Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders
gummysearch.com
gummysearch.com
One thing I'd like to understand better is how to avoid problems with mods. My startup had some very popular posts on LPT and YSK, but both were taken down. Some of the mods said that the reasoning given by other mods was bogus, and that we were just being targeted.
Since then, I've never tried engaging on reddit much, since it seems like even successful posts can be taken down without rhyme or reason. Any insights into how to avoid these sorts of problems, either with your tool or in general?
Each subreddit is moderated differently by completely volunteer moderators. How things are in one subreddit does not really tell you how it is in another.
In broad terms, directly engaging as a company on Reddit by creating a post is generally frowned upon. What works better is to respond to posts in the comments hwhere your company would be relevant. But it is very hard to toe the line between spamming advertisements, and engaging with the community. 90% of companies I see trying to engage on Reddit seem to do it with metrics such as ROI or engagement in mind, rather than simply trying to make a community a better place.
If you go by the former, you'll have your posts removed and maybe even banned from the community. If you do the latter, then you will make some headway.
E.g. Do not promote your business selling router bits, DO make a lengthy post explaining the differences between router bits and how to choose one that's right for you.
Counterpoint: mods can (and have been) paid off to promote/allow posts from certain companies, while shutting down posts from competitors.
The biggest example is u/gallowboobs, but many mods of medium to large sized subreddits have reported being approached by people offering them money to use their power to influence what gets posted.
So, while on the surface of it, it looks like a subreddit is moderated by clear, transparent rules, in most cases, decisions are made by a handful of people whose interests are not clear or aligned with the community's.
I can see that I would have been much better off letting one of my startup's users, or someone who had seen our Show HN, post to reddit and get the ball rolling. That would have generated the same type of publicity, and I would have been able to jump into the comments and answer questions in the same way. Lesson learned!
How many launches of other startups not affiliated with you did you share there first? What % of your comments in the sub would you say were on threads you didn't start?
If you were more intrinsically interested in the community, you’d probably have signed up long ago and engaged with plenty of other people’s posts, like you did here here on HN!
Is there a subreddit that has an analog of 'Show HN'? Or have HN and PH basically sucked all the oxygen out of that particular room?
Pinterest manages it just fine. And Reddit crossposting hints at the fix: sever content from specific subreddits and instead have content be tagged with relevant subreddits and attributes. Something being paid-content would just be another tag that could be optionally filtered.
If you make a post that mentions your company, in most subreddits there's a chance you could get it taken down. There are ways to mitigate that, but my recommendation is to start out by commenting as opposed to posting. There are a lot of conversations where people are talking about pain points you can help with, or asking for solutions which are exactly the business you run. By answering with a thoughtful reply and linking to your site (blog post with more info or product free trial is received best), you open up a win-win-win situation. OP gets their question answered (unless you're doing it wrong), you win because you get a potential customer, and the community wins because they learn of a related resource to a post they are reading. In my experience, comments are a lot less moderated, and because you're actually helping someone with your reply, less likely to be called out for self-promotion.
I've found that a lot of startup founders have similar experiences, so much that part of my job has been helping people get comfortable with Reddit. If you want to know more, here's my intro to Reddit for founders blog post: https://gummysearch.com/insights/reddit-startups/
But I use this open source project https://anvaka.github.io/redsim/ for that purposes.
Unless there's something else I don't see here, i think this open source thingy gives all you need.
However I'm pretty sure it doesn't let you search conversations on Reddit, categorize threads in ways that could be useful to founders (pain points, solution requests), get notified of conversations related to your business, or show you the growing categories of communities.
If you find a free tool that does this, I'd love to see it!
It's a tool to quickly find online communities on Reddit where your target customers hang out, what their pain points are, what solutions they need, and what they are eager to pay for. You can use it to quickly ideate/validate business opportunities, research your audience, and even find potential customers from Reddit when they are discussing topics related to your business.
If you'd like to take it for a spin, it's free to try and only takes a couple minutes to see results for your target audience.
Let me know what you think! Curious to hear your feedback.
Meanwhile, best wishes
But maybe they are harder to discover (eg because FB search is horrible, is it not). Or LinkedIn, but maybe over there one finds mostly recruiters and job applicants, hmm
So how much is it (going to be)? Thankfully my kids are now aware of 'free to try' and 'no credit card required'.....to try, i presume, but not 'to actually use'. Skipped, on principle.
$19/mo Starter plan, $39/mo Pro plan (Tracks keywords & more advanced search) and $99/mo Team plan (multiple users, shareable search result reports).