Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Roman
How I Used Reddit to Build a $34K/Month SaaS
Watch the full episode“I got rejected from the Y Combinator interview. We got selected from the interview but we failed the interview. Well, I said, why not make it a post? And we got more than 179,000 views. We got maybe 15 clients out of this.”
Turn a Y Combinator rejection into a 179K-view Reddit launch post
Roman reframed a personal setback as a Reddit story and turned a YC rejection into 179K views and roughly 15 paying customers. The lesson: any event in your founder life is launch fuel if you tell it as a story with proof attached.
“This post is called 'I paid five influencers on LinkedIn to promote my SaaS, here's what $1,250 got me.' And it got 160K views, 543 upvotes. In terms of visitors it got us something like 2,000 visitors, and out of 2,000 visitors we probably got something like 10 or 15 clients.”
Headline a $1,250 influencer experiment to pull 160K views and 15 clients
A specific dollar figure in the headline plus screenshots of the actual influencer posts created irresistible curiosity and credibility. The post pulled 160K views and converted around 2,000 visitors into 10-15 paying customers because the story carried verifiable proof.
“For the first 7 to 14 days don't even think of doing marketing. You will just post comments, you will upvote. This will warm up your account and gets you the first karma. The more karma you have, the stronger your account is.”
Warm up Reddit accounts for 7-14 days with only comments and upvotes before posting
Roman's pre-launch ritual: one fresh Reddit account per browser, profile pic plus bio link, hide-feed feature on, then two weeks of pure commenting and upvoting to build karma before posting anything promotional. Skipping this step gets accounts banned instantly, especially if paired with a new email.
“You need at least 10 upvotes in the first 10 minutes. What we've done internally is we have a group of 15 marketers where everyone shares their Reddit post. Everyone upvotes the other post and then external people are going to like — it's going to rank higher and higher.”
Engineer 10 upvotes in the first 10 minutes via a private 15-marketer pod
Reddit's algorithm rewards early velocity, so Roman runs a private 15-person pod that piles upvotes and comments on each new post in the critical first 10 minutes. That initial signal pushes posts into wider feeds where organic engagement compounds.
“Third thing that's really important is never putting your SaaS directly in the post. You can trigger curiosity by highlighting it, and as I said before, putting some proof and the people reading this post know that it's real and that we are not telling a fake story.”
Never link your SaaS in the post — trigger curiosity and force a profile click
Roman's viral posts (160K views, 543 upvotes on the influencer-spend post; 179K on the YC rejection post) work because they tell a story with receipts and let curiosity drive profile clicks to the SaaS link, instead of pasting product URLs that trip Reddit's promo filters.
“It can be really frightening at the beginning because when you post you get 15 bad comments saying that you will never make it, what you are doing is wrong. And so you really have to stick with it and believe in what you are doing.”
Show revenue screenshots, then block the haters and keep posting
The first viral posts attract a flood of dismissive replies and accusations. Roman's antidote is concrete: lead with revenue proof so no one can argue with the numbers, then block insulters and keep shipping posts. The story plus receipts pattern outlives the noise.
“We have three types of subscription. Most of our users are on the $99 plan. So you get an unlimited amount of high-intent leads and you can connect them directly through our platform.”
Concentrate demand on a single $99 anchor plan that captures most users
Roman runs three tiers but concentrates demand on a single $99 plan that offers unlimited high-intent leads, simplifying the choice and pushing willingness-to-pay toward a meaningful middle tier rather than a cheap entry plan.
“I'm not English native, so what I do is I tell my story to ChatGPT by voice and then I ask ChatGPT to translate and correct my post. That's something that works really well because you can dive way deeper into details than if you have to write everything.”
Voice-dictate posts to ChatGPT for depth — beats typing as a non-native English speaker
Roman's content engine runs on a sub-$200/month stack and the post creation itself is a voice-to-ChatGPT loop that beats typing for depth as a non-native speaker. Speak the messy story, let the model tighten the language — the result is denser detail and faster cycles than writing from scratch.