Get started with paid ads #2
On October 1 we ran the second edition of Get Started with Paid Ads, our monthly hands-on workshop for YC companies at Wefunder in San Francisco. Here's what the guest list told us about where YC startups are with ads, what the four workshops covered, and how to grab a seat for November 5.
The first edition in September proved the format: YC founders want to start paid ads, and what stops them is the setup, not the budget. So for the second one we kept the evening the same (pizza at 5, a short talk at 5:45, an hour of workshops at 6, a camera giveaway at 7) and added a fourth workshop track, so you could pick the one that matched where you actually are.
The short version
- 18 of the 38 people who answered our sign-up form had never run an ad. Another 16 were running small test budgets.
- Four parallel workshops: getting started (Gui and me), LinkedIn ads (Allie Gross), ICP definition (Peter Kazanjy) and Google Ads with conversion tracking (Jeremy Chung).
- The NanoCorp team won the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to shoot their next round of ad creatives.
- The next session is Thursday, November 5, same place. Request an invite on Luma.
Video summary
Before the details, here's the evening in 74 seconds, from the attendees themselves:
1:14
What the guest list told us
Before every edition, we audit the guest list: everyone we approve answers three questions when they register, and we check each company against the Google, Meta and LinkedIn ad libraries, the same way we did for our study of every YC company. Then I put the results on the big screen in the intro talk. It's the fastest way I know to make a room of founders stop being polite about ads.
| Where you are with paid ads | People |
|---|---|
| Don't run paid ads yet | 18 |
| Running ads with a small test budget | 16 |
| Ran ads, then paused them | 2 |
| Paid ads are a core channel | 2 |
Budgets were small, which is normal at this stage: 22 of the 38 spend (or plan to spend) under $2,500 a month, 14 between $2,500 and $10,000, and 2 between $10,000 and $50,000. My take: under $2,500 a month, pick one platform and do it properly. Splitting $2,000 across Meta, Google and LinkedIn just buys three platforms that never leave the learning phase. We go through the math in how much to spend on ads.
The ad-library check adds what a form can't. 40% of the people on the list worked at a company with live ads on Google, Meta or LinkedIn. The heaviest advertisers on the guest list were Pancake (78 active Meta ads in the US and 8 Google ads in the last 30 days), Classet (42 ads across all three platforms) and Invofox (22 ads in the LinkedIn library). What they have in common is volume: lots of creatives live at the same time, not one hero ad.
We also asked what people expected from the evening. Two of the answers:
"Targeting lookalike audiences have never gotten a high enough match % for them to even launch for us."
"We're in the hard tech / enterprise space, curious to see what it's like running ads for this case that is not necessarily broad b2b sales."
The four workshops
Get started with paid ads, run by Gui and me: creating your accounts on Meta, Google and LinkedIn, installing your pixels so you can build retargeting audiences from day one, and the campaign settings you can't change later. If you missed it, our guides to Meta, Google and LinkedIn ad accounts cover the same ground.
LinkedIn ads, run by Allie Gross, formerly at LinkedIn and Amazon: targeting by job title, company and industry, the formats and bids that work for B2B, and how to retarget your visitors and upload your target-account lists. Her core idea: your best posts are your first ads. Post organically first, because posts that earn saves and comments have already proven the message. Then sponsor the winners with Thought Leader Ads, which run a founder's, teammate's or customer's post as an ad. Then retarget the people who engaged. That was the right workshop for the enterprise founder quoted above.
ICP definition, run by Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales: deciding precisely who your ideal customer is, turning that into targeting you can actually select in an ad platform, and writing messaging for that one buyer. He brought another stack of his book for the table.
Google Ads and conversion tracking, run by Jeremy Chung: search campaigns set up right, deciding what counts as a conversion for your business, and sending conversions back so Google optimizes for customers rather than clicks. His framing was "start with the number the board cares about, and work backwards": build tracking from the bottom of the funnel up, starting at the closed deal and working back to the click. If you track only form fills, Google will happily find you more form fills.
NanoCorp wins the DJI
At 7 we spun the wheel for the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, same as last time, and for the same reason: creative volume is the real bottleneck for early-stage ads, and a pocket camera removes the "we don't have anything to post" excuse. This time the team from NanoCorp took it home. NanoCorp lets you launch autonomous AI businesses: AI agents run the day-to-day work (content, outreach, operations, ads) while you set the mission and the budget.
Join us on November 5
The third edition runs Thursday, November 5, from 5 to 8 PM, at Wefunder (1885 Mission St, San Francisco). The workshops planned so far:
- Account setup and getting started with paid ads on Meta, Google and LinkedIn
- LinkedIn ads, with Allie Gross
- ICP definition, with Peter Kazanjy
After the workshops, every host stays for an ad clinic: bring the campaign that isn't working and ask. It's free, for founders and employees at YC companies from any batch, and approval is required. Bring your laptop and admin access to your ad accounts (or come to the setup workshop and leave with new ones). There's another DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to win.