Yeah, community sites are often quite slow to take off. Which is perhaps why these Reddit alternatives are not really the best thing to try and raise capital for.

I mean they could theoretically take it off sure. But communities are very rarely going to be 'rocket ship' style instant successes like more traditional service and product businesses. And given how hard they are to make profitable, or how a lot of things VCs will want in order to make them profitable will hurt the community...

Yeah, not sure this is the best kind of thing to try and build as a startup business/get venture capital for. At least not initially, before the momentum is built and the community is proven to be successful.