hi Product Hunt!
When we decided to start making original video at Reddit, we didn't want to produce video the way that everyone else produces video. The strongest part of Reddit is our community of communities, so we've set out to make video alongside our audience–the first being r/entrepreneur, for obvious reasons–with their input every step of the way.
Today we're announcing FORMATIVE, a collaboration with Google Cloud Platform to discover the stories of eight entrepreneurs and the single moment that forever changed their paths. For me, it was sitting down at a Waffle House and coming to terms with the realization that being a lawyer for the rest of my life wasn't for me–that afternoon I went back to my college roommate Steve and insisted that we start a company together. Today, there would be no Reddit if it weren't for that moment.
Help us discover eight great moments by going to the discussion on r/entrepreneur and working with the community to help decide who we should feature. We can't do this without your insight and knowledge, so help us create the best show possible!
PS. I think the folks behind our Original Video team here at Reddit will also be around to chat with you. Say hi! You can see their work here:
http://upvoted.com/video/neil-de...http://upvoted.com/video/the-sto...
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@alexisohanian Absolutely brilliant idea. Will scout for the best people. For lot of people, getting into YC is their AHA moment. TBH, when I met you that was an important moment in my life as well.
@haseeb@alexisohanian Thanks Haseeb! I'll never forget that stop on the WoTP book tour--I'm grateful it turned BitAccess into a YC company and that had such a great impact on the business.
@alexisohanian Exciting news! I've always been a fan of r/entrepreneur. The thread is full of inspiration and advice for people just starting out. I am looking forward to diving deeper into those stories. Gonna check out the thread now.
Hi everyone! Really happy to be unveiling this today. We're extremely excited about getting the community to unite around an original series and can't overstate how much we want this to be a collaborative effort. If you're familiar with Small Empires (the show Alexis, Jordan and I did at the Verge) – this will exceed that in beauty and storytelling, so hope you're ready to help us make something awesome.
I absolutely love this.
"For others, it's being fed up with doing one simple task the way it's always be done". That's *exactly* what happened to me in a basement a few years ago, looking for contracts and renegotiating them. Honestly, at that time I was feeling so miserable. Now, I realize it's actually the best thing that ever happened to me, because that's what gave birth to my company.
Congrats on the initiative!
Yesss, this is awesome, @alexisohanian. As I've said before, my favorite part of the Upvoted podcast is its ability to highlight "unknown" people doing interesting (sometimes amazing things). FORMATIVE seems to be an extension of this.
@rrhoover Yes! We're coming at it from a different angel with this, since if r/Entrepreneur picks, say, Elon Musk, everyone knows Elon, but the community will help us tell the best story about that formative moment in his life and how it's affected things. And like everything on Reddit, we know the best stuff is going to be surfaced by those "unknown" 205M+ MAUs, so we're helping them shape it from jump: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepr...
Really happy to share this here, and see all the positive messages around it. Can't wait to start shooting, but for now let us know who we should include! https://redd.it/3oqbvj
I love everything about what this could become. It's like a hyper-distilled AMA that will hopefully be better than every inevitable Hollywood biopic on the tech titans of Silicon Valley. Good luck!
@jtzou Thanks! Part of what inspired this was also the "Office Hours" I've done on r/entrepreneur a couple times over the years [1,2]. Ideally we can not only profile these amazing people using questions and arcs suggested by the community, but also arrange for an "Office Hours" session with that person on the launch of the episode.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepr...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepr...
This is fantastic! I loved Small Empires (and meeting Alexis during his WoTP tour in Boston was great too). I found out about Artsicle through that show. Although I still haven't convinced my mom (an artist) to get on the platform, this jogged my memory. Looking forward to hearing about more entrepreneur stories.
@kunalslab Thanks, Kunal! I had a lot of fun making those 2 seasons of Small Empires. Formative is gonna be a very different show (I'm not hosting it + it'll be a new format from SE) but we're super amped to make it with r/entrepreneur and create something we hope many people will love.
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