Get started with paid ads #1
Every month we host Get Started with Paid Ads, a hands-on workshop for YC companies at Wefunder in San Francisco. Here's what the September 3 edition looked like, and how to grab a seat for October 1.
Most YC companies know they should be testing paid ads and keep pushing it back, because nobody on the team has ever set up a conversion pixel or written a Meta campaign structure. That's the gap this event exists for. One evening, laptops open, and you leave with accounts created, tracking working, and a clearer idea of who you're actually targeting.
The short version
- 60 people came to the September 3 session at Wefunder, mostly YC founders and growth people at YC companies, from pre-seed through Series A.
- Three parallel workshops: getting started with paid ads (the Adside team), live ad-account audits (Jeremy Chung), and ICP definition (Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales).
- One attendee went home with a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to shoot their first ad creatives.
- The next session is October 1, same place. Request an invite on Luma.
90 seconds video summary
Before the play-by-play, here's the evening straight from the room. We asked attendees what they were leaving with:
1:36
How the evening works
Doors open at 5, and the first hour is deliberately low-key: pizza, drinks from the Wefunder taps, name tags, and the kind of "what are you working on, what's your CAC" conversations that only happen when everyone in the room runs the same playbook. We do a short intro at 5:45, and from 6 to 7:30 everyone splits into workshop rooms. Then we wrap up together, someone wins a camera, and the networking runs until 8. It's hands-on: you bring a laptop and admin access to your ad accounts (or leave with brand-new ones), not a notebook for panel quotes.
The three workshops
Getting started with paid ads, run by us (Robin and Gui from Adside): creating ad accounts on Meta, Google and LinkedIn the right way, campaign structure, and the settings that are permanent so you don't regret them later. It's the live version of what we've written in our ad-account guides.
Ad audits, run by Jeremy Chung: attendees put their real ad accounts on the screen and got a live review, from wasted spend in broad campaigns to conversion events firing on the wrong page.
ICP definition, run by Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales: before you spend a dollar, decide precisely who the ad is for. Peter walked founders through narrowing "B2B decision makers" down to titles, company sizes and trigger events you can actually target. He also brought a stack of Founding Sales and gave copies away to attendees.
The DJI giveaway
We closed the night by giving away a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 (with a DJI mic to go with it). The logic is simple: the biggest bottleneck for early paid ads isn't budget, it's creative volume, and founder-shot video is the cheapest way to feed the machine. We spun a raffle wheel with everyone's names on the big screen, and Benjamin Skinner's came up.
Join us on October 1
The next edition runs Wednesday, October 1, from 5 to 8 PM, at Wefunder (1885 Mission St, San Francisco). The workshop lineup grows to four one-hour tracks:
- Creating your ad accounts on Meta, Google and LinkedIn
- Conversion tracking (pixels, events, and proving an ad actually worked)
- ICP definition
- Recording and generating your first creatives
It's free, for YC companies from any batch (pre-seed through Series A, B2B or B2C), and approval is required. Bring your laptop and admin access to your ad accounts. And yes, there's another DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to win.
