mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup: A CC0 Directory of Launch Channels

What the list actually solves for a first launch

The problem is not knowing where to post. It is not knowing which places exist at all. A founder with a finished product typically knows Product Hunt and Hacker News and then stalls, because the long tail of subreddits and small directories is scattered across old forum threads. This repository compresses that tail into two alphabetical sections, Reddit and Websites, in one README. The README states the list originates from an Ask HN thread, which referenced an earlier Ask HN thread, so the provenance is a community answer rather than a marketing team's funnel chart.

The audience is narrow and identifiable: solo founders, indie developers, and small teams preparing a launch who want a raw list to work through. It is not for growth teams running paid acquisition, and it is not a submission service. Nothing in the repository posts on your behalf, tracks what you submitted, or reports results. The value is the inventory. According to the README, the same content is mirrored to placestopostyourstartup.com, so a reader can browse it in a browser instead of scrolling a markdown file.

Repository layout and how the mirror is kept in step

The top level is small: .github/, .gitignore, .lycheeignore, LICENSE, README.md. There is no application code, no build step, and no package manifest. The README is the product.

The presence of .lycheeignore is the one structural signal about maintenance. Lychee is a link checker, and an ignore file exists so that known-bad or rate-limited URLs do not fail a check. That tells you the project has at least considered dead links, which matters in a list of directories where sites disappear quietly. It does not tell you how often the check runs or what happens when it fails; the README does not document the workflow, and the .github/ directory contents are not visible in the repository listing. Treat automated checking as a mechanism that exists in the repository layout, not as a guarantee about any individual link.

The mirror to placestopostyourstartup.com is described in the README as automatic. The README does not document the mirroring pipeline, the delay between a commit and the site updating, or what happens if the mirror fails. If you cite the website in a document, that gap is worth knowing about.

Installing PlacesToPostYourStartup and getting a usable checklist

There is no package to install and no release to download; the README does not reference any. Getting the list means fetching the repository, and the first real use is turning the README into your own checklist.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup.git
cd PlacesToPostYourStartup

You should end up with README.md, LICENSE, .gitignore, .lycheeignore and .github/ in the working directory.

The README is organized with the headings Reddit and Websites, and each entry is a name followed by a URL, for example /r/SideProject at https://reddit.com/r/sideproject and Product Hunt at https://www.producthunt.com/. A first real use is picking one subreddit and one website from the list and reading that community's rules before posting. The README gives the link only; the rules live on the destination site. /r/alphaandbetausers and /r/SideProject are both communities with their own posting conventions, and nothing in this repository tells you what those conventions are.

Where the list stops being useful

The main limitation is that the README records names and URLs, not requirements. A directory may accept a free submission, charge for review, require a vendor account, or have closed entirely. The README cannot tell you which, and the .lycheeignore file suggests some URLs are known to be problematic for automated checks. A dead link in a list like this is cheap to fix and easy to miss.

There is no metadata: no category, no audience size, no submission type, no cost, no expected turnaround. You cannot sort the Websites section by relevance to a developer tool versus a consumer app, because the section is alphabetical and nothing else. The Reddit section is the same. For a founder with limited launch energy, that means the list gives you breadth and no prioritization.

It is also the wrong tool if you need repeatable process. There is no API, no CLI, no schema, and no export format. If you want to track fifty submissions with statuses and follow-up dates, you will build that yourself; this repository supplies the seed rows and nothing more. Finally, the list is a snapshot of community suggestions, so its coverage of newer channels depends on contributors updating README.md. The last push was on 2026-08-29, which is recent, but the README does not describe a review process for additions.

Compared with a product launch platform

Product Hunt is the obvious alternative, and it is also in the list. The difference in approach is structural. Product Hunt is a platform with accounts, a submission flow, voting, and a scheduled launch day. It concentrates attention on one event. PlacesToPostYourStartup is a static document that points you at many destinations, each with its own account and rules, and it does not host any of the traffic.

That makes the two complementary rather than competing. A founder might use this repository to plan a week of small posts and use a platform for a single larger launch. The trade-off is control versus reach. A platform gives you a dashboard and a result you can measure; this list gives you a starting point and leaves measurement entirely to you. If you want one place to submit and one number to watch, the platform is the better fit. If you want to avoid depending on a single gatekeeper, the list is the better fit, at the cost of doing each submission by hand.

Licence, forks and the cost of keeping it current

The LICENSE file and the README both point to CC0-1.0. The README states that Matt McCaffrey has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the work to the extent possible under law. In practice that is about as permissive as a list can be: you can copy the entries into your own document, reorder them, annotate them, or republish them without asking. This is not legal advice, and if you plan to embed the list in a commercial product, read the LICENSE file yourself rather than relying on the README's summary.

The maintenance cost of a fork is mostly link rot. Every URL in the README is a dependency on someone else's site staying up and keeping the same path. The repository has a .lycheeignore file, which hints at an automated check, but a fork inherits neither the check configuration nor the habit of running it. Adding entries is cheap; verifying the existing ones is the recurring work. There are no releases, so there is no version to pin and no changelog to read between pulls. You track master and diff README.md.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt it if you are a solo founder or a small team assembling a first launch checklist and you want the raw channel list in one file you can edit. Do not adopt it if you need submission tracking, scheduling, or per-directory requirements, because the README carries links and names only. Before relying on it, check that the specific subreddit or site you plan to use still accepts submissions, and verify the CC0-1.0 terms in LICENSE if you intend to fork the list into your own product.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: CC0-1.0
3. mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup on GitHub
4. README