Alexis Ohanian on post-pandemic offices, fatherhood, and 'crypto spring'

Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to discuss how Dove Men+Care is shining a spotlight on Dads amid the pandemic, and how COVID-19 is impacting Silicon Valley.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: And Alexis Ohanian, who makes fathers a priority for a lot of people, is joining us. You also know him from Reddit. He is the co-founder and happens to also be the husband of Serena Williams, the tennis player. So a lot to talk with you about here. First let's talk about Dove Men Plus care, creating the Dad On movement. And as we're heading towards father's day, the steps that you and Dad On are taking to help frontline workers.

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Sure. Well, you know, this is something that I've been privileged to work with Dove Men Plus Care on for a little while now in the fight for paid family leave for all Americans. But more recently, you know, even before the pandemic, I believe the number is 86% of dads were looking on YouTube but couldn't find any content created by dads. And that seemed like an easy problem to solve. You know, we want to make sure that every dad could find a video that he could relate to, especially in these circumstances we're in now where more and more dads are taking on responsibilities, as their work and family lives blend.

And so dadscare.com is what we're launching, which is going to be a hub, an online resource for all kinds of content made by and for dads to show that, you know, dads-- dads care. And there are many ways for us to be supportive fathers. And we're happy to talk about it. We're happy to show it.

ADAM SHAPIRO: And you, with young children, would understand what it's like working from home. I mean, I'm curious though, how do you think working from home is going to change Silicon Valley?

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yeah, well, we're seeing more and more companies now declaring that employees don't need to come back. They're going fully remote. Coinbase recently announced-- you know, we were their earliest investors at Initialized Capital. And Coinbase yesterday announced they were going to be a remote first company now. It's a company with hundreds of employees, a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It is going to shift the mindset of a lot of people not just in Silicon Valley but across the country for workers who can do their work remotely thanks to the internet and thanks to these tools.

And I think it will also shift the way we think about childcare and how we balance that in our lives. I mean, even this-- this dry erase board behind me in my-- my office here, it's a daycare two days out of the week. And so I get teased often by my partners about all the scribbles and doodles that are on there from our 2 and 1/2 year old daughter. But this is the sort of new normal that, you know, frankly, we're lucky enough to be able to adapt into.

AKIKO FUJITA: How are you thinking about your workplace? You know, we we've certainly heard Facebook and Twitter say, likely a lot-- big chunk of their jobs will be permanently work from home. But that's going to really change the culture of the company. How are you thinking about that balance of being able to work remotely but also keeping that social cohesion?

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, you know, I've-- I've spent the last decade of my life working fairly remotely, even during leading the Reddit turnaround, I spent most of my time on the road trying to convince partners and folks. And then even now, our firm at Initialized is based in San Francisco. But we've always operated fairly decentralized and asynchronously using software tools like Slack and Zoom and all these others that now sort of the world is getting used to.

You know, my partner Kim-Mai Cutler put this really well. She said the onsite is going to be the new offsite. And so for a lot of companies, the way they'll even design their commercial real estate, I don't think it's going away. I think it will just be reinvented. They'll be designing these spaces not for day in, day out workers but for people to come in and make use of it for specific tasks if the design team needs to have an onsite on Tuesday to build that cohesion, to build that kind of connection is important. You're right. And physical spaces do allow for it.

But don't sleep on online connection. You know, Reddit's a community of hundreds of millions of people who don't even know each other's government names who develop close bonds. And I think companies are just going to have to be really mindful and thoughtful about the cultures they build going forward because they're going to have to work extra hard to create those kinds of social dynamics. But I think it can happen.

DAN ROBERTS: What do you think more remote working means from, you know, an employment standpoint. Mark Zuckerberg said essentially that now that they don't have to necessarily hire in just the Valley, this allows for more diversity. There's certainly a lot of people out of state that may be looking to work for a tech company as well. I mean, do you agree with him in terms of being able to broaden your reach? I mean is that the positive of this?

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Absolutely. And we're already seeing that trend at Initialized, where, you know, a majority of the companies we're funding now, and we're the first peck, are outside of the Bay Area. That trend's already been happening. This is absolutely going to accelerate it.

And I actually think the big winners here will be states that have low taxes. And I say this as a Florida resident. But it will be the states that have low taxes and sort of high desirability for quality of life as more and more of these knowledge workers decide, hey, you know what, actually, I really want to wake up every morning and go for a hike in the mountains, not here in Florida, but to choose that quality of life and that flexibility.

I think I think a lot of states are actually going to be big winners in ways that we wouldn't have expected. And I do agree, there is talent everywhere. Access and opportunity is not universally distributed. And I really do hope this provides more opportunities for a broader range of people because it's still a glaring weakness of the tech industry that is rather homogeneous, male-dominated. And I think this can be a part of the change.

But-- but I am also really proud of the fact that it's now, it's now re-engaged this conversation around what it means to be a career dad. I have a podcast called "Business Dad" where I just interview folks like Hasan Minhaj of Patriot Act about how he balances being successful at his career and successful as a dad. I think more than ever now, we're having fathers, more often than not, actually just really being able to empathize in a different way with their partners who are more often carrying that burden.

And I hope that can start to bring more of that conversation to the surface. And then we can also highlight the dads who I talk to all the time who are tweeting about how grateful they are to now be able to spend this extra time around family and to be closer, you know, for those who are lucky enough to do it. Right, there are plenty of essential workers who are actually now at this time stuck spending time away from their families. And really, you know, credit to them for shouldering that.

So there's-- there's a lot of dynamics in this shifting world right now. And I'm hoping that it all plays out in a way that makes us better appreciate all the people who are involved in our children's lives because at the end of the day, that's what we're working for.

DAN ROBERTS: Alexis, Dan Roberts here. You mentioned Coinbase. I cover bitcoin and Blockchain for us. And the Bitcoin price action has been interesting. I'd be curious to get your take on-- [GARBLED AUDIO] since March 16 when the widespread quarantine really began, bitcoin is up like 90%. And it's definitely not because of the halving. So the question is whether this is proving out the model that Bitcoin is a hedge during uncertainty. And just what you make of the prospects for crypto in the next few months or so?

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, you know, I try not to track the prices. I see we're kissing up towards 10,000. I think, you know, all told, we've been investors. We invested in Coinbase back in 2011, 2012. So bitcoin was a few dollars back then per coin. And so the trends we've seen bear out are actually quite telling.

I think I wouldn't-- I'm not here to talk prices. I can't predict any of that stuff. What I can say though is we see-- we really do see a crypto spring right now in terms of top tier engineers, product developers, designers building real solutions on top of the blockchain. And that to me, is the most interesting part because the way all of this actually works is if this infrastructure exists. And so Coinbase is a great example of it. The founders at Bison Trails are doing phenomenal work there. That's a company we backed last year.

We're seeing really top tier talent building on this infrastructure. And that to me is the best signal of long-term value creation. And you know, I I've had a percentage of my wealth in crypto for-- for quite some time now. And I still feel pretty good about it. I don't want to change too much of it because I do think it is just a prudent hedge. And it's interesting to see folks like OGs of Wall Street now getting into crypto and buying-- buying bitcoin and the like. But-- but I think it's-- it's-- it's increasingly showing that it's here to stay. And that is meaningful.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Alexis, I want to get back to a little bit about Facebook because there is the news not only that, you know, allowing people to work from home, 50% of the workforce in the future from home. But then there was the issue of, if you move to a place where the lower cost of living, we're going to pay you less. On the flipside, I should point out that it is common practice now that if you move from a place like Cleveland, Ohio, to a more expensive place, companies usually give you a bump based on the more expensive cost of living. What do you think about what the message Facebook is saying with that?

ALEXIS OHANIAN: I mean this one, cost of living adjustments are normal, for sure, in tech. And normally, you know, we talk about them going up, right, when folks are coming to more expensive cities like San Francisco. But I actually think I actually kind of sympathize with Zuck here because I would expect most of our CEOs to make that adjustment, even if they are going to ultimately be paying people less because they're moving to lower cost of living places.

That said, those rates, those salaries should still absolutely be premiums for where they're living. And so you know, it's going to come down to what each company wants to do. I think it's a lot harder for a company like Facebook that already has such scale, such mass, such incredible profits to talk about paying people less because it's obviously a bad look when you have that much cash on hand.

I think for the upstarts, for companies that we work with that are growing actively to have employees to say, you know what, actually, I want to go back to Omaha and live there, I think it'd be natural for them to have a conversation around adjusting based on that. But it wouldn't be a massive drop. You would you would still be very-- be very, very happy with your salary there.

And frankly, I think more importantly, you're going to be really happy with your quality of life. And that's-- I think that's the part of the equation that a lot of tech has not been thinking about or talking about until very recently. And COVID's forced us into that conversation as we've been, you know, locked in our homes for months on end. You know, I'm not an investor in home gardening or baking but I could be.

My goodness, all of these tasks that I think for a generation we thought we had, like, modernized, away, all these tasks are now becoming therapy. They're becoming a way to have control in an environment where you have none. And I actually think a lot of that--

ADAM SHAPIRO: We hear you, yeah. Yeah, Yeah. I just got to say to you real quick because you brought up Florida, it may be a low cost state when it comes to taxes. I grew up there. Just a reminder to everybody, the cockroaches fly in Florida. The Palmetto bugs fly. Jared Blikre is nodding yes because he grew up down there as well.

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit's co-founder, we appreciate your being here. And we want to let everybody know that Yahoo Finance spoke with your wife, Serena Williams, about this. So we're going to have more on the work life balance, that discussion with Serena Williams about the topic as part of Yahoo's special Reset Your Mindset at Work which will air next week. All the best to you, sir. Thank you for joining us. We'll be right back.

ALEXIS OHANIAN: Hopefully I got good reviews as a Papa.