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 share hard-won lessons, contrarian takes, or transparent failures from the author's own experience, framed as educational advice for the community rather than product promotion. The winning pattern is credibility + vulnerability + actionable insight.
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 strategies, lessons, and experiences without naming or linking your own project. Posts need at least 250 characters, clear titles, and genuine discussion value—not sales pitches or promotional content.
Post templates that get approved
Posts that share hard-won lessons, contrarian takes, or transparent failures from the author's own experience, framed as educational advice for the community rather than product promotion. The winning pattern is credibility + vulnerability + actionable insight.
lessons learned after our SaaS hit $50k MRR—and why growth slowed after that
Spent the last 18 months building in the project management space and hit a milestone last month. Looking back, most of the conventional advice I followed in year one actually became our biggest bottleneck in year two.