👽 How to get your first 1,000 customers from Reddit

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Your Facebook ads are getting more expensive every quarter. Your CAC is climbing faster than your revenue. Meanwhile, some founders are laughing all the way to the bank because they cracked a customer acquisition channel that costs nothing and converts better than your best-performing campaigns.

That channel is Reddit. 

I touched on this in last week’s Wispr Flow case study, where Tanay described how they built their early user base entirely through Reddit. Their competitor Willow did the same. OpenPhone also acquired its first batch of paying customers on Reddit and still credits the platform as a key growth channel with strong conversion rates. There are many more examples just like those.

Reddit just became the 5th most visible domain in Google search results in 2024. 

That's up from #68 just a year prior. A 1,328% increase in search visibility. This isn't just some algorithm tweak. Google partnered with Reddit to get real-time access to all their content. They're using Reddit data to train their AI models because Reddit is where actual humans have real conversations about products.

Reddit now shows up for 97.5% of product review queries. When someone searches for your type of product, Reddit threads are probably ranking above your landing page.

There is an Alpha right now for smart founders who understand the game… and you will be able to capitalize on that after reading this post. 

Not every startup should prioritize Reddit, but many will benefit a ton from this channel. Some categories I have seen that work quite well with Reddit:

*What doesn't work on Reddit: Generic consumer brands, anything that requires high-touch sales processes, products with long consideration cycles, or companies that can't authentically engage with communities (Reddit users smell corporate BS from miles away).

If you’re new to Reddit, start by creating an account with a normal, human-sounding username (not StartupFounderJohn). 

New accounts can’t immediately post or comment in many subreddits, so you’ll need to build credibility first. Do this by commenting and posting thoughtfully in smaller, more welcoming communities. The goal is to collect Karma points (earned when people upvote or engage with your contributions), which unlocks access to larger, more relevant subreddits.

The most important principle: Reddit is about value creation and authenticity. If you come across as salesy, you’ll get ignored, or worse, banned. Focus on adding genuine value and avoid overt promotion.

The subreddit research framework

Your customers likely aren't in obvious places. Wispr Flow found their best users in r/MacApps and r/ADHD, not r/artificial. OpenPhone crushed it in r/Shopify and r/EntrepreneurRideAlong, not the obvious business subreddits.

Your ideal customers might be discussing adjacent problems, not your direct solution.

Create a research spreadsheet tracking:

For each subreddit, analyze the top 10 posts from the past month. Look for patterns in language, tone, and structure. r/Entrepreneur loves founder journey stories with specific metrics. r/programming prefers technical deep-dives with code examples. r/Shopify responds to tactical advice with immediate implementation value.

Comments let you join conversations where people are already expressing pain points your product solves.

OpenPhone's founder discovered that comments can perform as well as posts if not better. Their top comment got 46 upvotes, rivaling their best posts. 

This comment worked because it provided immediate value (validation of the problem), shared specific insights (technical challenges), and mentioned the product naturally within the context of solving the exact problem being discussed.

However, as soon as you start being promotional, be ready for some downvotes, like the example below.

Each community has its own norms and winning formats. Make sure to post in a way that’s native to those subreddits. You should have already gathered data there from Phase 1.

For example, Allan Guo from Willow studied top posts of all time from productivity related subreddits and found that the best performing posts were often story-driven arcs that follow this format:

Before: I was unproductive → Discovery: I found a new tool/hack/routine → After: I became way more productive.

Like this one here.

177 upvotes and 54 comments might seem like a lot but that might equate to hundreds of thousands of views in the Reddit universe.

One format that has worked for my startup Pikes (AI creatives for consumer brands) is posting AI images/videos on different e-commerce related subreddits and asking for community feedback. This simple post generated 18K views on the back of only 22 upvotes and 40 comments.

The key to posting is to avoid being salesy at all costs. Only drop your name subtly in the post or in the comments section only. 

DO NOT LINK YOUR PRODUCT. The idea is to have Reddit users search your product on Google so make sure you use a brand name that’s ranked first on Google (e.g. Pikes AI vs Pikes).

1/ Knowledge base organization

Organize your existing content into searchable topics:

This lets you quickly find relevant information when engaging in discussions, rather than starting from scratch each time.

2/ Monitoring and alerts

You can use Reddit alert bots to track conversations that matter most to you. One free option is F5bot, which lets you set up alerts for specific keywords and even choose which subreddits to monitor. 

It’s a simple way to keep tabs on discussions about your product without having to manually search every day.

3/ Consistency and volume

Once the setup’s done, the real work is posting consistently. You can either have someone on your team handle it daily or bring in help from Fiverr or Upwork. There are plenty of Reddit specialists out there at reasonable rates.

Keep an eye on how each post performs, and pay attention to what lands and what doesn’t. In the end, it’s consistency that makes the difference, not clever tricks.

4/ Build your own community on Reddit

This is more of an advanced tactic and would only work when you already have a decent amount of users.

OpenPhone created r/openphone in 2019 as an announcement channel. It evolved into something much more valuable: a customer support hub and market research goldmine.

The evolution happened because OpenPhone consistently provided value rather than just promotional announcements. They responded quickly to customer questions, shared product updates with context about why changes were made, and used the space for genuine community building.

There are many perks to having your own subreddit:

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What growth frameworks should I break down next? Reply and let me know.

Leo

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