Book Review: Without Their Permission — Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Ohanian is one of the founders of Reddit.com, hipmunk.com, and several other startups and projects. I discovered Alexis Ohanian’s book after listening to one of his Ted talks. Anybody who has spent a lot of time around me over the last year or two knows that I am a huge fan of what Alexis Ohanian is accomplishing everyday. “Our responsibility is to get everyone onto the playing field with the skills they need to succeed.” That quote about why everyone deserves the opportunity to have internet freedom. Looking at my day to day activity, I wonder what it would be like in a world without the internet. I wake up now, check my schedule for the day on my iPhone, check my email, turn on a podcast or jam to some music off of Spotify in the shower. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have access to this technology. That is one of Alexis’s goals in this book and in real life. To spread the power of the internet into the hands of those people who haven’t had the opportunity as of yet to utilize it.

Throughout the first half of the book, Alexis tells his life story and how Reddit came to be. The most fascinating part about this section of the book is his attitude that he carries from a young age. “I ran out of fucks to give,” says Alexis in reference to caring about other people’s opinions. He’s right. I believe that the stat is something like 10% of people you meet throughout life will absolutely hate you. If you focus on what that 10% say to you or about you you will have a pretty miserable time. This message resonates about the book. When Reddit was competing against Digg, Alexis focused on doing the best he could at Reddit. He was aware of the competition but decided he couldn’t control what they did so he focused on what he could. Reddit outlasted Digg and that could’ve been a big reason why. Thinking back on several experiences of mine, I know that I could’ve ignored the competition more effectively. Would it have made a difference on the outcome? Probably.

The most difficult part of the book to read was about how Alexis lost his mom suddenly. He loved his parents growing up and they raised him well to help him become the person he is today. He praises his mom for how amazing she was and why he wants to make her proud everyday. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my mom. Both her and my dad are great people and I hope that someday I can be half as good of people as they are. I don’t say it enough but I love of you very much. Enough of being sappy….

“You’ve got to be willing to disrupt (and be disrupted).” When you launch a new company, you have the opportunity to disrupt an industry. You can change the game by streamlining a service that hasn’t been updated in decades or fulfill a need by applying a solution from another industry. You also have to be ready to be disrupted. Once you start making waves there is the possibility that somebody will notice. They can launch a competitor to change the game. You have to be ready for anything.

Surprisingly, a theme through a lot of the book is Alexis claims to have no idea what he is doing through the entire process of launching Reddit. It says a lot that he is very humble through the whole book about what the founders of Reddit accomplished. The first thing he did when Reddit was sold was buy his dad front row season tickets. Not many people have that as their first priority when the sell their company. If what Alexis says is true about the Reddit team having no idea what they were doing think about what you can pull if if you give it a shot. We all want a level of certainty that doesn’t exist in the connected economy. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and see what happens.

The second half of the book is focused on the power of the internet and the politics of internet freedom. I personally support internet freedom and a lot of what Alexis discusses in the second half. However, I am not going to go deep into my thoughts on internet politics as I am not well informed as believe I need to be. I do give Alexis props for leading the battle against SOPA and the other bills that could cripple internet freedom. With people like Alexis leading the internet freedom fighting for internet freedom how can big cable stand a chance of winning?

Big props to Alexis Ohanian for this awesome book! I’m hoping I can get out to his next book tour and meet him in person. I highly recommend “Without Their Permission.”