Posting your startup in r/startups
Yes. r/startups is one of the subreddits that lets founders share their own product, but it removes promotional posts until you clear a one-time step first (see the warning below), and you still have to follow its self-promotion rules.
Posts that frame genuine founder struggles, lessons learned, or advice as questions/observations rather than promotions. The winning pattern is adding "I will not promote" to titles and focusing on broader startup wisdom, failures, or strategic questions that happen to relate to the poster's experience.
Do not submit this as a normal post in r/startups. It will be removed. Two of their rules bite:
- "Read The Rules" bot. It removes your post until you acknowledge the rules ONCE on this account. Open r/startups, click "Read The Rules" in the subreddit's main menu (or in the menu of any post/comment there), and submit the acknowledgement. One-time, ~30 seconds. A post already removed for this is NOT restored, so you have to resubmit it.
- No promotion in submissions, at all. r/startups bans "direct sales, advertisements, or promotional posts of any kind", and requires that submissions discuss methods and experiences without tying them to your own project by name or URL. So a post that names your product gets removed even after you clear the bot. They also don't allow your own links in comments.
What to do instead: post the content below as a comment in the stickied "Share Your Startup" thread (pinned at the top of r/startups), which is the one place self-promotion is explicitly allowed. Naming your product and linking it is fine there. If you also want a standalone submission in r/startups, rewrite it as a genuinely non-promotional lessons/methodology post with no product name and no URL anywhere, minimum 250 characters.
Self-promotion rules
No direct promotion or ads allowed in regular posts. You can only share your startup in the monthly stickied "Share Your Startup" thread. All other posts must discuss startup methodologies, strategies, and experiences without naming or linking your own project. Posts need at least 250 characters and must have clear, descriptive titles.
Post templates that get approved
Posts that frame genuine founder struggles, lessons learned, or advice as questions/observations rather than promotions. The winning pattern is adding "I will not promote" to titles and focusing on broader startup wisdom, failures, or strategic questions that happen to relate to the poster's experience.
what we learned about customer acquisition after 12 months of building in a crowded market
After launching our product last year, we assumed our target customers would find us through organic channels. Six months in, we realized we'd been leaving massive growth opportunities on the table by not validating our channel assumptions early enough.