r/startups
The community for ventures designed to scale rapidly | Read our rules before posting ❤️
Founded January 2008 · Public — anyone can post
Welcome to /r/startups, the place to discuss startup problems and solutions. Startups are companies that are designed to grow and scale rapidly. Be sure to read and follow all of our rules--we have specific places for common content and requests.
Members
2,121,657
2.1M
Online now
—
not captured in the last snapshot
Posts per day
—
no sample yet
Comments per post
—
no sample yet
Growth · 7d
—
not enough history yet
Growth · 30d
+1.2%
+25K members · ≈26d
Published rules
9
5 mention promotion — quoted below
Last post
—
no sample yet
Distinct posters
—
no sample yet
Tracking since Aug 7 · growth spans are the real distance between snapshots, not rounded windows. Posts/day is measured from the community’s own newest posts on Reddit, not from what Prowlo happens to crawl.
Member growth
What works in r/startups
Every post in a recent sample, labelled by format. Share is how much of the sample used that format; average score is how it performed.
| Format | Share of posts | Avg score |
|---|---|---|
| Question | 39% | 31 |
| Lessons / story | 28% | 322 |
| Rant | 15% | 259 |
| Discussion | 11% | 266 |
| How-to | 7% | 339 |
Based on 72 posts sampled in September 2026. A sample, not the full history.
- Median score
- 54
- Top 10% score
- 448
- Text posts
- 100%
- Got no replies
- 0%
- Busiest windows
- Tue 16:00 UTC, Mon 04:00 UTC
Posting rules, in plain words
Self-promotion belongs in a dedicated thread. Promotion goes in Monthly Share Your Startup thread (monthly).
- No direct sales, advertisements, or promotion: **No direct sales, advertisements, or promotional posts of any kind**.
- No direct sales, advertisements, or promotion: * You MAY share your startup in the Monthly Share Your Startup thread
- Submissions Serve a Specific Purpose: Submissions are for discussing methodologies, experiences, strategies, techniques, markets, and other such things WITHOUT tying them directly to your own project using its name or URL.
- Rules for Links in Comments/Discussion: Link only content you have no affiliation with. Affiliate links = banned.
Quoted from the community’s own published rules. Always re-read them before posting.
What a good comment looks like here
- — Offers specific, actionable advice based on experience.
- — Directly addresses the original poster's question or problem.
- — Provides counter-arguments or alternative perspectives with reasoning.
- — Shares personal anecdotes or lessons learned.
- — Asks clarifying questions to deepen the discussion.
- — Acknowledges and builds upon previous comments.
What r/startups's rules say about promotion
5 of 9 published rules mention promotion, advertising or spam. Quoted from the community's own rules page, not summarised.
Relevant Content Only
rule 1 of 9
We are a community of discussion based around startups, not traditional businesses. All content must be relevant to startups. You are welcome to ask how to apply startup methodologies to your traditional business if you frame your question in a non-promotional way. We want you to be able to ask any question that helps your startup.
Removal reason shown to posters: not relevant
No direct sales, advertisements, or promotion
rule 2 of 9
**No direct sales, advertisements, or promotional posts of any kind**. We have designated places that are an exception to this rule and they will always be stickied at the top of /r/startups. * You MAY share your startup in the Monthly Share Your Startup thread Self-promotion is anything you have an interest, stake or relationship with including being friends with someone at the company. At the end of the day, /r/startups moderators have the final say if your comments are promotional or not.
Removal reason shown to posters: No direct sales, advertisements, or self-promotion
Rules for Links in Comments/Discussion
rule 5 of 9
Sometimes you think the best solution is simply to link to a resource that might answer someone's question. We want you to be able to link in discussion to relevant content. We also don't want the discussion to turn into a self promotional mess and link farm. If you are going to link to something in the comments please make sure to: * Write at least a sentence explaining why the link is relevant to the discussion. * Link only content you have no affiliation with. Affiliate links = banned.
Removal reason shown to posters: Violating link rules
Do Not Solicit PM Requests / Post DM Notices
rule 6 of 9
The purpose of making a submission or comment is to engage in a public discussion with the community. It is not to request a PM/DM from someone. Do not post a notice that you DMed someone. You are more than welcome to engage privately with one another, but it is up to you to take the initiative directly.
Removal reason shown to posters: Do Not Solicit Private Message Requests
Sharing Your Blog is To Start a Discussion, Never For Self-Promotion
rule 7 of 9
Sharing your blog is not a means to self promote. A link to the original blog post is allowed with **prior** Mod approval. If you are submitting your own blog content, the full body of the content must be included in the post, properly formatted for reddit. Include an outline & timestamps with a video. If your blog is over 2000 words you may ask for an exemption. All other rules still apply. No blogs about your "startup" journey allowed.
Removal reason shown to posters: Sharing your blog is not a means to self promote
The other 4
- Submissions Serve a Specific Purpose
- Feedback Has a Place
- Always Be Kind and Supportive
- No Unscheduled AMAs
Read from r/startups’s published rules on Sep 13. Communities change their rules without notice and enforce requirements (karma, account age, flair) that may live in the sidebar or automod rather than here — the source page is the authority.
Similar by content
Communities that discuss what r/startups discusses.
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The place to discuss about startup ideas. Share your business ideas, get feedback, and connect with other entrepreneurs.
Reddit's space to learn the tools and skills necessary to build a successful startup. A community meant to support each other and grow through the exchange of knowledge and ideas. A rising tide lifts all ships in its wake.
Shared audience
Posters in r/startups also post in…
Discussions and useful links for SaaS owners, online business owners, and more.
Follow real founders in real time. No gurus, no hindsight. Just the raw, unfiltered journey of starting and scaling companies from idea to execution. Whether you’re building in public or watching from the sidelines, this is where entrepreneurship gets real.
Our community brings together individuals driven by a shared commitment to problem-solving, professional networking, and collaborative innovation, all with the goal of making a positive impact. We welcome a diverse range of pursuits, from side projects and small businesses to venture-backed startups and solo ventures. However, this is a space for genuine connection and exchange of ideas, not self-promotion. Please refrain from promoting personal blogs, consulting services, books, MLMs, opinions.
This sub is not for advertisements! Questions and answers about starting, owning, and growing a small business only.
See the full lists on similar subreddits.
r/startups — frequently asked
How many members does r/startups have?
r/startups has 2,121,657 members as of our most recent crawl on Sep 2. Prowlo re-checks tracked communities on a rolling schedule, so this figure moves rather than sitting frozen at whatever it was when a scraper last ran.
Is r/startups growing?
Over the last ≈26 days r/startups changed by +1.2% — a gain of 25K members. We compare against the nearest snapshot we actually hold and state the real span rather than rounding it to a clean "30 days".
How active is r/startups?
We don't have a reliable posting-rate sample for r/startups yet. Subscriber count alone is a poor guide to whether a community is active, so treat this one as unverified until the next sample lands.
When was r/startups created?
r/startups was founded in January 2008 and is a public — anyone can post community. Age matters: an older community with steady growth has survived Reddit's moderation churn; a young one with a spike may not.
Can I promote my product in r/startups?
r/startups publishes 9 rules and 5 of them address promotion. The first, “Relevant Content Only”, says: We are a community of discussion based around startups, not traditional businesses. All content must be relevant to startups. You are welcome to ask how to apply startup methodologies to your traditional business if you… Read the full rule text on this page and the community's rules page before posting — moderator enforcement is the thing that actually decides.
How do I monitor r/startups for mentions?
Hit Watch on this page. Prowlo starts crawling r/startups into your Dataset — every new post indexed and embedded, searchable semantically, queryable by your AI agent over MCP, and able to trigger keyword alerts in Slack. Prowlo is read-only; it never posts on your behalf.
Can my AI agent read r/startups's stats?
Yes. Everything on this page is one MCP tool call away: catalog_get_subreddit returns r/startups's members, growth, promo tolerance and similar communities as typed JSON — free, no credits. Connect your agent to api.prowlo.com/mcp and it can vet the community and start watching it in the same conversation.
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