If you’ve ever killed an entire afternoon on Reddit—deep in a debate on r/AskReddit, scrolling through endless memes on r/funny, or arguing about the best Star Wars movie in r/movies—you’ve been part of something that started in a small college dorm room in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Yes, that Reddit. The chaotic, messy, wildly influential “front page of the internet” where millions of users post, upvote, and obsess over topics ranging from the mundane to the life-changing. The same Reddit that now draws over 70 million daily visitors and ranks among the most visited sites in the world.
What few people realize is that Reddit’s roots aren’t in Silicon Valley. They’re in Central Virginia, where two University of Virginia students, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, first dreamed it up in 2005.
The Birth of Reddit
Ohanian and Huffman met as undergrads at UVA, bonding over computer science classes and big ideas. They were part of the first cohort of Y Combinator, a then-experimental startup incubator that would go on to launch companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe. Their pitch? A simple, user-driven platform where anyone could post links and comments—an online bulletin board powered by upvotes and downvotes.
It was a modest idea. Within a year, Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast. Today, the site has morphed into an internet juggernaut—a sprawling landscape of subreddits that touch every corner of culture, news, and fandom. There’s a subreddit for everything: r/news for global headlines, r/aww for cute animals, and r/TheOnion for satire so sharp it occasionally gets mistaken for real news.
It’s Reddit’s scale—and its sheer weirdness—that has made it such a force. And it all started just a an hour drive west of Richmond.
Ohanian Returns to His Roots
This Virginia connection resurfaced recently thanks to Alexis Ohanian, who’s spent the last decade transforming himself from Reddit co-founder to tech investor and cultural advocate. In March, Ohanian dropped a $1 million donation to UVA’s women’s basketball program—the largest gift the program has ever received.
For Ohanian, the move is personal. As the self-proclaimed “girl dad” to his daughter Olympia, he’s spent years advocating for women’s sports, pouring money into projects like Angel City FC (a trailblazing women’s soccer club) and pushing for better pay and infrastructure.
With the UVA donation, Ohanian has brought the conversation back home. It’s a recognition of where he started—and a challenge to support institutions that have been overlooked for too long.
“I want to help build a better future,” he said in a statement. “One where my daughter and her generation see women’s sports on equal footing.”
Virginia’s Quiet Tech Legacy
Reddit’s Charlottesville origins are a reminder of something crucial: innovation doesn’t just happen in San Francisco or New York. Sometimes, it starts in the quieter corners, in places like UVA classrooms or Richmond’s art and tech scenes.
Central Virginia has always been a little overlooked when it comes to its tech legacy, but Reddit proves what’s possible. The same Reddit that’s now worth billions and shapes global culture started with a simple idea, two students, and a dorm room.
So the next time you’re lurking on Reddit—laughing at a r/Showerthoughts post or scrolling through r/rva—remember this: the front page of the internet started right here, in the Commonwealth.
