Reddit (comes from "Read It") was founded by two University of Virginia students, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. They've signed up for Paul Graham's Y Combinator, an incubator for smaller startups. The guys wanted to make an app for ordering sandwiches, but Graham told them to make a news-like "board" with links.
People were supposed to put some links to other websites, and others could mark those links as interesting or not interesting - that's all. They struggled with getting their first users, so they came up with a shady solution. They created fake accounts and started faking traffic by posting links. Reddit had no subreddits until real users began coming in. The fake accounts got phased out over time.
At the beginning, Reddit's creators put all users in one place to create a "feeling" that the platform is "crowded". One group with 100 users looks much better than a group with 10 people.
Very early on Reddit was a censorship-free platform. One of the most popular subreddits was NSFW which accounted for around 10% of the traffic.
3 years after the launch, Reddit users could submit their own subreddits. This feature brought a steady growth to the platform
