Reformatted email conversation with Steve Huffman of Reddit.com.

Paul:  Question from a fellow programmer hoping to do a startup some day.

Steve: Good luck!

Paul:  It seems to me like Reddit is free.  Where's your profit coming from,
       if any?  I don't see any ads or anything.

Steve: Reddit is free. We have enough funding to work comfortably for about a
       year, and our intention is to make the best site we can during that
       time. If we had taken VC money there would undoubtedly be intense
       pressure to generate revenue, but as we did not, we have the privilege
       of focusing on development for the time being.

Paul:  Oooh, I like that answer.  Spoken like a true hacker.  Still, I 
       imagine you want to make money off it sometime in the vague future.

Steve: Of course, the ideal way for most web applications (us included) 
       to make lots of money is to get acquired.  While we do have plans for how
       we could monetize portions of the site, they probably won't come up for 
       some time yet.

Paul:  Perhaps I'm just naive in business matters (well, no perhaps about it).
       If you don't have a plan for this yet, I applaud your 
       boldness.

Steve: Fortunately our investors understand, as do Yahoo and Google, that
       small companies can often get acquired if there's merely a *potential*
       to make money. VCs in general don't like to gamble like that, but
       we're not using any VC money.

       The worst-case scenario is great for us. We will have spent a year
       working on a fun project and have had users thank us for it. All money
       aside, we think it's worth it.

Paul:  That's the most encouraging thing I've heard yet.  So I just write a
       cool service and hope someone buys it from me.  :)

       I really hope it works for you (partially cause then maybe it'd work
       for me).  I think it quite likely that you've got exactly the right
       attitude about this - especially being okay with the worst case.

       Best of luck, Steve.