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- Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wants his site's users to invest in the company's initial public offering.
- "I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our shareholders to be users," he said, ahead of an expected Reddit IPO next year.
- He told the Wall Street Journal that Reddit is powered by its communities, like r/wallstreetbets.
Reddit is vying for a spot in the meme stock leagues as it seeks to attract its own users – the same ones who have driven GameStop and AMC to record highs – to its initial public offering.
"I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our shareholders to be users," Chief Executive Officer Steve Huffman said at the Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference Monday.
On Reddit, users are anonymous and band together on various so-called subreddits to discuss topics of interest. The site attracted millions of users to one subreddit alone during the COVID-19 pandemic: r/wallstreetbets.
On the thread, an army of retail traders joined together to drive massive rallies in shares of struggling companies, including GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry, among others, in January. Other retail investing threads have since proliferated like as r/Superstonk and r/amcstock, which have 653,000 and 435,000 users, respectively.
At the conference Monday, Huffman said his social site is powered by its communities and subreddits like WallStreetBets, the Journal reported. Now, the CEO wants those same users to invest in his public company.
The Reddit IPO could come early next year with a $15 billion valuation, Insider previously reported. In August, the site earned a $10 billion valuation from a private fundraise with Fidelity Investments.
At the conference, Huffman said retail traders generally get in last to initial offerings, and at the worst price. But, he said retail trading apps like Robinhood have made the markets more accessible outside Wall Street.
"That historically has not been the case," he said, according to the Journal. "But the way the market is evolving to be more fair I think is really exciting."
Earlier this year, Robinhood revealed a new service called "IPO Access" on its app to allow retail traders into public offerings at the initial price.
Then, when the app launched its own IPO, Robinhood offered a small percentage of shares to retail traders at the IPO price. It warned investors that the company might become a meme-stock play, if retail traders buying into the IPO caused the shares to rise to an unsustainable price.