There were a number of companies launched based on specific categories of craigslist. Reddit is a new unbundling opportunity. Greg Isenberg recently wrote about the unbundling opportunity in Reddit with great insights in a post at Pando.

Reddit is being unbundled as we speak. It's largely due to three reasons:

Major social platforms today are noisy. People have found refuge in groups (iMessage, Fortnite worlds and group chats). If Facebook is Walmart, tools and communities like Discord (ie:gamers) or Public.com* (ie: casual stock traders) are boutique stores There is too much surface area for Reddit to possibly cover within constraints of subreddits. This creates opportunities for startups to swoop in, create brands and products that really resonate with people COVID created an unsafe physical world yet people still want to explore their interests. The need has only grown but the ability to physically experience your interests have become more difficult. The internet provides the safest alternative to be with your people and buy products that earn status, reputation and major utility

There's a big shift towards audience building, with email newsletters rising in popularity, Patreon seeing huge success, and private communities growing. Reddit provides a platform for new audiences to meet, before there's a mainstream or well-recognized solution. There are thousands of subreddits with tens of thousands of active followers, and plenty more occasional visitors.

While Reddit enables these communities to develop organically, there are obvious limits of what is possible on the platform. It's easy to share new links, create discussions, and otherwise interact in straightforward online conversations. Communities with diehard audiences generally want more - specific content and sites catered to the interest, products matching needs, and information organized in the most usable manner.

Reddit has community built-in. Online communities are generally much larger than people recognize. Tapping into the right audience makes it much more feasible to build a successful marketing channels that doesn't depend upon third parties. It's well worth a read as there are undoubtedlbly plenty of successful companies being launched with this strategy this year.