Christopher Brian Slowe (born November 8, 1978) is an American businessman. He gained his PhD in physics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, and went on to co-found

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

, with

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Stev ...

and

Steve Huffman Steve Huffman, also known by his Reddit username spez (), is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, a social news and discussion website, which ranks in the top 20 websites in the world. He also co- ...

. He later departed Reddit and began work for

Hipmunk SAP Concur (formerly Concur Technologies) is an American SaaS company providing travel and expense management services to businesses. It is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. SAP SE agreed to acquire Concur Technologies in September 2014 for ...

, where he was Chief Scientist. He returned to Reddit in 2017 and is currently its CTO.

Career

Slowe was awarded his PhD in physics from Harvard for his thesis "Experiments and simulations in cooling and trapping of a high flux rubidium beam". His thesis advisor was Professor

Lene Hau Lene Vestergaard Hau (; born November 13, 1959) is a Danish physicist and educator. She is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University. In 1999, she led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose–E ...

. During his time as a research assistant at Harvard, he also began to devise computer programs. Whilst studying, in the final year of his PhD he and a group of other Harvard students received startup funding from

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

for their company TBD, later renamed Memamp. "I just wanted to design something to make it easier to work on my thesis," Slowe explained. "And I'll still be happy if that's what I end up with." Memamp failed as both Google and

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

introduced software similar to that which Slowe was seeking to develop. Immediately upon graduating he left academia to join Reddit, a social news website. Reddit was acquired by

Condé Nast Publications Condé is a French place name and personal name. It is ultimately derived from a Celtic word, "Condate", meaning "confluence" (of two rivers) - from which was derived the Romanised form "Condatum", in use during the Roman period, and thence to t ...

, the owner of technology Magazine

WIRED ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

in October 2006. Conde Nast wanted Reddit to "just focus on building out, which may involve adding to the current staff of four (all co-founders), who will all move from Boston to San Francisco and work at Wired's office." Fellow co-founders at Reddit departed after the Conde Nast acquisition,

resigning, and Huffman and Ohanian seeing out the legal duration of their contracts, before moving immediately to travel startup Hipmunk. Slowe remained Reddit's longest standing employee, and CEO, until 2010, when he left to become Chief Scientist at Hipmunk. There was much speculation as to the terms of his departure, but Slowe remained diplomatic, despite rumours of underfunding and understaffing by new owners Conde Nast. In an interview with

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

he stated "it was time to do something new ... that is less fully formed with room to explore." Slowe took on the job of troubleshooting most of the Hipmunk travel software. Slowe rejoined Reddit in 2017 as chief technology officer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slowe, Christopher 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American physicists Harvard University alumni 1978 births Living people American Internet celebrities