Internet Content Connoisseur
Business
Condé Nast, I’m publicly offering to buy Reddit.
Aug 27th
This was an email I sent to one of our sites, The Daily What:
Hi TDWers, I’m Ben Huh, and I run the Cheezburger Network (which includes The Daily What, if you were too Prop 19’d to notice). I have made this offer privately to a few people associated with Reddit, and I’ll say it publicly now:
I believe that Reddit is one of the best communities I have seen on the Internet. I also believe that Reddit would benefit from more resources and less corporate interference. We can offer all of the above. And we’d love to buy Reddit and all those pesky troublesome users that we love so much.
Condé, we’ll be waiting for a call.
Cheers,
Ben Huh.
The Paranoid Mind of A CEO
Jun 30th
Here’s a list of thoughts that haunt me. From talking to dozens of founders and CEOs, I know that this isn’t uncommon. Some of these thoughts are totally irrational. Some of them, totally sound. Most of them add very little value to my work.
- Being blind-sided by a competitive threat, whether it’s an actual competitor, or market change.
- Having a competitor out-execute us.
- Market change that will dry up revenues quicker than we can change our model.
- Hitting an invisible ceiling on growth, where our method just stops having any impact.
- Missing the signs of employee apathy
- Saying something really stupid in public
- Taking our community granted (by myself or by the team)
- Not planning or testing enough for a change.
- Planning for too long and taking too long to change.
- Being stuck in a paradox of contradictions
Well, that’s not the full list. But I didn’t want to put you to sleep — which I probably need.
I change jobs every 3 months
Mar 2nd
As soon as I took on the job of CEO for the world’s weirdest cat site in 2007, the focus hasn’t been about growth — in fact, I’d go as far as saying focusing on growth can have the opposite effect of what’s desired. The focus of my job has been on reinvention.
Let’s take a look at my “career” at the Cheezburger Network:
- Sep. 2007: That idiot who quit his job to run a cat picture site. (Staff count: Approx. 1)
- Jan. 2008: That idiot who quit his job to run some photo sites. (Staff count: Approx. 3)
- Jan. 2009: That idiot who quit his job to run a time-waster network. (Staff count: Approx. 15)
- Jan. 2010: That idiot who quit his job to run a… what the hell are they trying to do over there? (Staff count: Approx. 35)
Every quarter, we embark on a project or come across an opportunity that would fundamentally alter who we are. If you would have told me in 2008 that we’d be running 40+ sites and be one of the largest networks on the Web, I would have not believed you. In fact, I am on the record saying that we could never really see ourselves beyond the 25-sites mark at Gnomedex 2008.
Yet, here we are. WTF?
I believe our ability to grow has to do with two things:
1) Having no false expectations about who we are (we’re here to make you happy for a few minutes, nothing more) and,
2) Having no holy 3-year plan. (Few thought we’d be anything, so it was easy to be something).
That meant we could relentlessly chase what our users wanted each and every month — our own visions be damned. Every year, we look back on the last, and we’ve reinvented ourselves as a different company. Perhaps to the outside world, we haven’t changed much (which I see as a huge positive), after all, we still post the same number of lolcats to I Can Has Cheezburger? each day, but the dramatic internal change is easy to recognize in the office.
That constant drive to reinvent means it starts with me. Every quarter, I look back at the last and my “job” has totally changed. Last quarter, I was hell-bent on finding the Cheezburger way to do recruiting and hiring. This quarter, I want to create a lasting Cheezburger culture within the company. The only thing that’s common from quarter to quarter, from “job” to “job” is that I’ve never done it before. It’s scary as hell. But I really don’t have anything to lose. I can always get a new job.