The Blueprint: Reddit x Morgan Stanley

Steve Huffman: A big reason we wanted to take the company public is because our users and moderators feel this deep sense of ownership over Reddit. And justifiably right – they created Reddit, and we wanted the opportunity for them to be actual owners. And what happened is actually better than we could have even dreamed of.

Reddit is a community of communities. Communities are made of people. And so therefore, Reddit is the most human place on the internet. Reddit is a place powered by people, we should be owned by people. Giving our users and moderators and then just retail investors at large, the ability to own Reddit. I think it very much fits in the Reddit ethos.

We've known the team at Morgan Stanley for a very long time. They've been helpful, shepherding us on growing the business and getting us on the path to go public. (They) understand how Reddit's different. And so they know what the opportunities are and maybe what some of the challenges will be.

Kate Claassen: Every IPO has some really clear selling points, some really clear referendums. We're meeting with investors who have very diverse, investing backgrounds. And so we really focused on being able to tell the story to any type of investor.

Steve Huffman: One of the things that I talked about with our team at Morgan Stanley is I felt like we were getting lumped in with, you know, other kind of similarly scaled ads companies and what Reddit was wasn't coming through.

Kate Claassen: What we did is we brought a number of the mods from communities to Morgan Stanley to meet with investors. This is the first ever investor day prior to a company going public.

The investors left a full day of meetings with more energy and more excitement, which is a feat.

And so being able to lay that foundation was really special and is why we've repeated it for so many others following the innovation for Reddit.

Steve Huffman: I think that was really a turning point in our conversations with investors where they could see that Reddit was a unique thing on the internet.

Kate Claassen: One of the reasons that Morgan Stanley was able to win this IPO is the fact that we're an integrated investment bank. And so the very first conversation that we had with Steve about the IPO, we were talking about Tanya and her team and what she could achieve.

Tanya Hoffman: A directed share program allows an issuer to reserve a portion of the shares during the IPO process and allocate those shares to their employees, friends and family, anyone who's really been instrumental in that IPO journey. And so for Reddit, when we awarded the mandate for the IPO, inviting their community, the user community into the process was very important.

Steve Huffman: And then the IPO, our users got to invest alongside the pros. And I'm so honored we were able to create that opportunity for them.

Tanya Hoffman: With the Reddit story, I think it was so important because we touched so many different parts of the organization, right? So, directed share program, yes. They were also a stock plan client of ours, and then cash management. They were a cash management client. So it really just embodies what the integrated firm can offer them.

Steve Huffman: Preparing to be a public company is a lot of work. Being a public company, we actually really enjoy. Now the tone has completely changed. The moderators are shareholders. They're like, Steve, we want to grow.

Now we're on the same team. And I think that's, it's great for us, it's great for them, it's great for the platform. And I think being public provided that alignment.