Women's sports, Reddit's controversial data deal with OpenAI, resurrecting DIG, empowering nostalgia with tech. Today, we revisit my conversation with Alexis Ohanian. For Wednesday, December 31st, it's Brew Markets Daily, and I'm Anne Bry.
Whether resigning from the board of Reddit, which he co-founded, or commercializing women's sports, Alexis Ohanian has been pushing on what it means to take actions that are both based on principle and good for a business. While the social media platform is now public, IPOing in March last year, and after investing at a $3 million valuation, Ohanian has seen women's soccer club Angel City hit $280 million in its latest fund raise. But across these journeys, he has faced serious doubters along the way, as well as decision points that with hindsight look like momentous inflection points.
Early in Reddit's life, when Sam Altman asked if a nonprofit called OpenAI could scrape its data, what did Ohanian say? Could an arch rival CEO, a quote nemesis, be a plausible business partner in resuscitating a human-first social platform? How did one tweet lead to the launch of what Ohanian calls the quote Formula 1 league of track and field? So many questions. So back in November, I was excited to sit down to get some of the answers. I spoke with Alexis Ohanian about his successes, the lessons learned, and the challenges still to come in tech, in live events, in consumer trends. And he did not hold back, packing a punch in our conversation with blunt insights into accusations of virtue signaling, where the money proves success, and where he's investing next with his venture firm 776. That conversation in just a moment, but first a word from our sponsor, Vanguard. Producer John, do you know about Vanguard?
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All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Now, let's listen back to my conversation with Alexis Ohanian. All right, Alexis Ohanian, you're known as many things, tech founder, venture capitalist, but let's start with what has been perhaps the most visible part of all the things you do, which is as an investor in women's sports. And what started as a rage tweet almost in 2019, which was look at this, look at this burgeoning industry, no one's paying attention, has blossomed into something else and most recently had Athlos here in New York. Tell us about that. Tell us about that evolution.
Yeah. So, March of 2019, my tweet goes viral and I basically noticed that a team in the NWSL, the American Women's Soccer League, had just sold for like $3.5 million. And this was the year of the Women's World Cup. This was not a sport that I followed, but I knew who Megan Rapinoe was, knew who Alex Morgan was, I knew who the stars of the sport were. So, they had already transcended the sport. That's a great sign. And in Megan's case, she played for that team in Seattle. And the math didn't math because I knew she alone should be worth at least $3 million in brand deals a year.
And so the fact that the whole team was worth that much was a sign to me that there was an opportunity to just run an operation way more efficiently and effectively. And so I resolved at the end of this tweet storm, I basically laid out the vision to say, look, this is a multi-billion dollar industry laying in plain sight and I'm gonna either start or buy an NWSL team and you know who can help. And you know, the tweet goes viral. Most of the people responding were actually dunking on me, making the case that no one watches women's sports, you're an idiot, you're going to lose all your money, yada yada yada. But there were some really hardcore women's soccer fans, which was great to see. I look for that heat, right? Building Reddit, you learn to have a spidey sense for things that are culturally powerful in that there's a community of people who hate only because there's something they are intimidated by or something that is significant enough to garner their attention and their hate. So even those signs of irrational hate were actually giving me confidence that there was something really interesting and compelling there.
So, Alex Morgan famously responded to that tweet and I reached out to her and we spent time together probably a month later and I just took notes and resolved to buy a team or start a team. I started talking to some existing team owners, but then ultimately decided to start with an expansion and that obviously led me to Angel City where I was founding control owner. And there were a number of mistakes I made and lessons learned, but a big one was I should have just bought the NWSL because in 2019 I could have bought it for $10 million, fired everyone, reset the entire culture, built it like a technology company, right? Build software. I'm a product builder at the end of the day to run all the internal operations 100 times more efficiently and effectively. And in the last few years, especially as AI has really commoditized software, I've just been thinking, God, that was the opportunity.
And so when the Olympics were coming up, I simply looked and I said, okay, where are the athletes that transcend the sport? What are the most popular sports during the Olympics that also disappear in between four years, just like women's soccer in between the World Cup? And lo and behold, track and field was right there. Checked every box. And in addition to that, there is an existing league, but it's really like the accounting of the sport because if you think this is such a global sport and it all funnels up to the Olympics, you have to get every discus thrower in the world properly registered and graded and it's just a very different process.
And what we saw with Athlos was an opportunity to really build this very dynamic, very high energy with the very best. Like just the very best, still sanctioned. It's a World Athletics sanctioned meet. It was last year. It was also again this year. So it's legit. It's for points. It's for your ranking that helps you with the Olympics. But we also set a record prize when we doubled the top prize. Back then it was $30,000. This was last year. We doubled it to 60,000 and instantly became the most important race outside the Olympics. And we've been building on that since and now are launching this Formula 1 league. So if you love, you know, Mercedes versus Ferrari, you can imagine what team Nike versus team Adidas might look like. And so we're really excited to build towards that. Have multiple meets next year. We're not ready to announce those locations, but instead of just one in New York, add a couple more. And I can't wait for folks to see it and really elevate the sport that is an amazing sport that is I guess a top Olympic sport and then just disappears. No reason why it should and build it with software first which again I should have done if I could have gone back in time in 2019 with the NWSL.
So let me ask you a question about the Athlos building in particular, Alexis. Is that specific to women's sports or do you think that is just a sport which has been underfocused on, underinvested in, and the gender element actually wouldn't matter. You could just as easily do it with the guys.
We will at some point add men. The reason why we started with women and this is a great sport in that men and women routinely compete together, you know, there are events like mixed relays that are really exciting and really compelling. The reason we started with the women was a business decision, you know, in part because of all the success I've had as a founding owner of now a handful of women's teams not just Angel City but also just recently bought the LA franchise in League One, women's volleyball, bought a 10% stake in the Chelsea women's football club. The CMOs all want to know what I'm doing next in women's sports. It's funny when I bought the first team in Tiger's golf league, TGL, the LA Golf Club, these CMOs were like, 'Oh, that's cool.' But actually, like, are you going to have women? Because that's really what we want to invest in. And it's coming. I can't say when, but so for sure there's an appetite today. And look, five years ago, six years ago, we had to bring people on board and really stoke those flames of interest. Today the interest is there. And so starting women first with Athlos made sense from a business standpoint because that's how we could, you know, we announced it in April last year. We did our first meet five months later.
Really fast. Yeah. That whole thing's coming so quickly.
You know, that's but with a women-led meet that's how you can get Toyota, Tiffany and Co. I mean tier one brands and a handful of others within five months. And then we ran it back last month, so about a year later. And we brought those brands back. But we also added Instacart and Cash App, Essential Water, like more and more to come. They're hungry for women's sports. This is an opportunity. And then it's also a business decision because if you look at follower counts, the women of track and field, the top athletes, have a much bigger social presence than the men. And it's just simple math. Noah Lyles, we love Noah. He was there at the event having a great time. But, you know, there aren't enough stars on the men's side in terms of their following to justify the early costs. And so, again, we wanted to make this as effective a business as possible and in the sport of track and field, it actually makes more sense to start with the women.
You know, it's interesting to hear you focus on the investment side of it, Alexis, because one thing that when I think about your journey through women's sports, at the beginning, you did get some heat for virtue signaling. You did have people saying, 'Is this because, you know, you're married to the most amazing woman athlete, right, ever? You're a girl dad. You're a proud girl dad.' And it's interesting now. It feels as though you've moved beyond people saying that to you. No, no, the business model's proven. But does it irritate you? Do you feel as though you're still having folks looking at you saying, 'Well, what is this? Is this sort of philanthropy repackaged as business?'
It's interesting. At this point, it's really just people who haven't been paying attention who think it's philanthropy. It's actually really funny. It's the most common type of person I hear that from are actually tech folks.
Because I think they're just a little slow on this sort of stuff, these bigger cultural shifts.
