About
The book “Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century
Will Be Made Not Managed” was written by Alexis Ohanian in 2013. After
graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005, Ohanian helped found the
social media website reddit and the proceeded to the companies breadpig and hipmunk.
This book is an autobiography about how he became an entrepreneur and started
these companies but as he does this he also includes what to do if you want to
be an entrepreneur. This book is written in three parts each containing two to
four chapters for a total of nine chapters. Throughout the whole book one main
idea is very persistent and that idea is that the internet and social media are
helping entrepreneurs and that the internet needs to remain free and
uncensored.
 |
| Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian |
Part I
Part
one of the book is the main part of the autobiography. Part one has three chapters,
The American Dream Lived Online, The Story of reddit from College to Condé
Nast, and Hipmunk Takes the Agony out of Online Travel Search. The first part
of the book talks about how the internet effected his life from when he was
first introduced to his early college years. One of the first things
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Ohanian
talks about in this chapter is the first website he ever made, which was a fan
page for his favorite video game Quake II.he goes on to talk about his first
jobs and then starts talking about how he would have video game parties with
his friends. Ohanian says “I’d never attended a party that didn’t have “LAN” in
its name until college.” He also talks about how he was not popular and
couldn’t talk to girls in high school. Now some people argue that always being
on the internet so much from a young age hurt Ohanian’s ability to talk to
others. Rotella talks about this idea in her article “No Child Left Untableted.”
She says this “is the root of what she calls “the crisis in the ability to talk.””
Ohanian would argue this though, he would say that first computer he got gave
him the ability to start his businesses and that he was still able to talk to
people and make friends they just were the type of kid that enjoyed the same
things as him meaning the internet and video games. If that is not proof enough
that Rotella was wrong Ohanian has given TED talks, spoke in front of congress,
and given talks to many universities and businesses. This part of the book goes
on to talk about how Ohanian and his founding partner Steve were rejected the
first time they applied for start up funding. They later received a call saying
they could get the funding if they came up with a new internet based idea and
that is how reddit was born. Then Ohanian helped reddit co-founder Steve
Huffman and Adam Goldstein launch another start up called Hipmunk. This start
up was made to take the agony out of booking travel plans. Ohanian explains how
this was difficult because unlike reddit this website was setup to earn through
commission and therefore needed to partner with airlines and online travel
agencies. As the book talks about this took many coffees, emails and
persistence. When in Cairo shortly after the revolution Ohanian was giving
talks about hipmunk and how to be an entrepreneur he realized how important
internet freedom is and that the internet should never be censored like it was
during the revolution in Egypt. Although he was not a direct part the reading
shows he was glad that it worked because like Srinivasan talks about in her
article “Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt”
when the government began censor and shut down the internet more people rebelled
and this should the world that you just can not cutoff a whole nations internet
without consequences. A little after a year of running hipmunk’s marketing
Ohanian stepped down and took a role as an advisor.
Ohanian
talks about in this chapter is the first website he ever made, which was a fan
page for his favorite video game Quake II.he goes on to talk about his first
jobs and then starts talking about how he would have video game parties with
his friends. Ohanian says “I’d never attended a party that didn’t have “LAN” in
its name until college.” He also talks about how he was not popular and
couldn’t talk to girls in high school. Now some people argue that always being
on the internet so much from a young age hurt Ohanian’s ability to talk to
others. Rotella talks about this idea in her article “No Child Left Untableted.”
She says this “is the root of what she calls “the crisis in the ability to talk.””
Ohanian would argue this though, he would say that first computer he got gave
him the ability to start his businesses and that he was still able to talk to
people and make friends they just were the type of kid that enjoyed the same
things as him meaning the internet and video games. If that is not proof enough
that Rotella was wrong Ohanian has given TED talks, spoke in front of congress,
and given talks to many universities and businesses. This part of the book goes
on to talk about how Ohanian and his founding partner Steve were rejected the
first time they applied for start up funding. They later received a call saying
they could get the funding if they came up with a new internet based idea and
that is how reddit was born. Then Ohanian helped reddit co-founder Steve
Huffman and Adam Goldstein launch another start up called Hipmunk. This start
up was made to take the agony out of booking travel plans. Ohanian explains how
this was difficult because unlike reddit this website was setup to earn through
commission and therefore needed to partner with airlines and online travel
agencies. As the book talks about this took many coffees, emails and
persistence. When in Cairo shortly after the revolution Ohanian was giving
talks about hipmunk and how to be an entrepreneur he realized how important
internet freedom is and that the internet should never be censored like it was
during the revolution in Egypt. Although he was not a direct part the reading
shows he was glad that it worked because like Srinivasan talks about in her
article “Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt”
when the government began censor and shut down the internet more people rebelled
and this should the world that you just can not cutoff a whole nations internet
without consequences. A little after a year of running hipmunk’s marketing
Ohanian stepped down and took a role as an advisor.Part II
Part
two of the book is not as much of an autobiography. In this part of the book
Ohanian talks about how to become an entrepreneur but to do this he use many
example and problems he faced in starting his own websites/businesses. This
section has two chapters titled “Start Up MBA Part I:Make Something People
Love, and Start Up MBA Part II:Blueprint for Growth.” The first thing this part
of the book talks about is the fact that your idea needs to be based on a
genuine need that the world has. Ohanian says too many create technology and
then try to fit it around a problem they find after instead of just starting
with a problem that actually needs a solution. Once you found a problem a lot
of people have you need to do your research on the problem first. Ohanian goes
on to talk about a MIT grad that had an idea to fix a problem in restaurants
but before he started trying to come up with a solution for this problem he
first got a job as a waiter. Another important point that Ohanian finds so
important he lists it more than once is that you have to find people that care
about the idea he especially talks about this for web designers. He highly
suggests that one should learn to code your own website because if you
outsource that part of your business and something goes wrong in the middle of
the night it is not very likely your outsourced designer is going to get out of
bed at 3 a.m. to
fix it but if you designed it yourself you can. Ohanian says “The
traditional public-relations industry model is broken.” He say this because you
no longer need traditional advertising because word of mouth moves so fast now
with social media. With Facebook and other social media people can now tell
hundreds of friends about things at one time they like instead of just one. Then
the book talks about getting investments. It says that fundraising is very
difficult and gives many suggestions on how to get start up money. One of these
ways is to use a company like Y Combinator. This company, if you get through
the applications and interviews, lets you trade between 2 and 10 percent of
your company for funding and a three month program where they help you with
your business. One of the last thing Ohanian talks about in this part of the
book is that you document the early parts of your business. He says that this
is not to help your business but for your appreciation when it becomes big.
Part III
The
last part of the book part three is about Ohanian’s experience with the good
that the internet is doing for people. Using the Internet’s Power to Make the
World Suck Less, Are You Not
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Entertained?, Mr.Ohanian Goes to Washington, and
Dear Graduating Class of 2025 are the chapter in this part of the book. The
first way that the internet helps people is through a website called
DonorsChoose.org. This is a website that is helping teachers get much needed
supplies for their classrooms. The part that makes this different than other
school donation organizations is it shows donors who they are donating to and
what the money is going toward. They also get thank you letters from the
students who the donations help. The next story is about a man named Zach who
has cerebral palsy. He became famous when he made a video for a contest on the
Oprah Winfrey Network to win his own talk show. This video spread across the
internet largely in part due to reddit and YouTube. John Mayer even offered to
make a theme song if he won. In the end Zach won but the show ultimately failed
after four episodes leaving him jobless. That’s when BreadPig, another website
Ohanian is a part of, used donations to help Zach make the travel show he
really wanted too using YouTube and helped him get sponsors. The book then goes
into talking about how Ohanian was very unhappy with the legislations SOPA and
PIPA. These legislations were made to try to censor the internet and keep
people from looking at certain things. Ohanian thought this to be a terrible
thing and fought against these legislations as much as possible. He even testified
in front of congress on the matter. He was worried that the censorship from these
bills could end up like the censorship that MacKinnon writes about in his book “Consent
of the
Networked”. In her book she says “Thanks to censorship, the average
person rarely encounters information about these types of arrests.” When she
says this she is referring to the people arrested for political, religious, and
ethnic reasons. The last part of the book is Ohanian writing a letter to the
class of 2025. He talks about what he fought for, how the internet started and what
he hopes will happen.
Bibliography
MacKinnon, Rebecca. Consent of the Networked: The World-wide Struggle for Internet Freedom. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.
Rotella, Carlo. "No Child Left Untableted." The New York Times 12 Sept. 2013: n. pag. Print.
Srinivasan, Ramesh. "Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt." The Information Society 29.1 (2013): 49-60. Web.
Reviews
http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/1437338667/683C0F8861154694PQ/3?accountid=465
"his many bromides--"Magic happens when you give a damn"; "excellent customer service is vital"; "ideas are worthless...execution is everything"--also happen to have heft. Even if Ohanian's arguments concerning intellectual property rights are unconvincing, everything else he has to say can only help aspiring 21st-century entrepreneurs."
http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqrl/docview/1433822880/683C0F8861154694PQ/5?accountid=465
"In his thoroughly engaging and insightful first book, Reddit cofounder Ohanian extols the importance of a free Internet and exhorts fellow entrepreneurs to follow their dreams. Starting title-free cover and continuing throughout, Ohanian cheerfully breaks numerous business rules.... Despite some annoying asides, the book is worthwhile reading for all budding entrepreneurs."
"In his thoroughly engaging and insightful first book, Reddit cofounder Ohanian extols the importance of a free Internet and exhorts fellow entrepreneurs to follow their dreams. Starting title-free cover and continuing throughout, Ohanian cheerfully breaks numerous business rules.... Despite some annoying asides, the book is worthwhile reading for all budding entrepreneurs."
