How we got here
We are Robin and Guillaume, two French founders in San Francisco. We met through a common friend and worked side by side in the same coworking space for four years. Before Adside, we bootstrapped a software company together and sold it.
At that company we ran our own paid ads on Meta, Google and Reddit. It took trial, error and some expensive mistakes, but we eventually made them profitable. What struck us is how much of that work was mechanical: research, setup, monitoring, resizing, reporting. Exactly the kind of work AI is good at.
Most startups never get that far. Ads have a reputation for being complex, opaque and easy to waste money on, and the reputation is often deserved. Our study of YC companies found that only a small fraction run paid ads at all. We think that is a missed opportunity, not a verdict on the channel.
So we started Adside in early 2026. There is no obvious default for a company that wants to run paid ads, the way Stripe is the default for payments. We want Adside to be it: a platform you can run yourself, or a managed service where we run everything for you.
Curious about the YC numbers? Read our study: What ads are YC companies running?
The founders
We like meeting people who run ads
We host paid-ads events in San Francisco and run a community of practitioners. If that sounds like your crowd, come say hi.
Photos by Slava Blazer Photography.
