In 2011, publishing giant Conde Nast spun out Reddit as a standalone company while keeping full ownership. At the time, Peter Kafka of AllthingsD reported that Conde Nast had considered the option of selling off parts of the company to investors at a $200 million valuation.
Fast forward to today we’re hearing (from Techcrunch reports) that Reddit is raising money. And the company’s valuation has jumped to $400 million. Earlier this year, Reddit brought on a new CEO, Yishan Wong, to take control. A former director of engineering at Facebook, Wong reiterated at the time that Reddit has established a new board (which includes co-founder Alexis Ohanian) and was revamping its capital structure to allow the company “to manage its own finances and operations, including the ability to provide competitive equity compensation to its employees, which [it hasn’t] been able to do in the past.”
This move, if true, could be a big move for Reddit. It has been growing big time this year. Last year, the site saw 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visitors, and 30 million posts. In October alone, Reddit saw over 3.8 billion page views and more than 46 million unique visitors, which is double the number of page views from last year.
The money coming in from investors will definitely help Reddit improve its service and help it grow and pay for its costs. We’ll keep you updated as we here more on this.
