I'm 19, got thousands of users from reddit posts, and lovable invited me to their HQ. here's everything I know about marketing
Quick context so you know this isn't recycled from some youtube guru. I've shipped 8+ products in the last 18 months. My reddit posts have done over 1.5M organic views total and I have never spent a dollar on ads. That turned into thousands of users, paying customers, and running growth for a YC backed company. At 18 lovable invited me to their HQ to demo one of my products to their team. One founder I helped with this exact playbook went from zero to $1.6k MRR in 3 days. Another got 80 users from a single post. My most recent win was 2.3k users in 3 weeks using only reddit.
I skipped college to do this full time, so this is literally all I do. Here's the entire system, nothing held back.
1. Find where your users actually hang out
Most founders post in r/SaaS and r/startups and wonder why nothing converts. Those subs are full of other founders, not your customers. Figure out exactly who your ideal customer is, then find the 3-5 subreddits where THEY spend time. If you're stuck, literally ask claude "where does my target customer hang out on reddit" and it'll map it out for you.
2. Study what goes viral in that specific sub before posting
Sort by top this month, read the top 20 posts, and reverse engineer the titles, formats and tone. Every subreddit has its own culture. A post that kills in one sub dies instantly in another.
3. Accept that nobody cares what you built
"I built X" posts flop because readers are selfish, and honestly that's fair. Every post needs to GIVE the reader something. A story, real numbers, a full guide, a laugh. Your product gets mentioned subtly at most, or only in the comments.
4. The title is 80% of the post
I write 10+ titles before touching the body. Use numbers, they do insane work. "I got 400 signups from one reddit post" beats "how to market your product" every single time. Nail the title first, then write the post.
5. Use the formats that are proven to work
The ones that consistently perform for me: milestone posts (build in public, share your journey with real numbers, people genuinely root for you), receipt posts ("I tried X, here's exactly what happened"), value posts where you give the whole playbook away free (like this one), and humor, which is massively underrated for goodwill.
6. Keep links subtle in the posts.
Safest bet is to drop the links in the comments when someone asks for it. If youwant to get more clickws though, having it in the post body works better. The further up you have it in the post, the moer clicks you would get, but the risk of you getting shown as a promoter increases.
7. The first 20 minutes decide everything
Reddit pushes posts hard based on early engagement. Post tuesday or wednesday morning US time, then live in your comments for two hours. Reply to every single comment, even negative ones. Especially negative ones honestly, a little ragebait keeps the thread alive and reddit counts arguments as engagement.
8. One post is never one post
Winners get adapted and reposted to other subs weeks later. My views didn't come from one viral moment, they came from running this loop over and over for every product.
That's the whole system. None of it is complicated, it's just a grind, and doing the grind while also being the one building the product is what kills most founders. I've felt that on every launch.
Which is why the thing I'm building now is basically this playbook turned into a product. It's called sentrive.
You plug in your product and it spins up marketing agents based on what you're building, they figure out your ICP, where those people hang out, and run the distribution for you. I automated my own job because I've done this loop manually 8 times and I know exactly what it's supposed to look like.
Ask me anything about the playbook in the comments. And if your posts keep flopping, drop your title below and I'll tell you exactly why nobody's clicking it
19, building from sweden