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Reddit grew for nearly two decades before going public in March<\/a> at around a $6.5 billion valuation<\/a>. Though the social media forum site now boasts 91 million<\/a> daily active users, its success was not a certainty. In fact, Reddit’s co-founders were rejected by startup accelerator Y Combinator<\/a> at the start of their entrepreneurial journey.<\/p>\n “So, Alexis [Ohanian]<\/a>, my co-founder, college roommate at the time, he and I applied to Y Combinator,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman<\/a> on Thursday. Their initial idea was to create a way to order food from cell phones \u2014 which wasn’t the norm in 2005.<\/p>\n Y Combinator rejected the idea but asked Ohanian and Huffman, who were 22 and 21 years old at the time, to work on something else. They came up with Reddit, which Y Combinator funded with a $12,000 check<\/a>.<\/p>\n