savings from working in college. But like the difference it would have made to me and to the business of Reddit, had YC said, look, we've got some money set aside, you know, for those AirTran flights you're taking to Baltimore like we'll cover them. It's fine. The difference it would have made would have been massive. I know the existential dread of being a founder, of being a CEO and looking at the bank account and being like, God, do I really need to spend this $300 to go see my mom? And I don't want any of our founders to even think about that for a second. I want them to go, just send us the receipt and we'll reimburse them. And so I hope that what we're doing eventually and we'll share a lot of the learnings, the way these dollars have been used. We want to be as transparent as we can because we hope other venture funds look at this and say, you know what, this is a good idea too. We should do it better and then we can learn from them. But I think this becomes table stakes in ten years. It will be, every firm will do it.

As someone who cares deeply about my family and the people that are really important to me in my own life, I think what Seven Seven Six is providing for their entrepreneurs, is so forward thinking and just so important. And I personally hope that Alexis's hypothesis proves to be correct that by helping support their founders' whole selves and providing personal and professional support, they produce better founders and businesses long term. We're going to take a quick break here, but when we come back, we'll hear more about the challenging personal experiences that Alexis endured early on in his career that led up to his decision to leave Reddit and why executive coaching and therapy were absolute game changers for him. And we're back to the show. Before the break, Alexis talked about how his venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six, and how his priority beyond profit is to create a healthy and supportive environment with his founders and hearing him talk about it, I realized that that was something I would have benefited from immensely as a founder of Morning Brew. There's so much here. The first thing I'll say is I think, one, there's the money aspect of it, which using the example you just used. $3 million investment, 60k, that can go a really frickin long way for taking care of your health in some fashion for a very long time. But there's also just the symbolic aspect of it that your founders know that you actually give a shit about them as human beings and people. And as I reflect, even just on my journey, right, like for the longest time, one, I felt guilty about even taking any sort of salary for the business because it felt like money going to Austin or I was money not going into the Brew and it was a misuse of our investor dollars. And I would quickly get to a point where I realized, well, if we literally have so much financial insecurity and anxiety, how can we best run our business when we're worrying about that? But also things like, you know, only in the last few years have I kind of religiously seen a therapist, religiously talked to an executive coach. And I would have never thought about those things in the early days because I was just like, Where's that money coming from to pay for those things? But in retrospect, if I had had an executive coach in the early days of the Brew, I would have been such a better founder and leader.

Yeah. Oh, 100%. I mean, it's a choose-your-own adventure at the end of the day for them, right? We're not their bosses. But the huge advantage that coaching and or therapy gives a founder is massive. Just massive. And I know even reflecting back on my own life, the decisions I would have made as a CEO would have been 10x better had I had both in my corner back then, had it not taken me as long as it did to get a coach, get a therapist, get that, basically get that foundation for doing the work mentally. And it's one of the reasons we lean into this so much, because I think it's important to destigmatize and because it is objective reality in a lot of ways, like anyone who wants to be a high performing business person has to respect the fact that the only industry where real high performance is measured is sport. Because like I said, there's winners, losers as champions or not. It would be inconceivable to imagine even the best athletes in the world not having a coach. And so, thankfully, it's more and more rare. But any time a founder, CEO says, like, I don't need a coach, what I'll tell them is like, Oh, so you're basically saying that you are the Tom Brady of marketing, except you're better because you've never needed any coaching to get better. Like, that's impressive. That's very audacious. Do you really believe that? Because it's pretty ludicrous. And then when you start to think about all the different ways, the folks who have objective reality and unlimited resources and want to be the best do it. You find they don't just have one coach, right? They have everything from sports psychologists to nutritionists to to folks who ostensibly they should know better at this point how to do the work, but they still want the perspective of others in order to get even better. And that's the part where I think it becomes a no brainer for anyone who is actually genuinely interested in trying to be the best at what they do, that you want that support in as many ways you can get it from the best people you can.

I want to bring back up something you said about the early days of Reddit. You had, I believe, just gotten into YC and you just had this massive gut punch in life. Whereas I think you even described in the past where you had a relatively normal team upbringing. You know, and it's interesting that you bring this up because a recent conversation I had was with Andy Dunn from Bonobos. And in our conversation, he's basically like, statistically speaking, a human being in their first 40 years of life will have some gut punch. It will happen. So having the tools to be able to navigate it and work through it is so crucial.

So crucial.

I am just fascinated by both the tragedy you experienced with your then girlfriend, as well as the news about your mom having terminal brain cancer. How did you navigate that while also literally working properly in the most intense stage of your business, which was actually making a viable product? How did you do it?

Man. Not well. I mean, I, I used work as my refuge, as my therapy. That was it. And fortunately, I had folks around me. My family who, I mean, they went out of their way. My dad stepped up in such a big way to help. He was an entrepreneur himself, a travel agent, and he was able to basically mold his work life around also being there for her as she was dealing with chemo. Never missed a single appointment. Taking her to the doctor, all that stuff. And so they actually made it really easy in a lot of ways because I think and to my mom's credit, she felt worse about me being distracted than her having cancer. That's the kind of person she was.

I remember you said that she said, I'm sorry, when you first called her. Which is wild.

Yeah. And that's, but that's that is the kind of human she was. And that also hopefully gives you a little bit of a sense of the kind of foundation that I had and was fortunate enough to have to work with, because she never let me feel bad about it for a second. She never let me feel guilty about it for a second. And so then I just resolved to work as much as I possibly could to help this get to a good outcome. And, you know, this was this is 2005. So, you know, Facebook, I think, was still in colleges. No one was really a believer in start ups yet. It wasn't like a thing to do. And so, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty even within YC of like what a good outcome could even look like. And so when a year and a half, no it was like a year after starting, I had had a conversation with this dude, Kourosh Karimkhany, who was the head of Biz Dev for Condé Nast. And we had a mutual friend. He had reached out. He'd heard good things and we just got to talking. And one thing led to another. And I get this offer from him about an acquisition, and I'm sharing it with the team thinking like, holy shit, this is $10 million for a year and a half of work. This is more money than my folks have made their entire working lives. And at the point it had been like maybe a year had gone by and I'm like, shit, this is amazing. Like, this feels like we're getting away with something. And, you know, frankly, I was looking for an out. I was looking for a way to say, yo, put a W on the board. And I also was naive. I could not even conceive of building a multi-billion dollar business, and I know now so many more things I would have done differently. But at the time, like I said, I was just grinding as an escape from dealing with all the emotions and the feelings. And it looked like there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you know.

When you sold the business, was your mom still around?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was the best phone call of my life. I called her up and she's the first person I called when I checked the Bank of America account that the money had come in and I was like, Hey, Mom, we feel like we did it. I got this thing sold, and I'm proving to you now that it was worth it, like all the support and all the everything. And I will never forget that phone call and how happy she was. But the thing is, to her credit, she was just as happy to hear from me any other day that I was calling her to see how she was doing. And and so I feel like I certainly learned a lot from that experience. And Mom fought for another, I think, two years after. And I made sure I stayed on the East Coast. I got an office in the Condé Nast building in New York, and so it's an easy train ride back to Baltimore, and I'd go back just about every weekend. So I got to spend a lot of a lot of time with her. I really only started doing the work, talking about and thinking about and processing all of that. Six years ago, seven years ago.

What prompted you to do it then?

Ah, well, because in 2014, oh my math is bad, eight years ago I got a phone call to come back to Reddit as executive chairman, and it involved leaving New York, which I never thought I was ever going to do, moving to San Francisco and like, you know, returning to this company that I'd left maybe five years earlier that had some issues in the intervening years and revenge porn, it was just bad. The site was had gotten really, really unwieldy and it was in a pretty rough place. And so it was a turnaround job. And I, I knew that part of what I was getting back into was going to involve, well, one, a business effort that I had never done before in my life so I was like, okay, I'm going to need an executive coach for this. And then that led me to therapy because as I started getting feedback and guidance on business-type decisions, so much of this stuff ended up coming back to self and emotions and the emotional weight that we can carry and the ability to handle business situations, whether they're small or large in terms of stakes. I think so much of being able to process and effectively make the right decisions comes back to how well and sort of what your emotional weight strength is.

Yeah. Like the tolerance.

Yeah. And because the more that you can get into not ignoring the emotion, rather acknowledging it and then sort of de-fanging it in order to make the right decision is really, I think, a core part of leadership and decision making that I never really understood until having those executive coaching conversations which led me to the therapy, which led me to even just better understand how my own brain works, which is different from your brain, which is different from my wife's brain, which is different from my daughter's brain, and better understand myself. And then in practice better understand the other humans that I work with.

I think it's such a good answer. So, you know, one last question I have for you before I want to talk about one more topic is before you started working on therapy, which I believe you said was like eight years ago, before that, how did you process emotions generally? Did you feel them? Did you not feel them? And as you reflect on what made you both a great entrepreneur, but also where there are trade offs, how do you see kind of the trade offs that existed of not having done that work at the time?

Oh, yeah. So I very much ignored them and buried them.

Stoic.

Yes, but not in the right way. More like self-censoring. And that showed up time and time again because there were things that I knew were the right things for the business that I wanted to have done, that I wanted to do that I knew in my gut, like, I knew my bones were the right decision. And I might advocate a little bit. But then just retreat, set aside, self-censor and just say no, I can feel this elevating and I just don't want anything to do with it. And so I'm just done. And as I started to notice, the pattern continued to emerge. I realized there were and I'm not saying I'm batting a thousand, but there were absolutely missed opportunities as a result. And for what? For what? Because I could feel strong emotions about something and decided, you know what? I'm just going to leave it. I don't give a fuck. I'm ignoring it. You know, now, obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of those things were like, it would have been the right decision, but I opted out or I and I withdrew from it. And so a big part of doing the work, first in coaching and then with therapy was actually understanding, okay, this emotion I'm feeling, let's say it's rage, it's anger. Let me acknowledge it to myself, like, hey, okay, all right. Right now what I'm feeling is definitely anger. And now let me lean into this. The part of me that is like, here is the thing that you feel passionately about. This is the thing that you should be advocating for. Don't withdraw from it. Don't let this go. Say, hey, what's up, anger? I see you. And now you're going to help me because I need to make this point, or I need to push further into this because I know this is the right course and it sounds absurd, but I'm telling you, even even just acknowledging and noticing these emotions is a way to defang them from their ability to take over and help you make a better decision. And that's, I'd say, time and time again, it just continues to be something that I have to fall back on.

It's interesting to hear Alexis talk about learning to process his emotions and consequently use them to help guide him. I think a lot of people might instinctively think that emotions are something that should not have a role in business operations and decisions. But rather than ignoring his emotions and tamping them down like he used to. Now, Alexis not only embraces them, but opts to lean into them and even allow them to guide him and his decisions. And it seems to have served him well so far, especially when it came to his momentous decision to step away from Reddit and its board in 2020. Last topic that I want to talk about is, it's a two parter. It's you feeling kind of like the loss of control around Reddit, like your baby that you built and coming back into it and basically being like, what the fuck happened to this beautiful thing that, you know, we had such a beautiful vision for the world of what this would be. And then finding kind of when the Internet just has free reign, what happens? How did you mentally deal with that? And then the second one and I can restate after, but is the lead up to you deciding to step down from the board? You know, I've watched the video of you making the decision. You've talked about the decision. But I want to understand, like the lead up and the conversations that happened that led to that decision.

Great. A bunch of things I can't answer. Let me, well obviously be respectful of many confidential board conversations. Bloomberg reported back in 2018, 17, I forget the year. There was a pretty explosive board meeting. I was advocating to ban a subreddit, a community called Watch People Die. And you know, as it was popular, hundreds of thousands of members, probably millions of viewers daily, all watching videos of people dying, mostly accidents, sometimes murder, sometimes suicide. It was a really horrific community and it had come up in a board meeting. I was pretty appalled that it even existed. Made a pretty passionate case for why it should be banned. Why we should have a policy against communities advocating for violence or showing gore. And, you know, I was one vote out of five for it. Again, that's public. That's been reported on. You know, that was a situation where I should have realized a lot sooner maybe that it's very hard to be the face of a company, to be one of the founders of the company and still have situations where you're one vote out of five for something that feels pretty obvious. And where it really doesn't align with, it just didn't align with my values. Didn't align with the good of the business, didn't align with good of the community like there was no redeeming quality to it. And that's kind of a slam dunk, pretty obvious. Like we shouldn't have this on the platform type thing, but I think it's illustrative of something I encountered that I didn't handle as well as I should have, frankly, that I wasn't able to be as effective as I wanted to be and needed to be and everything really came to a head after George Floyd was murdered. Having lots of conversations with my wife, with friends. And I realized in the wake of it there were a lot of companies talking about standing in solidarity and putting out blog posts and changing their logos. And it just did not sit well with me that, you know, we still had thousands of hate communities on the platform and allegedly, you know, standing in solidarity or whatever the jargon was and so I was like, you know what, I can't do this. I, I really probably should have done it years earlier. That's on me. But I had some very clear goals that I communicated. I wanted these hate communities to be banned. I wanted to be replaced by a Black director. And selfishly, I never wanted to be in a room again where I was one vote out of five. And I realized this was a way to get the outcome that I think long term was going to be best for the company. And it was, I was so surprised and delighted to see that three weeks after my resignation, they honored my request to ban those communities and appoint a Black director. And lo and behold, that's actually good for business. Shocker. But it didn't change the fact that I knew then that I could never let myself be in a situation again where I was one vote out of five. I needed to have the autonomy to say, this is what we're doing, and I believe it. I'd made it far enough in my career that I was like, you know what? This is what I have to do. And parted ways with and split. The venture firm I started initialized and and started Seven Seven Six to say, look, this is it. This is the last thing I'm going to do, I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it. We're going to be the absolute best at it. And we're going to do it in a way where when I'm talking to my daughter, when she's all grown up, she's going to be pretty proud of it. She's going to have some hard questions for me for sure about why I didn't do things sooner. But from that moment on, I was like, okay, I have a clear North Star and this is what I'm marching towards and to hell with anything else.

Love it. This is awesome. I just want to finish off if it's cool with you with a lightning round. So one word to one sentence.

Okay.

What is the most important thing that your wife, Serena, has taught you?

Turn off, like don't work all the damn time. And when you're when you're not working, give it 100%.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Seven Seven Six.

And pancake batter?

Yes. And the custom pancakes.

What was the most important thing you did to grieve the death of your mom?

Wow. Gosh, she was very, very excited about me getting into UVA and so I dedicated a little thing at UVA. There's a seat with her name on it.

I love that.

Yeah, I think she was more excited than I was even to get in because she didn't go to college and so she was super hyped.

That's awesome. Last one. What is something that motivates you that maybe you're not so proud of?

Oh, okay. I shouldn't be proud of it. My wife says I'm too petty, but ever since, like, starting Reddit, every time someone criticized me or or whatever I was building, I would save it and put it on a wall. Now I have it in a Dropbox folder, but like I actually three years ago when I talked about investing in women's soccer, I had all these people who were telling me I was going to waste my money and I was an idiot. So I actually have this recap video like of mean tweets. I have to, we have to put the finishing touches on it, I'm going to publish it, because we juxtaposed with the sold out crowd of 22,000. I'm so petty, this stuff is incredibly motivating to me. And so any time I get someone shitting on me on Twitter or a business or, you know, God forbid you talk about one of my founders because I'll come for you, I just relish it because I live for proving these people wrong. That's my that's my thing. I'm never breaking that one.

This has been awesome. Thank you so much for the time.

Yeah, thank you, Alex.

I deeply admire Alexis for his devotion to his values. He truly embodies someone who is clear about what is important to him and is being accountable for not only following them personally, but providing an opportunity for others to do the same. Because of the importance he places on being present in his daughter's upbringing, he has been able to develop a whole new vision for being an entrepreneur that he is now passionately advocating for. And after facing two really major traumas with his girlfriend at the time and his mom at the very start of his career, Alexis found clarity on what is truly most important for him in his life, and he's found a way to build it into his current business model. If you're interested, I strongly suggest you check out Seven Seven Six's most recent investments. We'll link to a few them, but they are truly smart, mission-led companies that do the cliché thing of making the world a better place. And with all of that in mind, it's hard to see how Olympia wouldn't be proud of her father's legacy. Now Imposters listeners, we need your help. We would love to hear from you on how the conversations on Imposters have impacted your life. How does this show help you in your career or your personal life? Are there any particular guests or episodes that have stood out to you? And tell me the stuff that you haven't liked, where you want the show to get better. Our goal is simple. We want to make this as valuable as humanly possible and make the show worthy of your time. So shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Imposters is a production of Morning Brew. Our senior producer is Vishnu Vallabhaneni and Micaela Heck is our producer. Brian Henry is our executive producer and AB Silver is our booking producer. Our sound engineers are Dan Bouza and Rosemary Minkler. Emily Milliron is our video producer and Sarah Singer is our VP of multimedia. Our theme song is by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Original Music in this episode it is by Rosemary Minkler.