Are paid Ads a terrible early growth strategy?
YC advises against early-stage startups using paid advertising, as it can mask issues like weak product-market fit. However, some founders find value in controlled ad experiments to quickly test messaging and gauge customer acquisition costs.
At VanillaSky.ai, we help small businesses turn simple prompts and URLs into videos like ads and memes. We’re running small tests now, tracking conversions, understanding potential ROAS, and iterating on the landing page. Basically: treating it like a product experiment, all before we start monetizing the product.
Some products have successfully scaled using an ad-first approach. For example, AdCreative.ai has built solid demand generation loops entirely on paid advertising. While this isn’t the conventional Indie Hacker playbook, it demonstrates that, for specific products, early investment in paid ads can be effective.
Pros of Paid Ads:
- Fast feedback on messaging and landing pages.
- Targeted reach, saving time on marketing efforts like building a community.
- Ability to test if ads work by comparing CAC to LTV, calculating potential ROAS, pricing, etc.
Cons:
- Potential to attract low-quality users, leading to a false sense of product-market fit.
- Unsustainable growth if the product isn’t fully developed or lacks genuine market demand.
Is the “never ads” advice too rigid? We do think so, but would love to hear from founders who’ve tried this. Did ads work for you early on? Or did you end up burning time and money?
It makes sense to start building an online presence organically and postpone paid ads until you start seeing some activity and have refined the ad copy. I built my marketing SaaS app to autonomously handle both organic growth and paid ads as I wanted a complete solution to all my marketing needs.
I think it can make a lot of sense, as long as you have strong expertise in it!
The upside is it helps you validate/invalidate an idea faster by solving the distribution part
Really insightful take on a topic that so many founders wrestle with in the early stages. I appreciate how you didn't just frame the question as a binary "yes/no," but rather opened up a nuanced discussion about context, timing, and product-market fit.
Paid ads can be incredibly tempting for early growth — especially when organic channels feel slow — but your breakdown of when they don’t work is spot on. The points about CAC, low LTV, and how premature ad spend can distort learning signals really resonated with me.
What I found most helpful is your emphasis on understanding the why behind using paid ads. Too often, people rush in without clear hypotheses or feedback loops. Your perspective encourages more intentional experimentation, which I think is a healthier mindset for sustainable
Thanks! So maybe the nuance is, fine to use ads as long as they are profitable or help testing an hypothesis.
No I think they aren't bad, just don't blow your enrire marketing budget on it and think about other ways you can put that money to help. Conferences, dropping off flyers in person, networking events etc.
100%! Thanks!
I do meta ads for a living, and while I like that founders do ads sometimes (rather than never), I see too many do this without seeing the nuance you've pointed out here: that it accelerates learning.
Many people think ads provide outcomes because you pay for it. But it doesn't fix products with no market fit, poor landing pages, poor UI/UX, etc.
It literally just sends the most likely to convert traffic possible according to Meta's algo.
I will say that the most common issue I see with using ads early in the process is that you get poor quality users. Most don't convert to paid. So it can leave some lingering questions- was it the ads (creative, copy, funnel, messaging?), or is it the product?
Good point. I'm actually thinking to speed up monetization to be able to really test the funnel and potential ROAS.
I think you definitely need paid ads to cut through the noise these days. Organic is great and noble, but makes it much harder and takes more effort to reach your audience.
Have you seen results then with paid ads for your side hustle?