Subreddit guide
r/startups bans direct sales, advertisements, and promotional posts of any kind. Products may only be shared in the designated monthly "Share Your Startup" thread. Discussion posts must not tie strategies to your own project by name or URL, and submissions must be at least 250 characters. Feedback requests belong in the weekly feedback thread only.
Direct promotion banned — monthly Share Your Startup thread is the only exception.
No explicit karma minimum in the published rules, but AMAs require mod approval with 2 weeks lead time, and blog links need prior mod approval.
Digest of the subreddit's published rules as of 2026-07-02, focused on what matters for founders doing outreach. Always re-check the live rules before posting.
Promotion rules limit how you can talk — they don't stop buyers from talking. These are the phrase patterns that signal a potential customer in this community:
Post angles that consistently land inside this community's rules — framed as value, not promotion.
It scores every new post for buying intent, flags each subreddit's self-promo policy before you engage, and never sends a message for you — you reply in your own voice, which is exactly what these communities' rules reward.
Only in the monthly Share Your Startup thread, which is stickied at the top of the subreddit. Anywhere else, posts that name or link your own project are removed under the promotion rules.
By answering the questions buyers already ask — threads about tool recommendations, validation struggles, and acquisition problems. Reply with genuine help in your own words; the subreddit explicitly permits relevant links in comments when they answer a question rather than promote.
The 9 published rules don't state a numeric karma minimum. Moderation instead gates by format: promotional content is thread-only, blog posts need prior approval, and AMAs require two weeks of mod lead time.
Zero promotion of any kind — and you must engage in comments before you may post.
r/SaaS1 product mention per 60 days, affiliation disclosed — and zero promotion for lead-gen/outreach tools.
r/indiehackersOne SHOW IH post per product, framed for feedback — repeat promotion is removed.
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