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Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

gummysearch.com

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Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#11

Post by maest »

Maxion wrote: post #6
gnicholas wrote: post #4

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page. 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. S…

Reddit is not a platform for self-promotion, and moderators there are very keen for it not becoming such a place. 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…

> Reddit is not a platform for self-promotion, and moderators there are very keen for it not becoming such a place.

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.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#12

Post by lloydatkinson »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page. 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. S…

Honestly the best way to avoid mods I’ve found is to repost something some time later at a different hour or when a particular American National holiday happens (I’m from the UK. This way you get to avoid the usual trigger happy Reddit mods. As you’ve probably experienced Reddit has some of the worst and biased moderation and administration around.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#13

Post by rco8786 »

InCityDreams wrote: post #8

Completely free to try No credit card required 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.

That seems like a strange principle. Nowhere does it say it’s free, and the pricing details are plainly available. 3 tiers, 19, 39, 99/mo after the trial.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#14

Post by rco8786 »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page. 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. S…

Avoiding mods is a problem with Reddit itself. If you think that mods devalue the conversation on Reddit so much that searching the discussions for relevant information is not worth it then the product here is not for you.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#15

Post by dmitriid_y »

PUSH_AX wrote: post #5
gnicholas wrote: post #4

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page. 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. S…

The spirit of Reddit is to share things you’ve found that you think are cool or suited to the sub. This falls down when people start self promoting their stuff. The thing is there are lots of cool things people have created that should be shared, but if you open the floodgates then you also get the other 90% of spammy garbage. So generally there are blanket rules about this kind of thing.

> This falls down when people start self promoting their stuff.

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.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#17

Post by thefedoration »

Hey folks - I made GummySearch, which is an audience research toolkit for Reddit. Thanks for checking it out!

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.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#18

Post by thefedoration »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page. 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. S…

Ah the mods. Feared by most, hated by some, necessary to make Reddit the place is is.

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/

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#19

Post by annagrigoryan2 »

I hate to be that typical hackernews commenter that says "Oh this is already done for free by this thing".

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.

Re: Show HN: Reddit search engine for startup founders

#20

Post by thefedoration »

annagrigoryan2 wrote: post #19

I hate to be that typical hackernews commenter that says "Oh this is already done for free by this thing". 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.

That's a nice free tool to discover subreddits related to one that you already know about, and the map is pretty cool too!

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!

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