For months, I saw other founders talking about Reddit as this goldmine for early traction, but every time I tried, it felt like walking through a minefield. I'd spend hours scrolling, trying to find relevant threads, carefully crafting replies, only to either get ignored or, worse, instantly flagged for self-promo. It was frustrating, inefficient, and honestly, a bit intimidating. The fear of getting banned from a valuable community was always lurking.

I realized the problem wasn't Reddit itself, but my approach. Most of us just dive in thinking "I need to market my SaaS here," when really, Reddit is about communities, solving problems, and being genuinely helpful. You can't just pitch; you have to earn the right to even hint at a solution.

So, I shifted my mindset. Instead of pushing my product, I focused on:

• Deep Listening: Really understanding the pain points people voiced, not just keywords.
• Community Rules: Treating each subreddit like a unique country with its own laws.
• Authentic Engagement: Participating in discussions where I could genuinely add value, even if it wasn't directly related to my SaaS.

This started to work. I built karma, made connections, and found a few legitimate opportunities to share my insights. But here's the kicker: it was still incredibly manual and time-consuming. Identifying threads with real buying intent among thousands, then drafting a reply that was both helpful and compliant with obscure subreddit rules? That was the biggest bottleneck.

That's why I started using a tool called Karmo. It basically turns Reddit from a time sink into a predictable lead-gen channel. What I love about it is how it watches my chosen subreddits, scores posts by buying intent, and surfaces only the high-value threads. Then, for each, it generates an on-brand reply in the subreddit’s native tone, while checking rules so I don’t get banned. It compresses discovery, drafting, and compliance into one pass, making Reddit actually usable as a growth channel. It even helps generate ban-proof posts for different goals, whether it’s sharing ideas, optimizing for SEO, or making a gentle pitch.

It’s been a game-changer for consistently finding and engaging with potential users without the constant fear of the ban hammer. If you're struggling to make Reddit work for your SaaS, I highly recommend adopting a community-first approach, and tools like Karmo can seriously streamline the most challenging parts.

What strategies have you found most effective for engaging with Reddit communities without crossing the line?

Some context: I'm an indie dev who ships small side projects. Every launch, I hit the same wall — the App Store wants polished screenshots per device, per language, and every tool I tried was either $30/month or stamped a watermark on the free output. For something I use twice a year, a subscription never made sense.

So I built the free version I wanted and put it online. No marketing budget, just one Reddit post. Four days later: 150+ users across 9 countries (Turkey, US, India, UK, Romania, Poland, Brazil, and a few more). Small numbers, but real strangers — not friends I begged to click.

Here's what's surprising me so far:

1. The feedback loop is the actual product. Most of what I shipped this week came straight from comments — mobile support, landscape mode, bug fixes. People who use a free tool and then tell you what's broken are worth more than any roadmap I'd write alone.

2. "Free vs paid" might be the wrong frame. My tool is one-shot by nature — people use it during a launch week, then disappear for months. Subscriptions optimize for daily-use products. For occasional-use tools, the right metric isn't MRR or DAU, it's "did someone come back the next time they needed it." I'm still figuring out how to even measure that.

3. Going backend-less was a strategy, not a limitation. The whole thing runs client-side — no accounts, no server, no database for user data. That keeps it private AND means near-zero running costs, which is exactly what lets me keep it free without bleeding money. The constraint is the business model.

What I'm genuinely unsure about: whether "free + good enough" is a viable long-term position, or whether I'm just avoiding the hard monetization conversation. My current plan is to stay free forever on the core, maybe add an optional one-time unlock for power features later — but only once there are enough users to justify it.

Curious how others here think about occasional-use tools. If your product isn't something people open daily, did subscriptions still work? Or did you find a different model?

(Tool's here if anyone's curious — it's free, no signup: launchshots.app)

Hey everyone,

I'm Roman, 30, French founder based in Lisbon, currently halfway through the YC P26 batch with my company gojiberry.ai

We're building what we call an "AI GTM self-learning brain": AI agents that identify high-intent prospects, contact them automatically, learn from replies, and improve targeting over time based on your offer, your ICP, your conversations and the intent signals you care about. Basically a self-improving outbound system.

Quick background before I dump everything:

Before this I built and sold a SaaS called CocoAI (7-figure exit)

We applied to YC 3 times before getting in

We hit ~$1M ARR before being accepted

We've done ~2.5x growth in the first 6 weeks of the batch

We still haven't received the $500k (more on that later)

I'm 30, I have kids, and the average batch is closer to 24

Now that I'm halfway in, I wanted to share the honest version of what YC actually feels like from the inside. Not the Twitter fantasy, not the LinkedIn humblebrag. The real thing.

The good. The bad. The exhausting. The overhyped. And the parts that genuinely change you.

First thing to understand: YC is not magic

People online sometimes act like YC is a cheat code. It's not.

YC does not build your company for you. Nobody tells you "do this exact feature", "hire this exact person", "run this exact playbook". Your company is still entirely your responsibility.

What YC gives you is something more dangerous than advice:

Momentum.

The amount of pressure, ambition, intelligence and energy concentrated in one place is honestly insane. You feel guilty when you're not moving fast. When you publicly commit to 30% growth in 2 weeks in front of other founders, you really don't want to be the guy who misses the target.

That changes behavior. Fast.

We got rejected the first time, and it was deserved

Our first YC interview was bad.

At the time we were doing $20k MRR, and we were pitching ourselves as "an AI LinkedIn outreach tool". Which, to be fair, is not exactly a billion-dollar narrative.

The biggest mistake: we couldn't clearly articulate why we were fundamentally different from the 200 other AI outreach tools.

After the rejection, we sat down and asked a different question:

"What's the billion-dollar version of what we're doing?"

That's when the vision shifted. Same core product, completely different framing: an AI GTM brain that learns over time from ICPs, intent signals, conversations, reply patterns and customer behavior.

We reapplied later at ~$1M ARR. That time we got in.

The lesson for anyone applying: YC doesn't expect you to be a unicorn, only ~5% of YC companies become one. But they want to see that the ambition vector points there. If your idea has a natural ceiling at $50M ARR, you're going to have a hard time, no matter how good your execution is.

The application process itself

For us it went:

Written application + short video

First call

Second call (much more pointed, all about the numbers)

Final call where they tell you you're in

The moment you're accepted, the excitement lasts about 5 minutes. Then reality hits, because suddenly you have to:

Move to San Francisco

Find housing in one of the most expensive cities on earth

Sort visas / ESTA

Pause your normal life

Potentially relocate with a partner and kids

Do a "flip" if you already have an existing company structure

That last one is important. YC gives you $500k for 7%, but you don't get the money right away. In our case, halfway through the batch, we still hadn't received it.

If you arrive at YC running low on cash, this becomes very stressful very fast. Luckily we were already profitable, but I can see how this would crush a pre-revenue team.

San Francisco is both amazing and brutal

This is honestly the most complicated part of the experience to talk about.

SF has a vibe I haven't felt anywhere else. Victorian houses, hills, parks, tech buildings, that startup density in the air. There's an energy here that's real.

But the city is also brutal.

As a European, the cost/value ratio is hard to wrap your head around:

$10k/month for a 3-bedroom house

Insane prices for average food

Everything costs roughly 2-3x what it would in Europe

And then there's the other side. You walk out of a dinner with founders building potentially billion-dollar companies, and three streets away people are literally dying from drugs on the sidewalk.

That contrast is hard. At first it shocks you. Then you slowly start to get used to it. And honestly that part scares me a little, because humans should never become invisible.

A small note on housing: YC recommends staying close to the office (Dogpatch, The Landing). I found those neighborhoods kind of dead, no restaurants, nothing around. As someone who's 30 with a family, I needed an area with actual life, so we ended up near Dolores Park. Trade-off: longer commute, but my mental health is intact.

How the batch actually works week to week

Every Tuesday: a 30-minute office hour with our partner. Our partner is someone who built a serious company (like all the partners). They probe what you're working on, where the business is going, where you're stuck.

Every two weeks: group office hours. You're with a small chunk of the batch, you announce your goals publicly, you share your challenges, and you get held accountable.

This part is brutal in a useful way.

We committed to 30% growth in 2 weeks. We hit it. Next round, we committed to 40%. We missed and did 33%.

When you commit to numbers in front of 12 other founders who are all gunning for similar growth, the social pressure becomes a real engine. There's nowhere to hide.

The batch itself: who's actually there

There's everything in a batch.

Some people you meet, you genuinely don't understand the idea. Others you talk to for 5 minutes and you're like "this person is operating on a different level." Some are technical geniuses. Some are absolute machines who just outwork everyone. Some have a clear vision the rest of us are still squinting at.

But here's the thing: everyone is there for a reason. YC rarely makes mistakes on selection. So even when an idea seems weird at first, there's almost always something underneath.

That's the real difference with regular entrepreneurial circles. Outside YC, when you talk to random founders, sometimes you can tell within 30 seconds that the conversation is going nowhere. At YC, the filter is so strong that every conversation has signal.

I'll be honest about one thing though: there's a real generational gap inside the batch. The average founder is 24. I'm 30, married, with kids. I find I have way more in common with the 35-40 year-olds in the batch than with the 22-year-olds. Not better or worse, just a different life stage.

Once a week YC books restaurants for founder dinners. You sit with random founders from the batch and just talk.

Because of the YC filter, you're potentially having dinner with the next Zuck. I don't say that with any pretension, but statistically, in a room of 200+ founders selected by YC, someone is going to build something massive. The expected value of every conversation is much higher than in a normal networking setting.

The real value of YC isn't what you think

Sam Altman came to talk. Brian Armstrong (Coinbase) came. The CEO of Cursor came. It's motivating, it's interesting.

But that's not the biggest value of YC.

The real value is the network.

Bookface (the internal YC social network) alone is unreal:

Need to hire? Post on Bookface, founders apply.

Need advice from someone who built a $100M company? Bookface.

Need an intro to a specific exec at a specific company? Bookface.

Need feedback on a contract, a strategy, a hire? Bookface.

And in San Francisco, the moment you say "we're YC", conversations change. Doors open. Meetings happen.

That, far more than the talks or even the money, is what makes YC unique. The compounding effect of being inside that network is hard to overstate.

The partners' advice is great too, by the way, but it's broad strokes. They've exited companies for tens or hundreds of millions, so when they say something, you listen. But they won't (and can't) micromanage your business. The decisions are still yours.

Truth : I'm exhausted

I'll be straight.

For the past month and a half my average sleep is somewhere between 5h30 and 6h per night. I still work out, I still eat decently well, I'm trying to stay healthy.

But YC creates an environment where it becomes very hard to stop. Especially when you live with your cofounders 24/7. The company eats everything. Conversations at breakfast are about the business. Conversations at dinner are about the business. Weekend? Business.

The upside: you move at a speed that's almost unfair compared to a normal startup pace.

The downside: I now understand exactly why so many founders burn out.

The part I didn't expect

This is probably the biggest thing I'll take from this experience.

Back in Europe, I genuinely felt ambitious. I'd built and sold a company. I was hitting $1M ARR with the new one. I felt like I was playing the game at a reasonably high level.

Then I came here and realized:

there are probably 25 levels above what I previously considered "big".

In Europe, I felt like a medium fish in a medium pond. In San Francisco, I'm nobody. And weirdly, that's exactly where I needed to be. Once you actually see what's possible, your brain recalibrates permanently. You can't un-see it.

There's a whole class of founders here, repeat YC alumni who exited for hundreds of millions, who quietly come back to mentor, invest, answer DMs, help the next generation. And the surprising part is they're not flashy. No guru energy, no flex culture. Just smart people building things and helping. That ecosystem is, honestly, the most valuable thing YC has built.

So is YC worth it?

For me, yes. Without hesitation.

Not mainly because of the money.

Because of:

The network

The pressure

The ambition recalibration

The mindset shift

The people

The acceleration

The credibility

The long-term relationships

You sacrifice a bit temporarily, comfort, sleep, stability, time with family. But the experience is hard to replicate anywhere else on earth.

YC compresses years of startup intensity into 3 months. And once you've experienced that level of environment, it becomes very hard to think small again.

Happy to answer questions about the application process, the flip, life in SF as a European with a family, how we got from $20k to $1M ARR, the AI GTM stuff, or anything else.

Let's see what the second half looks like !
Romàn, gojiberry.ai

A lot of B2B SaaS teams put serious effort into content, SEO, and distribution, but they still optimize for the wrong thing. They look at impressions, clicks, and rankings, and assume that means the content is working.

The problem is that traffic does not tell you whether a page is helping pipeline or revenue.

What changed for me was building the process around three parts. I use EarlySEO to create content that is actually tied to buyer intent instead of generic blog filler. I use IndexerHub to make sure the pages get discovered quickly, because even strong content is useless if it sits unseen for too long. And I use Faurya to track which pages are actually generating revenue, so I can see what is driving business outcomes instead of vanity metrics.

That combination matters more in B2B than people think. B2B buyers usually do not convert from one random visit. They move through a longer decision process, which means your content needs to be specific, your pages need to be discoverable fast, and your measurement needs to show real commercial impact.

The big shift is this: instead of asking “Which post got the most traffic?” ask “Which post influenced the most qualified revenue?” That question changes what you publish, how you structure it, and what you keep investing in. For B2BSaaS, content is not just marketing. It is part of the sales system. If you cannot connect the dots between content and revenue, you are probably underestimating what is working and overestimating what is not.

I’ve been building a product over the past few months and finally reached a stage where I need real users to break it, test it, and tell me what actually works (and what doesn’t).

💡 What it does

It helps businesses automate customer support and improve conversions using a Agentic AI chatbot (no complex setup needed).

🧪 What I’m looking for

• Honest feedback (UX, bugs, usefulness)
• Real usage (not just sign up and leave)
• Suggestions on how it can be more valuable

🎁 What you get

• 6 months free access (no catch)
• Early access to all upcoming features
• Direct influence on product roadmap

⚡ Why I’m posting here

I know this community is full of builders and early adopters who actually test products (not just scroll), and that’s exactly the kind of feedback I need.

If you're interested, drop a comment or DM and I’ll share access 🙌

Also happy to test your product in return 🤝

PreSeedVCList covers 390 venture capital firms actively writing pre-seed checks, with data on firm websites, investment stages, sectors, office locations, and portfolio links, structured from recent funding activity and updated monthly at https://preseedvclist.com.

Hello guys,

I started working as a AI-IT service based business with my friends, delivered some crazy AI projects, not just LLM wrappers but some advance ML and computer Vision projects.

The hunger for more never stopped and we developed dunefox, now dunefox also got early traction and has 5 paid users too

We are thinking of VC funding, applied for YC too

But we need some more users, a lot more numbers to pitch for...

So i would request u to use dunefox.io it is a AI based chatbot, just stick on your website, its free and can be removed whenever u need to

Also i would like to give 3 months of free unlimited access

I know u might call this marketing, but its more of a need right now, i need some more numbers on the table

Dm me if u need any help figuring dunefox.io or have any suggestion for me

Thanksss...