How to Get Your First 100 Users on Reddit (Without Spending a Dollar)

I'm Joseph, co-founder of Supademo. We help SaaS teams create interactive product demos in minutes.

When we were just starting out, I didn't have a growth team, an ad budget, or an audience. I had a free plan and a willingness to do things that don't scale.

The first thing that worked was Reddit. Not running ads on Reddit. Not automating posts. Just showing up, offering to build something for free, and letting the results speak in public.

Today Supademo does $4M ARR with 200,000+ users. We got there without a sales team, without paid ads, and without outbound.

I recently sat down with Starter Story to break down the full journey of how we got our first 100 users. You can watch that below.

This doc is the exact approach but a more detailed step by step walkthrough of Part 2 (how to get your first 100 customers).

Starter Story Interview

Reddit is one of the only places where early-stage founders are openly talking about the problems your product solves, in real time, without gatekeepers, for free.

You don't need a following. You don't need a budget. You need to show up and be genuinely useful. That's it.

Most people read a playbook like this and don't start. Here's the exact sequence I'd run if I was doing this from zero today.

The whole first week is manual. That's the point. You're not trying to build a system yet. You're trying to prove the product is worth using.

I didn't post everyday on Reddit. I just did the unscaleable with one high-leverage post.

• Posted in r/SaaS: "Drop your product URL. I'll build you a free interactive demo."
• Manually signed up for each product, read the docs, built the demo
• Posted the finished demo inline in the comments — public, not gated
• 11,000+ views in 24 hours. Hundreds of comments. Several thousand signups.
• Same offer ran on IndieHackers with the same result

The volume wasn't the point. The visibility was. Every demo posted in the thread was proof of concept for everyone scrolling past.

🔥 The Post Formats That Work at Zero Users

1. The offer post — "Drop your product URL. I'll build you a free [thing]." Lead with work, not words. This is what drove Supademo's first 2,000 signups.
2. Storytelling (90/10) — Share a real win or failure with 90% pure value and a 10% natural mention of your product. Resonates because it's human, not promotional.

That's it at this stage. Everything else — comparison posts, AMA threads, SEO comments — comes later once you have users and a track record to draw from.

⬆️ How to Find the Right Subreddits

You're not looking for keyword opportunities. You're looking for where your first customers already hang out.

Three ways to find them:

• Search your product category on Reddit and see which subs come up
• Look at where your competitors get mentioned
• Ask yourself: where do the people who feel my problem most acutely go to vent about it?

Start with one or two. Post your offer there. See what happens before spreading to more.

To write the posts: dictate them to ChatGPT, then ask it to format them for Reddit.

🟩 Show Up Before You Have Something to Show

Before you have a polished product, you can still build presence by being the most helpful person in the room.

Answer questions in your niche without pitching anything. Comment on threads where your ICP is struggling with the exact problem you solve. Build karma and context so that when you do post your offer, you're not a stranger.

The goal at this stage isn't SEO. It's trust. Trust converts.

🔥 What to Do When It Works (And 50 People Drop Their URL)

This happened to me. The thread went semi-viral overnight and I woke up to more requests than I could physically handle in a day.

Here's what I did.

I didn't try to build every demo at the same quality. I triaged. The ones with the most upvotes or replies in the thread, I did first, because those were the ones most people would see. The public visibility was the point. One good demo in a highly visible comment thread did more than ten mediocre ones buried at the bottom.

I also didn't ghost the ones I couldn't get to immediately. I replied to let them know I was working through the list. That alone kept the thread active and brought more people in.

The goal was never to help everyone. The goal was to create enough public proof that people who hadn't asked yet would sign up anyway.

A few things I learned:

• Prioritize the most visible replies over the earliest ones
• A quick reply acknowledging people you haven't gotten to yet keeps the thread alive
• Don't aim for perfect. A good demo posted fast beats a great demo posted three days later
• Screenshot the best reactions and save them. You'll use them later.

👻 Turning Conversations Into Customers

After someone engaged on Reddit, I'd take it further. I'd sign up for their product, build polished demos for their specific use cases, and send them directly — no ask, no pitch, just the finished work with edit access.

A real example from my outreach:

"Hey — here are the more polished versions (I can provide edit access):

• E-learning: [link]
• Absence: [link]
• Recruitment: [link]
• Blip: [link]

Since these are top-of-funnel demos, I've cut down as many unnecessary steps and tried to keep things short and engaging (with the intent to push folks towards MOFU/booking a demo)

Let me know what you think,

Joseph Lee — Co-founder & CEO, Supademo"

Lead with the finished work. Make it impossible to say no. Let the demo close itself.