40 Comments
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Taylor's avatar

Loved this piece. However the biggest hurdle I face is actually promoting the product without getting banned or downvoted to hell. Self promo is a huge no no on most communities so I’m curious how one could thoughtfully circumvent this barrier?

Neil's avatar

Where are the community building communities? Sounds to me like we need a product that enables these initial conversations.

Falgun H. Chokshi's avatar

Yes. This is a big issue. Many of the subreddits have explicit rules against even the slightest bit of marketing or even asking questions about a product. What to do then?

Peter Yang's avatar

"Once you've created your new space, make a post about it, mention it in comments, invite people personally with private messages."

^ Any advice on how to do this in a subtle way, especially in the beginning when your new space has very few people?

Taking the FIRE example, something like this...?

"I created a Slack for us to chat more in real time with different channels for #investingtips #savingtips and more - url."

Nick Moore's avatar

Interested in this too. I can’t imagine too many mods would take kindly to you trying to siphon away members of their community, especially.

Jk's avatar

Checkout wibe.so, it looks very promising

Elad Cohen's avatar

Would also love to hear Greg's thoughts on this!

My approach would be to address the first few members that I can identify as future community leaders.

I'd offer them something of value - e.g: let's produce content together / let me help you with X...

After you have demonstrated that you can give value...

then you tell them about the new community you are starting.

If they need it, if they like it, if they trust you, they will post about it and not you.

That's a more subtle way and it takes more time. But it builds more trust and 10Xs your efforts as a single individual.

Siddharth Shah's avatar

This is a probing question because Reddit does not allow self promotion, and posts with the slightest hint of it get banned. How do you go around it without posting links to landing pages/apps/websites?

Fed's avatar

Fantastic piece, thank you Greg. It's true, Reddit is a goldmine for those that are looking to start new businesses. If you focus on the audience's pain points and the things that they are currently missing from their day-to-day, you can really get a huge head start on the ideation & validation process.

I made an audience research tool for Reddit that shares a lot of the same concepts as the first half of this article. For anyone that is looking to leverage Reddit to run through this process, feel free to give it a try at https://gummysearch.com/ and let me know what you think!

Christine Zhu's avatar

Love this. On “figuring out what to build”, Reddit’s suggested “related communities” is a good way to see what products already exist in the market and can lend tangential ideas.

Eg. r/productivity, related are product communities like Notion, todoist, thingsapp, and also tangential hobbies like bujo (bullet journaling).

Brendan Lloyd Weitz's avatar

awesome. i wonder if there’s a similar opportunity w/ Quora that is more untapped

40 Square Feet's avatar

thanks that a generous knowledge share. I did try it but couldn’t quite get the hang of it, maybe I’ll try again now after your article

Tom Spark's avatar

Build with the community, not for them. That’s the leverage.

Alan Hsieh's avatar

Mostly commenting for One Punch man

The Letters By Erin Larkin's avatar

If you were brand new to Reddit, what are the first things a new user should do?

Jaisal Rathee's avatar

Your original post inspired me like crazy all those years ago. I’ve even built and sold multiple 5 + 6 figure projects based off (roughly) this strategy

Michael Spencer's avatar

Substack is showing me a post from 2020? Uh okay.

The Silent Treasury's avatar

Hello there,

Huge Respect for your work!

New here. No huge reader base Yet.

But the work has waited long to be spoken.

Its truths have roots older than this platform.

My Sub-stack Purpose

To seed, build, and nurture timeless, intangible human capitals — such as resilience, vision, trust, truth, evolution, fulfilment, quality, peace, patience, discipline, relationships and conviction — in order to elevate human judgment, deepen relationships, and restore sacred trusteeship and stewardship of long-term firm value across generations.

A refreshing take on our business world and capitalism.

A reflection on why today’s capital architectures—PE, VC, Hedge funds, SPAC, Alt funds, Rollups—mostly fail to build and nuture what time can trust.

“Built to Be Left.”

A quiet anatomy of extraction, abandonment, and the collapse of stewardship.

"Principal-Agent Risk is not a flaw in the system.

It is the system’s operating principle”

Experience first. Return if it speaks to you.

- The Silent Treasury

https://tinyurl.com/48m97w5e

Benjamin Mock's avatar

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