Best places to promote your startup for free!
When you have launched a startup or prototype, one of the most important strategies to prove is your business concept and gaining early user traction. If you’re like most startup founders, you don’t have much money, nor do you have enough money to hire a PR agency. However, to become a great entrepreneur means you have the inquisitiveness to look elsewhere to get your startup liftoff. To gain further product validation and reach product/market fit quickly, so you can scale, there are many platforms available to help you engage with your target users.
Gaining early user traction is often the hardest part of the startup life cycle and there are hundreds of platforms to help. However, after much research, these are the best platforms to promote your startup for a very low cost.
1. Hacker News
Hacker News is a great platform if you have a startup serving a technical audience. It’s a great service and if want to target the tech people, then it can be a great community to promote your offering to a community of hackers and entrepreneurs.
2. Product Hunt
Product Hunt is now the forefront when it comes to showcasing your product to the startup world. It is a great platform to promote services on Technology, games or books, and well, pretty much everything. It has voting system which enables your product to rise in the list of new products. The benefits of Product Hunt if something goes viral, similar to Hacker news, can significantly grow your startup very quickly.
3. Betalist
Betalist has been around for a few years now. It has been home to featuring some of the world’s biggest startups today as we know them, before they launched. These include the likes of Pinterest, About.me, IFITT, Nuji, Skillshare and many more.
4. Crunchbase
One of the most effective platforms for startups that offers you thousands of profiles of people and companies of different kinds.
5. Reddit Side Projects
Reddit is fantastic when it comes to getting very quick feedback and have discussions on any topic around the Web. Reddit-Side projects is a great subreddit for new startups to get feedback on ideas for businesses and small side projects.
6. Reddit Entrepreneur
Reddit-Entrepreneur is not a place to submit your startup, but you can tell stories for free about your product to of 100k+ subscribers. There is a likely chance with more discussion around your startup story or entrepreneurial concept, that you may get featured on the front page. The only limitation is that you need over 10 karma points, but if you’re an avid Reddit user, this is perfect to launch your startup.
7. Angellist
If you need funds to raise funding for your startup, Angellist is a great platform to build a community that will help you get seed funding. Within the startup world, it’s one of the best directories for exhibiting startups globally.
8. The Startup Pitch
The Startup Pitch is another great directory, but in a pitch format, just like what you would send to journalists to have your startup being featured in a major publication.
9. VentureBeat Profiles
This is only a tool that I discovered not too long ago, and it’s a great way to show your startup to many high-profiled entrepreneurs. Very similar to Index.co, it’s a handy tool to get updated with the trends of your industry for free. You can add your company there and get the latest updates on recent trends to plan your business accordingly.
10. Beta Bound
When launching a startup to market, you will often not only get feedback on your product, but also feedback on bugs and other technical issues that your users will find. As we know, this is something as founders we want to minimise as much as possible. If you have apps that need to be tested, then this platform with over 90,000 beta testers and subscribers is a great place to test your apps.
11. F6S
f6s - the #1 free network where founders get deals, list & recruit Startup jobs, apply for funding (Accelerators, Funds, Angels) & Investors find great startups.