Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian took his and Serena Williams' daughter to Waffle House so she could experience the place 'where it all started'

• Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian shared that he took his daughter Olympia to Waffle House on Friday.
• The moment was special, Ohanian said, because WH was partly responsible for him starting Reddit.

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian commemorated the important role Waffle House played in his life — and the history of the internet — by taking his daughter to the chain for the first time.

On Friday, Ohanian posted a series of images and videos of Olympia, his daughter with tennis champion Serena Williams, to Instagram, alongside a post explaining the importance of the restaurant in his life trajectory.

Ohanian partly credits a trip to restaurant chain Waffle House for helping him create Reddit, which was valued at more than $10 billion in August 2021.

"If you've been following me for a while, you know just how important this restaurant is," Ohanian began, "this is where it all started."

"If not for Waffle House, I might be a lawyer," he said. "Thankfully, in the middle of taking the LSAT, I got hungry, and I got up and left — and went to a Waffle House. Now, I'm taking my daughter there and showing her the greatness that is Waffle House."

In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Ohanian said he'd initially planned to be an immigration lawyer. "I had this romantic idea of helping people get citizenship," he said. "But then I realized how much I hated what I was doing, so I went and got a waffle instead. It was at a Waffle House I realized I wanted to start something."

Ohanian previously waxed poetic about Waffle House in a post on LinkedIn, sharing that it was a specific Waffle House on Route 29 near the University of Virginia's campus where he had his internet-changing epiphany.

Ohanian stepped down from Reddit in 2020 — and publicly requested that a Black candidate fill his position. (Reddit named Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel to the board of directors shortly after.) Ohanian described the decision, announced amidst national protests for racial justice, as a "long overdue" move to "do the right thing" and committed future gains of his Reddit stock to serve the Black community — starting with a $1 million pledge to Colin Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp.

"I'm writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his Black daughter when she asks: 'What did you do?'," Ohanian wrote in a June 5, 2020, tweet.

Williams responded on Twitter at the time with a tweet that read, "Having diverse views on any boards is important. So proud of you, Alexis. I know Olympia will be too."