26
Overheard a Shopify partner say 'don't burn cash on ads' and it clicked for me
I was at a meetup in Toronto last month and some guy was talking about how his startup wasted $15k on Facebook ads before anyone even used the product. He said they should have talked to 50 potential users first instead. It hit me hard because I just spent $8k on Google Ads for my SaaS and got like 3 signups. Now I'm rewriting my whole approach to focus on cold emails and community building instead. Has anyone else found a way to validate before spending on ads?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
angela_park15d ago
Holding the opposite view here but ads can be a valid validation tool if you're smart about it. Running small dollar tests (like $500 with tight targeting) shows you if the messaging even resonates before you commit to a full manual outreach campaign. Cold emails aren't free either, you know, they cost time and often require paid tools to scale. The Shopify partner might be right for some cases but slamming the door on ads completely ignores that they can surface product-market fit signals faster than manual conversations in some niches.
8
reese55015d ago
How do you define a real signal from just noise with only $500?
0