My junior year, I went to an LSAT-prep course. I flipped over my test and thought, You bastards. I walked out and went to Waffle House. That's where I had what I call The Waffle House Epiphany: I didn't want to be a lawyer. I wanted to make a dent in the universe.

"You came all the way up from Virginia? Sure." He ended up inviting us to an interview for Y Combinator, which no one had heard of at the time. The night of the interview, Paul called me and said, "I'm sorry, we're not accepting you." That sucked.

In our conversation, Paul said, "You guys need to build the front page of the Internet." That was all Paul, and that became Reddit.

We built Reddit in three weeks. It was just Web links and text submitted by users, with Interesting or Uninteresting buttons that you could click on underneath. Simple: That's all it was. After a contentious debate, we added Comments. We knew our business was in our user base, that that was the most important part.

Founders are supposed to be not at all interested in selling. But there is a price at which a founder can't help being interested.

"I want to stay hungry. I really believe my resources are best used to help projects that make the world suck less."