This post was written by Hatchet reporter Lexie Farkash.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian had a message for students to get past their fear of inevitable failure: “I’m going to talk about how you’re all going to change the world.”

Speaking to a crowd of GW entrepreneurs, Ohanian recounted his early struggles as a tech entrepreneur leading up to the creation of the explosive news aggregator site, Reddit.com.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” Ohanian said. “We’re building the front page of the internet and we had no fucking clue what we were doing.”

Reddit now draws about 62 million unique visitors per month.

But Ohanian failed before he turned an idea into a multi-million dollar website, unable to earn funding for a food delivery app and said he realized that ideas aren’t the measure of success.

“Every single person thinks they have a great idea, and that’s great, it’s a sign of healthy self-esteem,” Ohanian said. “But ideas are worthless.You actually have to launch, you actually have to do stuff.”

During his presentation, Ohanian showed the audience an unrecognizable image of the first version of Reddit’s homepage and pushed the crowd to bring their ideas to life even if the initial product is far from perfect.

Katherine Lin, a sophomore engineering student, said Ohanian’s words made her feel more confident in her abilities.

“If he didn’t have any idea what he was doing, I feel a little better not knowing, myself,” Lin said.