Can I post my startup on r/startups?

Only as a long-form lessons-learned post of roughly 500 words or more, and self-promotion outside the designated threads is removed regardless of how good it is. If what you have is an announcement rather than a lesson, post it in r/roastmystartup or r/EntrepreneurRideAlong instead, where that format is what the community is for.

Why do startup subreddits remove my posts?

Usually the link, and usually the account. Both r/Entrepreneur and r/startups treat a URL in the body as the promotional payload independent of the text, and a first-ever post about your own company from an account with no comment history is the pattern moderators filter on sight. Remove the link and build some history first.

Will I get customers from Reddit startup communities?

Rarely, unless you sell to founders. These rooms are mostly other founders, so everyone is selling and few are buying. What they reliably produce is feedback, co-founders, early testers, hires and a check on whether your positioning makes sense to strangers. Sell in the subreddits about your customer's job instead.

How do I share traction numbers without sounding like an ad?

Give absolute figures with their base rather than percentages. This audience has seen every inflated growth chart and will ask for the denominator in the first few comments, so volunteering "34 customers, up from 28" reads as honest where "up 21% month over month" reads as evasive.

Is r/roastmystartup worth posting in?

Yes, and it is one of the few places a link is genuinely legitimate, because handing your product over for criticism is the entire purpose of the community. The one rule that matters is not defending yourself in the comments — leaning into the roast is what makes the thread useful, and arguing with it is what makes it go badly.

How to promote a startup on Reddit without getting banned

Startup subreddits look like the obvious place to launch and are one of the harder places to survive. The reason is not stricter moderation, though r/startups is strict. It is the audience: these rooms are mostly other founders and aspiring founders, which means everyone is selling and almost nobody is buying.

That changes what a post is for. Customers are rarely the return here. What is available instead is credibility, co-founders, early testers, hires, and the kind of comment thread that tells you whether your positioning makes sense to strangers. Post for those and the communities are generous. Post for installs and they are a wall.

The other thing that catches founders out is scrutiny. A number in a startup subreddit gets examined by people who have run the same playbook. "We grew 40% month over month" invites a question about the base, and if the honest answer is that you went from five customers to seven, it is better to say so first.

Where startups can actually be promoted

Each of these is a real community with its own rule. The rule is the part that matters — a good post in the wrong thread is still a removed post.

r/EntrepreneurRideAlongPromo tolerated
Built for serialised progress rather than launches, so an ongoing build is the native format instead of an intrusion.
The rule here: Post in "Day N: shipped X, got Y customers" update form with real metrics. Continuity is what earns attention here — a single announcement from an account nobody has seen before is the weak version.
r/roastmystartupPromo tolerated
The one room where handing over your product for criticism is the entire point, which makes a link legitimate.
The rule here: Frame it self-deprecatingly and lean into the roast rather than defending. Arguing with the critique in the comments is what turns a fine post into a bad thread.
r/SaaSConditional
The largest concentration of operators who will engage seriously with your numbers, if the numbers are the post.
The rule here: Metrics-heavy founder stories only — MRR, churn, conversion, what broke — written as a story. The product may appear inside the story and never as its subject.
r/startupsStrict
High authority and high reach, and the room most founders get removed from on their first attempt.
The rule here: Long-form only: 500+ words of specific lessons learned. Self-promotion outside the designated threads is removed regardless of quality.
r/EntrepreneurStrict
Enormous general audience, tolerant of stories and hostile to anything resembling a pitch.
The rule here: Use "lessons learned" or "mistakes I made" framing and put no link in the body at all. The link is the removal trigger here more reliably than the content is.

Rules change and moderators enforce their own reading of them. Check the sidebar before you post, every time, and see the full directory of 104 communities for the rest.

What this audience actually upvotes

The decision you cannot un-make. Founders read for the choices with consequences: the co-founder split you regret, the pivot you delayed six months too long, the first hire who was wrong for reasons you can now name. These get long comment threads because everyone reading is about to make the same call.

Small numbers stated plainly. This audience has seen every inflated growth chart, so a modest number with its denominator attached ("$1,900 MRR across 34 customers, up from 28") reads as credible in a way that a percentage never does.

What the advice got wrong. Startup communities are saturated with recycled guidance, and posts that test a piece of it against real experience and report that it did not hold are unusually well received.

The two ratios that decide whether you get removed

Enforcement on Reddit is account-level, not post-level. A moderator opens your profile after one post trips their attention and skims what fraction of the account is about its product. That is why a reasonable post attached to a promotional profile still goes.

9:1 — comments to posts. Reddit's self-promotion guidance implies about nine contributions that have nothing to do with your product for every one that does. It comes from Reddit's 2014 moderator clarification and its current small-business guide restates it as “be a user first”.

3:1 — value posts to promotional posts. Among your submissions, at most one in four should promote anything. Clearing 9:1 while every post you make is a plug still reads as a marketing account.

The mention-deletion test. Delete your product name from the post and reread it. If nothing of value is left, it was an advertisement with context attached and it will be removed. If it still teaches something, the mention is a footnote on a real contribution.

New accounts have a further problem: most large subreddits silently filter posts from accounts under a karma or age threshold, so the post looks live to you and is invisible to everyone else. Check yours with the karma and warmup calculator before you post at all.

What gets startups removed

Announcing a launch as the post
A launch is news about you, and startup subreddits are full of people whose own launch is more interesting to them than yours. Outside the rooms built for it, an announcement is both removable and ignorable, which is the worst combination.
Instead: Post the thing you learned getting to the launch, and let the launch be the closing sentence. In r/roastmystartup and r/EntrepreneurRideAlong the announcement itself is welcome — use those rather than forcing it elsewhere.
Quoting growth as a percentage
This audience knows that a percentage without a base is a way of hiding a small number, and someone will ask for the denominator in the first three comments. Being asked is worse than volunteering it.
Instead: Give the absolute figures first and the percentage second, if at all. "Seven customers, up from five" costs you nothing and buys the rest of the post credibility.
Treating founders as the customer
Unless you sell to founders, the people in these rooms will never buy, so a post optimised for conversion wastes the one thing they are genuinely good for.
Instead: Come for feedback, hiring, co-founders and positioning tests. Sell where your actual customers are, which is usually a subreddit about their job rather than about startups.
Posting to r/startups from a new account
It is among the most heavily moderated communities in this niche, and a first-ever post that happens to be about your own company is the exact profile its moderators filter.
Instead: Answer questions there for a couple of weeks first. The account history is what separates a lessons-learned post that stays up from one that does not.

A post that would survive

Written for r/startups. Adapt the specifics; keep the shape.

We spent 5 months building for a customer segment that could not sign contracts

Writing this down because I have not seen the specific failure discussed here and it cost us most of a year. We sold a compliance tool to mid-size logistics firms. Discovery went well: we spoke to 31 operations managers, 24 said the problem was real and painful, 11 said they would pay. We built for five months. At launch we closed two of the eleven. Not because they had changed their minds — because operations managers at that company size cannot sign a contract. Procurement can, and procurement had never heard of us, did not share the operations manager's problem, and had a vendor-approval process that took between four and seven months and required a SOC 2 report we did not have. What I should have asked in discovery, and now ask in the first call: who signs, what is their process, and have they ever bought something like this before. Three questions. None of them are about the product. What we did afterwards: - Moved down-market to companies where the person with the problem is also the person with a card. Sales cycle went from months to days. - Kept two of the original prospects warm and started SOC 2. One of them signed 14 months later, which is a real outcome but not one you can survive on. - Started treating "they said they would pay" as worthless unless the person saying it has bought something before. The uncomfortable part is that the discovery process was not wrong. We asked good questions about the problem. We just never asked a single question about the purchase.

Why it survives: It is 500+ words of specific lessons learned, which is exactly what r/startups permits, and it contains no product name and no link. The numbers carry their denominators, the failure is the author's own, and the takeaway is three questions a reader can use tomorrow. Nothing in it asks for anything, which is why it stays up.

Frequently asked questions

Can I post my startup on r/startups?: Only as a long-form lessons-learned post of roughly 500 words or more, and self-promotion outside the designated threads is removed regardless of how good it is. If what you have is an announcement rather than a lesson, post it in r/roastmystartup or r/EntrepreneurRideAlong instead, where that format is what the community is for.
Why do startup subreddits remove my posts?: Usually the link, and usually the account. Both r/Entrepreneur and r/startups treat a URL in the body as the promotional payload independent of the text, and a first-ever post about your own company from an account with no comment history is the pattern moderators filter on sight. Remove the link and build some history first.
Will I get customers from Reddit startup communities?: Rarely, unless you sell to founders. These rooms are mostly other founders, so everyone is selling and few are buying. What they reliably produce is feedback, co-founders, early testers, hires and a check on whether your positioning makes sense to strangers. Sell in the subreddits about your customer's job instead.
How do I share traction numbers without sounding like an ad?: Give absolute figures with their base rather than percentages. This audience has seen every inflated growth chart and will ask for the denominator in the first few comments, so volunteering "34 customers, up from 28" reads as honest where "up 21% month over month" reads as evasive.
Is r/roastmystartup worth posting in?: Yes, and it is one of the few places a link is genuinely legitimate, because handing your product over for criticism is the entire purpose of the community. The one rule that matters is not defending yourself in the comments — leaning into the roast is what makes the thread useful, and arguing with it is what makes it go badly.

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Last reviewed: July 2026