Reddit plans to let its users get in on the ground floor of its initial public stock offering

Nearly 20 years after it first became a thing, the social media site Reddit is planning to go public. Monday morning the company filed details of its initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among them, Reddit says it’s reserving about 8% of the shares it’ll be selling for users and moderators, alongside some board members and friends and family of employees. That’ll give them a chance to buy in before institutional investors, unlike most IPOs.

The first time the University of Florida Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter remembers this kind of thing happening was about 30 years ago. The Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams, went public, “and in their six packs included a coupon saying, ‘If you drink our beer, you can buy our IPO.’”

Read more of Ritter’s insights on the Reddit IPO in this story from Marketplace.