Building in Public: How to Use Reddit for Product Feedback

Building in public has become a popular strategy among indie hackers and startup founders. The idea is simple: share your journey openly, get feedback along the way, and build an audience that becomes your first customers. Twitter is the default platform for this approach, but Reddit offers something different—access to highly engaged communities full of your actual target users, not just other founders watching founders.

The challenge with Reddit is that communities have developed strong antibodies against self-promotion. The same communities that offer invaluable feedback will quickly downvote and ban anyone who shows up just to promote their product. Success requires understanding Reddit's culture, providing genuine value, and earning the right to share your work.

This guide covers how to build in public on Reddit effectively—getting the feedback you need while building relationships that turn into users, advocates, and even collaborators.

Why Reddit Works for Building in Public

Reddit offers unique advantages for founders willing to invest in community participation. Unlike Twitter where your content competes with millions of tweets, Reddit organizes discussions into focused communities where your target audience is already gathered and paying attention.

The feedback you receive on Reddit tends to be more honest than what you'd get elsewhere. Anonymity removes social pressure to be polite. When someone on Reddit says your landing page is confusing, they mean it. When they say your pricing doesn't make sense, they're not worried about hurting your feelings. This brutal honesty, while sometimes painful, accelerates learning.

Upvotes provide built-in validation signals. When your progress update receives hundreds of upvotes, you're seeing community-wide interest, not just polite engagement from people who feel obligated to respond. Conversely, when your post gets ignored or downvoted, that's signal too—something about your approach or your product isn't resonating.

The niche subreddit structure means you can reach exactly the audience you need. Building a tool for accountants? Post in r/accounting. Creating software for sales teams? Engage in r/sales. This targeting precision is difficult to achieve on broader platforms.

However, Reddit also presents challenges. Anti-promotion rules are strictly enforced in most communities. Users are skeptical of anyone who appears to be selling something. Communities quickly identify and reject spam. Getting banned from a relevant subreddit can permanently close a valuable feedback channel.

The key insight is that Reddit rewards value first. Provide genuine value to communities, and you'll earn the right to share your work and receive feedback.

Finding the Right Communities

Different subreddits serve different purposes for building in public. Some explicitly welcome project sharing; others tolerate it under specific conditions; many prohibit it entirely.

General startup communities welcome building-in-public content when done well. In r/SideProject, the entire purpose is sharing side projects, making it one of the most permissive communities for founders. The subreddit r/startups hosts regular "Show and Tell" threads for sharing work. In r/SaaS, SaaS founders discuss their products openly. The community r/Entrepreneur welcomes business-building discussions including product development.

Feedback-specific communities exist specifically to provide critique. In r/alphaandbetausers, founders recruit testers for early products. The subreddit r/roastmystartup provides brutally honest feedback by design—users expect to be criticized. These communities are explicitly structured for product feedback.

Your target market's communities require the most careful approach. If you're building for marketers, r/marketing contains your potential users. If you're building for developers, r/webdev or r/programming might be relevant. These communities often have strict anti-promotion rules, but the feedback from actual target users is invaluable when you earn it.

Before posting in any community, read the rules carefully. Observe how others share their work. Note which posts get upvoted and which get removed. Understanding community norms prevents missteps that can damage your reputation.

What to Share and How to Share It

The content of your building-in-public posts determines whether you're welcomed or rejected. The pattern that works is clear: provide genuine value through your sharing, with your product as context rather than focus.

Progress updates work when they contain substance others can learn from. A post saying "I just shipped feature X—here's what I learned about implementing real-time sync" teaches something. A post saying "I just shipped feature X—check it out!" promotes without value. The difference determines reception.

Revenue milestones attract attention when you explain the journey. "Week 4 of building my product: hit $100 MRR—here's exactly how I got my first 10 customers" provides value to others facing the same challenge. The numbers hook attention; the details provide substance.

User research insights interest other builders. "I talked to 20 users this week—the number one thing they said surprised me completely" creates curiosity while sharing genuine learning. The post becomes about the insight, not the product.

Educational content from your journey helps others while establishing your expertise. Posts like "5 things I learned launching on Product Hunt" or "The pricing experiment that increased conversions 40%" teach something useful. Your product is the context, but the lesson is the value.

Honest struggles humanize your journey and often generate the most engagement. "I almost quit this week—here's what brought me back" or "My landing page converted at 0.5%—here's what I changed" show vulnerability while providing learning. Others facing similar challenges engage because they see themselves in your story.

What gets downvoted follows a predictable pattern. Pure promotion with no value—"Check out my new app!"—gets rejected immediately. Cross-posting the same content across multiple subreddits looks like spam and gets treated as such. Only showing up when you want something, without any community engagement history, marks you as an outsider. Fake humility—"I guess I accidentally built this thing"—reads as manipulation. Asking for feedback on a finished product suggests you're not really interested in feedback, just promotion.

Structuring Effective Feedback Requests

When you do ask for feedback, how you ask determines the response you receive. Vague requests get vague responses. Specific requests get actionable insights.

Before asking anything, establish yourself as a community member. Answer questions others ask. Share insights from your experience. Engage with other people's projects. Build karma and posting history. Communities treat established members differently than brand-new accounts asking for favors.

When you're ready to ask, structure the request carefully. A good feedback request might look like: "I've been building a time-tracking tool for freelancers. Before adding more features, I want to make sure I'm solving the right problem. Here's my landing page—does the value proposition make sense? What's confusing about how I've described the problem?"

This works because the ask is specific—you want feedback on value proposition clarity, not general impressions. It shows you'll actually use the feedback—you're explicitly deciding what to build next based on responses. The approach is humble—you're asking for help, not validation. And it's clear what you want to know—commenters can focus their response.

After receiving feedback, follow-up matters enormously. Respond to every comment, even critical ones. Thank people genuinely for taking time to help. Explain what you're going to do with their feedback. Later, update the community when you implement changes. This follow-through builds relationship and increases the quality of feedback you receive next time.

Distinguishing Signal from Noise

Not all Reddit feedback deserves equal weight. Learning to identify high-signal feedback prevents you from chasing every suggestion while missing patterns that matter.

High-signal feedback shares certain characteristics. When multiple people independently say the same thing, that's a pattern worth attention. When someone provides a detailed explanation—they cared enough to elaborate—the feedback carries more weight. When comments come from people who match your target user profile, their perspective matters more than random observers. When feedback is specific and actionable rather than vague, it's more useful.

Low-signal feedback also has recognizable patterns. Single opinions without corroboration might be edge cases. Vague statements like "I don't like it" or "it's confusing" without specifics don't tell you what to change. Feedback from people outside your target market might not apply to users who actually matter. Focus on edge cases or unusual scenarios might distract from core use cases.

Sometimes you should ignore feedback entirely, even when it's well-intentioned. If feedback contradicts what paying customers tell you, trust the paying customers—they've voted with their wallets. If feedback comes from outside your target market, it might not apply. If it's about features rather than problems—"you should add X"—the underlying need might be different than the suggested solution. If one person is very vocal but unrepresentative, their volume shouldn't outweigh their sample size.

Conversely, certain patterns demand attention. When multiple independent sources agree without coordinating, you're seeing something real. When feedback aligns with problems you're seeing in your metrics, external validation confirms internal signal. When it comes from confirmed target users, their perspective matters more. When it points to something you've sensed but haven't articulated, external confirmation helps you act.

Building Relationships Through Consistent Engagement

Building in public on Reddit isn't a one-time activity—it's an ongoing relationship with communities. The founders who succeed treat Reddit as community participation, not content distribution.

Consistent engagement means responding to everyone who comments on your posts, not just the positive ones. Remember repeat commenters and reference previous interactions. Share other people's projects when they're relevant and well-done. Help community members with your expertise even when it has nothing to do with your product.

Avoid behaviors that damage relationships. Don't only show up when you want something—participate between asks. Don't ignore or argue with criticism—engage constructively or thank them and move on. Don't spam multiple subreddits with the same content—communities talk, and they'll notice. Don't disappear after getting what you wanted—stay engaged.

Over time, these relationships compound. Repeat commenters become early users. People who remember you helping them become advocates. Community relationships create distribution channels that pure content marketing can't replicate.

Learning from Successful Building-in-Public Posts

Studying posts that work helps you understand patterns of success. A well-crafted building-in-public post typically has a hook that creates curiosity, substance that delivers on the hook, and a minimal call-to-action that doesn't feel like the point.

Consider a title like "Month 3 of building my side project—just crossed $500 MRR. Here's exactly what worked and what didn't." The body shares specific numbers that ground the story in reality. It explains what was tried, including approaches that failed. It details what actually worked and why. It extracts lessons others can apply. The post might include a small mention of the product at the end, but that's not the focus.

This post succeeds because it leads with value—others learn from the journey. The product mention is incidental rather than central. The specificity makes it credible and useful. The honest inclusion of failures makes it trustworthy.

Conclusion

Reddit building in public works when you genuinely participate in communities rather than treating them as audiences to broadcast to. Be a member first, contributor second, and promoter never—let your product come up naturally in context.

Share genuine progress that teaches something. Ask specific questions that can receive actionable answers. Respond to and implement the feedback you receive. Build relationships through consistent engagement over time.

Done right, Reddit becomes a free focus group that tells you what to build, a marketing channel that introduces you to early adopters, and a community of collaborators who want to see you succeed. Done wrong, you get banned from communities that could have accelerated your success.

The choice is in how you show up.

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