| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2ksht8hp76gpx6wx8p8rv5 |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2ksht8hp76gpx6wx8p8rv5 |
| Date | 2026-01-25 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvjalHFNM9Q
This is by far the best channel to getusers for your products.Meet Roman, [music] a guy who launchedhis SaaS just six months ago and alreadysurpassed 30,000 [music].He broke down everything,including how to warm up your accountsproperly, how to make sure your postsalways get seen, and why Reddit is stillthe untapped channel to grow your SaaS inthe early days.
All right, this one isone you cannot miss. I’m Pat Walls andthis is Starter Story.All right, before we jump in, Roman isabout to share his entire system for howto get seen and how to get users onReddit. What he’s done is not new.
I covered a bunch of Reddit growth storieshere on this channel. So, I decided toput together a playbook that you candownload right now on how you can getyour first 100 users on Reddit. It isthe combination of many differentstrategies from actual founders thatI’ve talked to on this channel. I putit all in one place and you can downloadit right now. I will put the link in thedescription. But without further ado,let’s get into the interview. All right,Roman, welcome to the channel. It isamazing to have you on. Tell me aboutwho you are, what you built, and what’syour story. Hello everyone, my name isRoman. I’m the co-founder of Goji BerryAI. We are an intent-based outreach tool.We do about $30,000 per month. Four monthsago, we were doing zero in revenue, andReddit is an important part of our success.So, I’m really excited to talk to you about that.
Okay, I’m really excited to talk aboutthis, especially Reddit, because Redditis one of my favorite channels,especially for early founders. This isgoing to be a fun one. But first, beforewe get into that, I want to understandwhat is the business that you built?
What’s the business model? And then Iwant to walk through some of yourdashboards and show off how much thisbusiness is making.Yes, we are a SaaS business. Wehave three types of subscription. Mostof our users are on the $99 plan. So youget an unlimited amount of high intentleads and you can connect themdirectly through our platform. Ourusers get better results than withregular outreach tools. One ofour main ways to get users, at leastin the beginning, was Reddit. Wegained 11 million impressions onReddit, which is insane. If we hadpaid for that, it would have cost ushundreds of thousands ofdollars. That way we got our 100first customers, and we arestill getting customers today.
Here you can see that’s 24K MR. Sothat’s around $30K, and the growth ispretty good. We arereally happy with how it’s going. Elevenmillion impressions on Reddit is insane.We’re going to dive into exactly howyou achieved that, what kind of posts you made,and everything. But before we do, I wantto understand your background. How doYou get into building apps and buildingSaaS. How do you get to this point?
So, originally I was a mechanicalengineer, and a bit before COVID, I waswondering if I wanted to stay anemployee. I learned how to doaffiliate marketing and got my firstsuccess. I made a bit of money, and Igot into freelancing. In 2023, Ilaunched my first SaaS called Coco AI, andscaled it to 50K MR withOutreach. Then we sold it to a USventure. When we sold thisbusiness, we looked at what made thisbusiness great, and actually it was theacquisition. The acquisition methodwe used in marketing was outreach, andthat’s what helped us build good AI.
Okay, cool. Thank you for sharingthat. Before we get into thenitty-gritty details, can you providea high-level overview of how Redditimpacted your business and helped it grow?I think we cracked the Redditdistribution. We got more than 11million impressions and over 40,000visitors on our website, whichis insane. That’s only the visiblepart, because every time we have a demoCall or we [music] talk to other leadson other platforms. Almost all of themhave seen [music] us on Reddit, and sothey say, "Oh, you are the Reddit guy."And so that helps us a lot because themore your leads see you, the more youare likely to close them during a call.
Let’s dive into an example. I want youto show me one or two actual Redditposts and walk me through these and whythey worked and how others could dosomething similar.
Sure. This post [music] is called I paidfive influencers on LinkedIn to promotemy SaaS. Here’s what $1,250 got me. Itgot 160K [music]views and 543 up votes. In terms ofvisitors, it [music] got us somethinglike 2,000 visitors. Out of 2,000visitors, we probably got something like[music] 10 or 15 clients out of theseposts.
Also, something that’s reallyimportant when you do a post like this,you have [music] to tell a story and youhave to show proof. So here, forexample, I’ve [music] included theinfluencer post and all the proof thatare available. For the people that arelistening [music] here and are thinking,"Okay, but I haven’t launched or I don’tIf you have any success to share, then you canalso explain what [music] you are doing.
For example, I got rejected from the YCombinator interview. We were selectedfor the interview, but we failed it.I said, "Okay, why not make it a post?"We got more than[music]179,000 views and maybe 15 clientsout of this. You can turn any event[music] happening in your life into aReddit post. What Roman is doing here isjust amazing. He’s generating millionsof views on his app just from Reddit.This is an incredible marketing system Ihaven’t really seen anyone do before.If you love crazy growth strategiesand stories like these, then youdefinitely need to check out The Hustle,which is today’s sponsor. The Hustle isa free email that covers awesomebusiness case studies and stories justlike the one you’re watching right now.
I’m talking wild stuff like how a guymade millions renting out backyard poolsor why gas station pizza is secretlydominating fast food. I’ve been readingThe Hustle for years. It’s an email Iread every time it lands in my inbox.It’s quick, easy to read, and it alwaysGives me a story to share with myfriends. So, if you lovediscovering new business ideas beforeeveryone else, then definitely check outThe Hustle. Just hit the link in thedescription, subscribe to The Hustle,and you’ll get daily stories to keep youin the loop on what’s working inbusiness, tech, and startups. Thank youto The Hustle for sponsoring this video.
Let’s get back to the story. All right,Roman, I want to dive into this Redditpost you have right here, this YCombinator post. What do you think wouldbe the top three reasons why thispost went viral that people watchingthis can learn from and try to do withtheir own Reddit posts?Sure. So, the first thing would be using AI.How I write my post is reallysimple. I’m not a native English speaker.So, what I do is tellmy story to ChatGPT by voice,and then I ask ChatGPT to translate andcorrect my post. So that’ssomething that works really well becauseyou can dive deeper into detailsthan if you have to writeeverything yourself. The second reason why it workedis the initial start.
You need to get as many upvotes as you canin the first 5 to 10 minutes. [Music] Sowhat I do to make it work is I have agroup of friends where we share eachother’s Reddit posts, and every timesomeone shares the post, we all go and upvote and comment. The third thingthat’s really important is never puttingyour SaaS directly in the post. You cantrigger curiosity by highlighting it.And as [Music] I said before, puttingsome proof so that the people reading thispost know that it’s real and that we arenot telling [Music] a fake story. Okay.
So what would be your playbook forstarting over right now in 2026 ingetting Reddit off the ground as amarketing channel to acquire yourfirst 10,000 users?>> So first, you need a fresh account. Youneed one account per browser. Forexample, I have one account on Chrome,one account on Mozilla, and one account onSafari, and that’s more than enough tokeep it safe. When you create anaccount, do not create it with a newemail. If you combine a new emailwith a new Reddit account, you will getbanned right away. Step two, once your
account is created, you have to add aIn your profile picture, link your SaaS inthe bio, and activate the secretfeature that hides your feed. So whenyou do Reddit marketing and heavily poston Reddit, some people are going to goto your profile and see that you arealways talking about the same SaaS, and[music] they will say, “He’s advertisingway too much.” So, that’s a really usefulfeature. Step three: for the first 7 to14 days, don’t even think of doingmarketing. You will just post comments.
You will upvote. This will warm up youraccount and get you the firstkarma. The more karma you have, thestronger your account is. Step four:Once you’ve done that, after 7 to 14days, you can start posting. And step[music] five: once you reach that stage,you can start doing marketing. So, thereare still some things to know. Some[music] subreddits don’t allowpromotion. The way you combine asubreddit, it’s [music] almostimpossible to post anything, and so it’snot worth posting there. Step six: withevery post, change the angle. Either
redirect to a YouTube video or toa Twitter post. So, you can really[music] get creative and that’s reallyThe magic of Reddit. Step seven, afterthat, you need at least ten upvotes inthe first ten minutes. [music] What we’vedone internally is we have a group of fifteenmarketers where everyone shares theirReddit post. Everyone upvotes the otherposts and [music] then external peopleare going to like it, which is going to rankhigher and higher. Step eight, you reply toevery comment, absolutely every one of them.
This is going to give you traction. This isgoing to show engagement, and the moreengagement you have on the [music] post,the more upvotes you get and the higheryou are going to rank.
Okay. What I’m curious about is how doyou come up with these ideas fordifferent content, different stories?Are you using AI to come up with theseideas? Are you looking at top posts? Howdo you find this?
Yeah. So, the main source of inspirationis what I do in my daily life as a SaaSmarketer. [music] The more things I do,the more stories I can share. Same forthe communicator. We get rejected. We doa post. And even if you don’t haveexperience, even if you are startingyour business and you want to share your stories.
Customers, you can still create storiesabout how your SaaS is going, whatproblem you are trying to solve.Everyone can get views and get [music]traffic on Reddit.
All right. Well, one thing that I hear alot from people is, “I posted on Reddit,I got negative feedback, my entireaccount got banned.” How have you handledthis and how has your experience beenwith that?
The only way to deal with that,actually, there are a few ways, but the firstone is to show proof. So no one [music] canargue with what you are saying. You make25k MRR, you show that you make it. Sothat’s [music] really easy, and then youblock all the people insulting you orbeing really negative, [music] but itcan be really frightening at thebeginning because when you post, you get15 bad comments saying that you willnever make it, that what you are doing iswrong. And so you [music] really have tostick with it and believe in what youare doing.
That is great advice. You may not beaware, but I grew Starter Story onReddit. That’s how we got our firstthousand users and monetized the business.
People were so mad that we were sharingthese business stories on Starter Storythat they created a petition to ban usfrom Reddit, and it got all these upvotes and all this stuff.At the time, it felt really scary and likeeverything was going to fall apart. Now,when I look back on that time, it didn’tmatter at all. So, for anyone watchingthis who is worried about what peopleare going to say about them on Reddit,none of it matters. Just like Romansaid, block these people, continuebuilding your app, sharing your story,and everything will work out, and it’llbe worth it.
But anyways, Roman, wedidn’t really talk a whole lot aboutyour app and what it does. Could yougive us a quick demo of what you builtand how it works?Yeah, sure. So, we built Gojibberry tofind high intent leads on LinkedIn. So,an intent can be many things.It can be someone liking a specific post,interacting with competitors, someonewho has just raised funds, hired, and soevery day our software is going to findthe best leads with their signals.For example, just engage with aWe have the warmest leads on the market and then wecan launch campaigns directly from oursoftware like this. [Music] And so thiswill automate the LinkedIn outreach. Soconnect with these people, send AIpersonalized messages, and the results weget in terms of acceptance rate andreply rate are way above industry standards, justbecause the leads are great and themessaging is really tailored to everylead.
Thanks for showing that. It looks like asuper cool app. I’m curious how youbuilt it and how you run this app. Whattools are you using every day to buildand grow this app?
So I’m the marketing guy, so I’m goingto talk most about marketing tools. Sowe use [Music] Instantly AI, a greattool for cold emailing. That costsabout 99 per month. And we of courseuse Goji Berry AI to do LinkedInoutreach and high intent lead outreach.That’s [Music] about $99 per month aswell.
We use Canonly to book calls, sothat costs about $20. We use Framer for ourwebsite to build landing pages.
That’s about[music]40 per month. Andthen we also use Sales Navigator on someof our accounts for $100 per month.All right, cool. Well, thanks forsharing that. Last question that we havethat we ask everyone who comes on toStarter Story: what would be your adviceto young Roman or anybody who’s watchingthis today who wants to build a SaaS?
So that’s going to be really simple.It’s advertised the way you would loveto be advertised to. For example, I lovewatching entrepreneurs’ stories likeStarter Story. [music] So when I hearsuccessful stories of how they made it,that’s something that triggers me and Iwant to learn more. So this is the way Iadvertise as well.Cool. Well, thanks for coming on, Roman,sharing how you built this business in 5months. It’s insane. It’s a great story.I love Reddit. So thanks for coming onand sharing everything. I think peopleare going to love this one.Thank you so much. Well, Gus, producerOf Starter Story, what do you thinkabout that one?
That was pretty awesome. I mean, if youtry to figure out how to doanything on Reddit, I feel like itdoesn’t get any more practical thanthat. You know, you talk about thissometimes, how you started StarterStory, like with Reddit, and obviouslyit’s evolved and changed, but thatis still a platform thatessentially works the same way. He wasjust talking about how he postedstories and his experience, and you knowsubtly linked his product, and it’s kindof crazy that that still works.
Yeah, I think Reddit is not a platformto get scale. It’s not a platform to hit10,000 MRR or 20,000 MRR, but Reddit isamazing and why it’s especially valuablefor anybody watching this right now. Ifyour product is not good enough, go poston Reddit. If you’re worried that yourproduct is not good enough, go post onReddit right now and you’ll get productfeedback from real people. Get yourfirst 10 customers, your first 100customers, probably not your firstthousand customers, but that’s whatReddit is for. Go post on Reddit rightNow, re-watch this video, watch thatplaybook, and do it over the next month.
Totally. Not that it’s easier to post onplaces like Twitter or Instagram. Butwith Reddit, there’s a vibe on there, right, where you’re justlike, “Don’t BS me,” which is probably what someonewho’s just starting out really needs. Right? I think about myself;it would scare me to post on there, butit probably is exactly what I need, theexact feedback I need to know whetherwhat I’m doing is good or not.
Yep. Rip off the band-aid. Just go poston there right now. Post anything. Seewhat happens. I remember when I firstposted on Reddit; it didn’t go viral.It didn’t even make the front page. It wasmaybe the fifth or the sixth or theseventh post where I got 400 upvotes.That’s when I realized I had somethingwith Starter Story — that one piece ofcontent. So, rip the band-aid off. The worstthing that can happen is it doesn’t getany upvotes, and no one will ever seeit. So, if you enjoyed this video andyou’re ready to build something, you’reready to launch something, you shoulddefinitely check out Starter Story.
Build. It is our platform where you willfind an idea, you’ll build that idea,and you will ship that idea to realcustomers, even something enough tomaybe plug it into ChatGPT and come upwith your first Reddit post and put thelink to your app right there and getyour first users. You can start rightnow by going to the link in thedescription and starting to build yourapp right now. All right, guys. Thankyou for watching. We’ll see you in thenext one. Peace.