Since Aaron was working on another startup during that summer, I don’t think he had a very good understanding of what was going on while Steve and I started reddit. Then again, it could have been a misquote of Steve (or an exaggeration on his part) — either way, I can authoritatively say that this quote “80% of the submitted links for many months [were submitted by Steve and me]” is false.

I remember the day when neither Steve nor I even had to vote on the front page (let alone submit content), because we had enough of a community, and this was definitely within a month of launch.

Thanks for helping me set the record straight, Tom. And yes, sorry we missed ya in Toronto. The kids at Waterloo want us (and our open bar) to come back, tho…

The source I picked up the ‘80%’ figure was:

http://www.startup-review.com/blog/reddit-case-study-how-personality-impacts-product-success.php

Sorry I missed you on your Toronto drankkit tour stop. I would have loved to interview you for our blog!

Cheers!

Tom

I’m curious as to where you got all your data, though.

Steve and I were indeed the only two people using the site when we started it (aside from a few friends we begged) but we were submitting&voting under multiple usernames only for a couple weeks. Once we got a link from a PG essay, we started seeing some traffic — people who did a much better job than we ever could at finding interesting content.

Your “80% for many months” figure is incorrect. If you could provide the source, I’d be happy to contact them to correct this inaccuracy.

Otherwise, you’ve got a pretty spot on piece. Thanks for writing it.