Health Tech

309k views in r/sysadmin

Specode is the Topflight team’s AI platform for building HIPAA-ready healthcare apps, made for the people vendors keep letting down. We wrote one of those letdowns into a story and posted it in r/sysadmin. 309k impressions, 1,049 upvotes and 293 comments later, hospital IT is still in the thread comparing scars.

Industry: Healthcare software
Date: 2025–2026
Website: specode.ai

Client Stats

309k

impressions from one post

1,049

upvotes earned

293

comments from hospital IT

post. That was the whole campaign.

The situation

Specode is an AI-assisted platform for building HIPAA-ready healthcare apps, built by the Topflight team. Its buyers own hospital software: IT directors who have been promised “seamless Epic integration” before, paid for it, and watched the vendor vanish. They do not click ads. They read r/sysadmin at 11 PM.

So that is who the story is about: an IT director at a 200-bed hospital, a patient portal still running Flash, and an integration vendor that goes radio silent three weeks before go-live. Every beat of it is the disaster Specode was designed to make impossible — told from inside the blast radius.

What we did

One story, posted where hospital IT vents

The challenge

Our approach

Hospital IT buyers do not click ads, and every vendor pitch sounds like the last one that burned them.

Wrote a first-person story dramatizing the exact failure Specode exists to prevent: an Epic integration vendor going silent three weeks before go-live.

The health-IT subreddits are small and moderate promotion aggressively.

Posted it in r/sysadmin, the big room where hospital IT actually talks.

One-shot promotional posts sink without real engagement.

The thread earned its reach: 1,049 upvotes, with 293 comments trading vendor horror stories.

Ad impressions stop the moment the budget does.

309k impressions on a story that reads like the diary of Specode’s exact buyer.

Book a call now

The post ends where Specode begins.

The story closes with the IT director googling “how to build Epic integration from scratch” at 11 PM. That search is Specode’s entire pitch: HIPAA-ready patient portals, scheduling flows and EHR integrations assembled from vetted healthcare building blocks instead of a vendor’s promises.

Specode building an appointment-scheduling flow for a healthcare app

The thread put that pitch in front of 309,000 of exactly the right readers — and the 293 comments of sysadmins trading their own ghosted-vendor stories kept it climbing without a dollar of ad spend.

Ready?

What this looks like for you

All the upsides of having a working Reddit marketing strategy

If your category's subreddit moderates you out...

that is not the end of the strategy. It is the start of it.

The room where your buyers already are...

is usually one door over from the room with your industry's name on it.

Every thread we publish in a sub...

you own stays indexed. You stop paying us, it keeps ranking.

Get started today

Testimonial

Iuliia ShnaiAug 19, 2026

Papermark

Reddit is doing so much for us in search. Papermark is now the top recommendation on Reddit in our category, and that matters.

Imran

@isb

Paul picks a CPM number and then creates a reddit campaign to hit that. Like Chappelle writes jokes.

Aug 20, 2026

134 referrals

to MessageDesk from Reddit in 90 days. The same volume ChatGPT sent them.

166K views

from a single organic post for a rug brand. 67 upvotes, 52 comments.

HanafiJul 27, 2026

Inflow

Great results so far. The subreddit AEO work especially attracts the leads we love: qualified, not problematic, and with money.

KyleMay 19, 2026

MessageDesk

Love it, this is great. More I say. Real, traceable Reddit users became leads and booked meetings.

“Most agencies do a bit of everything for everyone. Paul picked the hardest channel on the internet and built real credibility on it. That's why I advise Spacestation.”

Gregory Kennedy

VibeYourSaaS

JamesAug 18, 2026

Ethos

Love it. Our AI citations have been rising steadily since June and the growth curve looks good. Even in negative threads about us there's now organic fightback.

JeremyMay 29, 2026

EcomCPA

Amazing, great job. We now hold multiple first-page Google spots for the exact terms our buyers search, from international tax to Shopify accountant.

The top Reddit recommendation in its category, and climbing search because of it.

ShivamMay 18, 2026

Founder, Floqer

Reddit is looking good. I'm impressed by the work these guys have been doing. My only question was how we could press even harder.

J.P. MohlerAug 5, 2026

CPO & Co-founder, General Legal

We told Paul we only care about one thing: General Legal coming up when someone searches AI law firm. Now the top cited source in those AI answers is a Reddit thread his team made.

John Wright

@johnwrightai

Thanks Paul, launched it at an affiliate conference today day 1 and the response is overwhelming.

May 19, 2026

Miguel Castillo-ClarkMay 27, 2026

1v1Me

The AMA they ran with our pro player crushed my expectations. Ads, our subreddit, AI citations, they handle all of it.

Grant WalkerMar 5, 2026

Argo IQ

Super impressed with what they've built. A very cool project.

Book a call

Retro engraving of two spacecraft docking

Free playbook

Steal the playbook behind this study.

The exact Reddit AMA process this case study ran: how to pick the subreddit, pitch angles the community upvotes, and turn one thread into page-one Google real estate.