Posting your startup in r/startups
Vulnerability-driven founder questions and real problems. Top posts are personal challenges (team dynamics, equity disputes, operational crises) framed as genuine requests for advice, often with the disclaimer "i will not promote" to signal authenticity. Community responds to specificity and honest struggles.
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
You can share your startup only 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 be framed as genuine questions or discussions, not promotions—the mods have final say on what counts as self-promotion.
Post templates that get approved
Vulnerability-driven founder questions and real problems. Top posts are personal challenges (team dynamics, equity disputes, operational crises) framed as genuine requests for advice, often with the disclaimer "i will not promote" to signal authenticity. Community responds to specificity and honest struggles.
our payment processor flagged us as high-risk after hitting $50k/month. how did you handle this?
We scaled faster than expected and now our processor is threatening to close us over dispute rates we can't control. Curious how other founders dealt with this exact situation early on—did you switch providers, fight it, or change your model?