Founder’s Guide
A Simple Founder’s Guide to Reddit
Reddit and Redditors have a very specific way of allowing brands and founders to participate on the platform.
This guide will show you that way.
Follow it, and you’ll understand how to participate without coming across as spammy, promotional, or inauthentic. Ignore it, and you’ll quickly find yourself getting downvoted, removed, or banned from communities.
This is the Reddit-native way to build a genuine presence as a founder or brand.
1. What is Reddit?
Reddit is a collection of thousands of communities called subreddits, each built around a particular topic or interest.
Examples:
- r/Entrepreneur → entrepreneurship
- r/sobercurious → discussion around people's new sober lifestyle
- r/AskReddit → people asking Redditors about anything and everything
Each subreddit has its own culture, rules and inside jokes. Think of every subreddit as its own little internet neighbourhood.
2. Who are Redditors?
Redditors are mostly anonymous people who participate in these communities under usernames rather than their real names.
A comment by an anonymous Redditor could be an unemployed idiot or Bill Gates himself. (Like, seriously, this is- Bill Gates' Reddit account)
Sometimes you know. Most times you don't.
Which brings us to one of the most important things about Reddit:
Your job title carries surprisingly little weight.
A CEO, student, engineer, teacher, teenager, investor or anonymous account can all contribute to the same conversation.
What matters is what you say, not who you are.
A founder saying: "I'm the CEO of XYZ and we've learned..." doesn't automatically make the comment valuable.
A Redditor saying: "I tried this with 400 customers and here's what happened..." might be far more influential.
Reddit rewards experience and interesting opinions more than credentials.
3. The mindset required to succeed on Reddit
The biggest mistake founders make is bringing their existing marketing mindset onto Reddit.
The wrong mindset: "I have a product. Where can I promote it?"
The Reddit-native mindset: "I'm entering communities that already exist. How can I become useful here?"
When posting or commenting, the philosophy should always be:
"I'm here to share my experiences, contribute to conversations, and voice my opinions."
Not: "I'm here to teach/tell Redditors how they should think."
Reddit is generally hostile to obvious self-promotion, especially when an account exists primarily to advertise something.
The best Reddit accounts feel like a person who works at a company, rather than a company pretending to be a person.
4. Your Reddit account is a person, not a marketing channel
This is especially important for a founder account. You don't want the account to look like:
- Product announcement
- Product announcement
- Company blog post
- Product announcement
- "Check out our startup!"
- Product announcement
You want someone visiting the profile to think: "Oh, this is a real person who has interesting things to say."
That means the account should contain a mix of:
- Opinions
- Experiences
- Interesting observations
- Answers to questions
- Stories
- Relevant discussions
- Occasional brand-related content
The founder's personality should come through. Reddit is conversational. Short sentences, imperfect grammar, jokes, opinions and personality work the best.
5. What is karma and why does it matter?
Karma is Reddit's reputation score.
You generally gain karma when people upvote your posts and comments. Reddit distinguishes between different kinds of karma, including post and comment karma.
Why does karma matter?
Many subreddits have requirements for newer accounts, such as minimum karma or account-age thresholds, to reduce spam and abuse. This means you can't engage in those subreddits till you cross the threshold they've decided. Generally, after 200 karma, you can engage almost everywhere.
To quickly summarise, karma can help you:
- Participate in more communities
- Post in communities with restrictions
- Establish that your account isn't brand new
- Build some visible history on the platform
But:
Karma isn't the goal.
Your profile activity is what we're trying to optimize. When someone clicks on your Reddit account, they don't just see your karma. They see all your posts and comments.
Our goal is to show fellow Redditors that this is a normal human who actually uses Reddit and not a brand account that was created yesterday to only promote your brand.
6. How to grow karma
The easiest way to start is simply to comment.
Find communities you genuinely find interesting and participate in conversations.
(No brand mention. Just be yourself.)
Some easy places to start:
- r/AskReddit
- r/interestingasfuck
- r/Damnthatsinteresting
- r/mildlyinteresting
You can also scroll through the popular section of Reddit and find posts and subsequent communities that genuinely interest you.
Pro tip
Sort posts by:
New / Rising / Hot
This helps you find posts while they're still gaining traction i.e. before they've been seen by thousands of people, so even simple comments like "damn this was interesting" or "never seen this before" can get a massive amount of upvotes.
You don't need to sound intelligent or spend 20 minutes crafting every sentence.
If something makes you laugh, say it. If you disagree, say it (and preferably, explain why). If you've experienced something similar, share the story. If you have nothing interesting to add, don't comment just for the sake of commenting.
Some examples:-
Once you're over 100 karma (shouldn't take more than 1 to 2 weeks of casual scrolling), post on these subreddits:
(I'll give you the posts. DM or email me)
Once you're past a few hundred karma, you're free to engage almost everywhere on Reddit.
7. Subreddits to target for [Your Brand]
Personal branding
Format: Story post
A good place to tell your founder story, share what you're building, and talk about the journey of building the company.
Format: Story post/advice
Potential topics:
- Lessons from building your brand
- Things you've learned as a founder
- Interesting challenges you've faced
- Business decisions you've made
- Things you wish you'd known earlier
Format: Founder story/discussion
Similar approach. The focus should be on the story, experience or lesson, rather than the brand itself.
General business-related
These are useful communities for general founder and startup discussions. Participate in conversations around:
- Building a company
- Hiring
- Fundraising
- Product
- Marketing
- Customer acquisition
- Founder problems
- Lessons learned
If your brand happens to be relevant to the conversation, bring it up naturally.
Brand-specific subreddits
Once you've spent enough time participating in the communities above and have built up a history of around 5–10 genuine posts, you can start entering your target, brand-specific subreddits and engaging as a fully disclosed brand entity.
At this stage, the goal is to participate in relevant conversations, answer questions, and build genuine relationships within the community, rather than immediately promoting the brand.
DM or email me if you need help with this final step.
8. What NOT to do
One of the fastest ways to get hated by Reddit is to sound like a corporate account.
Always talk like a person.
If you're annoyed, confused, excited, amused or disagreeing with someone, let your actual personality come through. Reddit doesn't require everything to sound polished. In fact, polished makes you look less trustworthy.
What's the 90/10 Rule on Reddit?
Reddit communities value authenticity and contribution over self-promotion. That's where the 90/10 rule comes in: 90% of your posts and comments should offer genuine help, insights, or entertainment — with only 10% focused on linking to your own site, product, or giveaway.
This unspoken rule keeps Reddit valuable for users and ensures brands don't flood the platform with spam. It also helps your business avoid bans or being flagged by moderators.
TL;DR: If you remember nothing else, remember these:
- Be a person. Don't sound like a company.
- Give before you ask. Contribute before promoting.
- Don't force your brand name into conversations. If it fits, mention it. If it doesn't, don't.
- Don't fake anything. Your Reddit profile will always have “Founder of BRAND in your bio” so your affiliation will always be visible to everyone. Additionally, whenever necessary, disclose your affiliation.
- Don't overthink every comment. Reddit is not a press release. Mistakes make you more human. Your own voice and writing style will always outperform ChatGPT's over-polished language. In fact, as a sub rule, NEVER USE CHATGPT TO WRITE YOUR COMMENTS.
- Have opinions (as long as they're not political) Reddit is much more interesting when you're actually a person with thoughts, experiences and preferences. But be wary of jumping into topics related to politics. These tend to be very heated here on Reddit.
The simplest way to think about Reddit
Don't enter Reddit as a founder looking for customers. Enter Reddit as a person who happens to be a founder.
- Talk to people.
- Have opinions.
- Tell stories.
- Be useful.
- Be transparent.
- And most importantly, have fun.
Reddit Glossary
A few Reddit terms you'll keep seeing:
- Subreddit
- A community on Reddit built around a specific topic. r/Entrepreneur is for entrepreneurs, r/RateMyMealDeal is for people posting their meal deals, etc.
- Redditor
- Anyone who uses Reddit. You are now technically a Redditor.
- OP
- “Original Poster” i.e. the person who made the post. If someone says “OP is right”, they're talking about whoever made the original post.
- Post
- A new piece of content someone puts on Reddit. Could be a question, image, video, story, link, etc.
- Comment
- What you write underneath someone's post.
- Reply
- What you write underneath someone else's comment.
- Upvote
- Reddit's version of a like. Upvotes generally help a post/comment get more visibility and contribute towards karma.
- Downvote
- The opposite of an upvote. Basically Redditors saying “this isn't useful/relevant/I just dislike it.”
- Karma
- Your Reddit reputation score. You generally gain karma when people upvote your posts and comments. Some subreddits require a certain amount of karma before you can post.
- Cake Day
- The anniversary of when someone created their Reddit account. You'll sometimes see a little cake next to someone's username. It's basically their Reddit birthday.
- Flair
- A little label attached to a post or username. Some subreddits use it to categorise posts, e.g. “Discussion”, “Question”, “Advice”, “Meme” etc.
- Mod
- Short for Moderator. These are the people who run individual subreddits and enforce the rules. Don't piss them off.
- Modmail
- A private message sent to the moderators of a subreddit. If you have a question about whether something is allowed, this is usually where you'd ask.
- Lurking
- Reading Reddit without posting or commenting. It's actually useful when you're new to a subreddit because you get to understand how people talk before you start jumping in.
- Repost
- Posting something that has already been posted on Reddit. Reddit generally doesn't love this.
- Crosspost
- Taking a post from one subreddit and sharing it to another subreddit.
- AMA
- “Ask Me Anything.” Someone basically opens themselves up to questions from Redditors. You'll often see founders, celebrities, experts etc. do AMAs.
- DM
- A private message sent to another Reddit user.
- PM
- Private Message. An older term for what Reddit now generally calls a DM.
- TL;DR
- “Too Long; Didn't Read.” Usually used to give you the short version of a long post or comment. Example: “TL;DR: Don't sound like a corporate account.”
- Edit / ETA
- If someone adds something to their comment after posting it, they might write “Edit:” or “ETA” (“Edited To Add”) before the new information.
- NSFW
- “Not Safe For Work.” Usually means sexual, graphic or otherwise questionable content. Probably not something we'll be dealing with much, but you'll see it around Reddit.
- Shadowban
- A restriction where your content can appear normal to you but isn't properly visible to other people. The easiest way to avoid this is don't spam, don't mass-post the same thing everywhere and don't behave like a bot.
- Brigading
- Getting a bunch of people from one community to go and vote/comment on something somewhere else. Don't do this. Reddit really doesn't like coordinated behaviour like this.
- Subreddit rules
- Every subreddit has its own rules. Read them before posting. Something that's completely fine in one subreddit can get you banned from another.
That's pretty much it. You'll pick up the rest naturally once you start using Reddit.
Need help putting this into practice? Get in touch.