Hi, everybody! (Hi, Doctor Nick)

We didn't have comments on reddit until mid Dec. 2005 (site launched June of that year) so our 'holy shit this might actually work moment' actually came over that YC summer based on submissions.

For the first, say, month, I was actively submitting links under multiple screenames (thanks to a simple little formfield Steve added to our admin submit page - long since removed). Steve did it as well, but he was spending most of his time, you know, building reddit.

Seeding a nascent social news site is one of the many unglamorous things the non-programming cofounder does in those crucial early startup months :) as well as browbeating friends and family into contributing as well.

But we had a day that summer when neither Steve nor I did anything on reddit except read and vote; I'd like to dig through my email and half-assed journal from that time to give you an exact date, but I haven't got it handy. But it happened within the first 3 months.

Why?

Well, at the time, we were filling a need that wasn't really satisfied many other places. I don't believe there's any dominant economic/financial social news site out there (I can't even think of any aside from Newsley, well, and /r/economics). So you've got an advantage there in that you don't need to convince people away from a similar resource as much as you need to show them this is just more efficient than how they're getting their news now (editorial-picked front pages).

On that note, you should really play up the fact that it's a "Marketplace of ideas and news, where the best bubble up and the worst fall into obscurity." Most folks interested in that space will already have an affinity for the perfection of a free market, which is essentially how these sites work. Of course, like any market, it succumbs to the whims of irrational crowds at times... but that's another post.

The other thing that helped us tremendously was getting written up by PG in an essay and more broadly, being the first YC company in the first YC class to launch. Paul and Y Combinator already had a following that was going to take an interest in reddit just because of its association with the two. And when they stuck around, Paul Graham readers tend to be the perfect kind of early users for a social news site you'd like to promote thoughtful news/ideas over, say, the crap on CNN.

As for reddit these days, heh, it's rather varied.

Oh, and I don't see any kind of stats system for your community. Believe it or not, karma was a huge incentive for our early users, some of whom would let us know the site was broken because stats weren't being calculated properly. It's not what's going to motivate everyone to submit, but for those it resonates with, it's a great incentive.

tl;dr
It took us only a few months for reddit to be self-sufficient, but that was largely thanks to the YC and PG connection (and his writeup). Since those aren't replicable, I'd suggest getting in touch with someone who is a PG in the finance/economics online world and email her. I suspect you've got some in mind who you already read regularly, so write not as a pitching CEO, but as a reader & fan of her work. It may not go anywhere, but it'll only take a few minutes, and the upside is limitless...