I've definitely gotten the sense that this is a potential significant factor in this "clown car crash". Kind of feels like Reddit has been able to raise insane amounts of money for years, but, with the sudden appearance of (and gold rush-style interest in) ChatGPT combined with Fed moves on interest rates, the taps have 'suddenly' been closed. And, apparently, there was no ... real plan (even though they hired a CFO back in 2021 and have been signaling plans to IPO since around that time).
Of course, this underscores the stupidity of the whole thing. Given that THE 'google-hack du jour' is adding reddit to search terms (with articles in MSM showing up since at least Jan 2022) AND the value of Reddit's 'corpus' (as Huffman himself put it back in April) to companies like GOOGLE (trying to not only build ChatGPT-style ML, but relevant up-to-date search capabilities based around ChatGPT-style 'agents'), you'd think they'd be able to convert these stories into reasonable financial health and successful IPO w/o wading into brand-destroying PR debacles...
Of course, this underscores the stupidity of the whole thing. Given that THE 'google-hack du jour' is adding reddit to search terms (with articles in MSM showing up since at least Jan 2022) AND the value of Reddit's 'corpus' (as Huffman himself put it back in April) to companies like GOOGLE (trying to not only build ChatGPT-style ML, but relevant up-to-date search capabilities based around ChatGPT-style 'agents'), you'd think they'd be able to convert these stories into reasonable financial health and successful IPO w/o wading into brand-destroying PR debacles...
... but, apparently not.