I have worked on growth with several venture-backed startups, alongside the founders, and the most common pattern among the slower growers is the same: they started paying for ads before knowing what they were selling, to whom, and whether that person stayed.
Paid acquisition is an amplifier. It amplifies what works and what does not. In a startup that does not yet know which is which, it mostly amplifies the confusion.
What needs to be in place first
Know who stays. Take each month’s new customers and see how many are still active one, two and three months later. If the curve drops to zero, the problem is product or positioning and no channel will fix it. If it flattens, even low, there is a group the product works for. Find out who they are: that is the audience paid media will later go after.
Know why they buy, in their words. Talk to the customers who stayed. What were they using before, what made them try, what almost stopped them, how would they explain the product to a colleague. The phrases that repeat are your ads.
Minimum viable measurement. For each new customer: where they came from (UTMs plus a “how did you hear about us?” question), whether they activated, and whether they are still around at one and three months. A north star metric helps define activation.
Finding the first channel
In most startups that grow well, early growth is explained mostly by one channel.
- Pick two or three channels to test, not ten.
- Write the hypothesis and success criterion before starting. Without one, any result reads as promising.
- Give each test the minimum time and budget to produce an answer.
- Concentrate on the one with traction and switch off the rest.
More on choosing what to test in prioritizing growth initiatives.
By model: B2B almost always starts with founder-led sales; consumer products with existing demand can use search early; products that need demand created lean on paid social, creators and referrals; and self-serve products can make the product itself the channel, see product-led vs sales-led growth.
When paid starts to make sense
Paying for ads early is fine if the goal is learning: testing messages, seeing which audience responds. Using it to grow too early is the mistake. Signs the moment has come:
- Retention flattens and you know who the retained customers are.
- You have a rough customer lifetime value. LTV and CAC together explains why both matter.
- One message converts better than others, and it came from customers.
- You can measure the cost of a customer who stays, not just a signup.
What is specific to Latin America
- Start with one market. Launching Mexico, Colombia and Chile at once because “it’s the same language” ends in three mediocre launches. See entering LatAm.
- Payment method is part of the product. Installments in Argentina, cash vouchers in Mexico, Pix in Brazil.
- WhatsApp as a sales and support channel, even in B2B. See click-to-WhatsApp ads.
If your startup has found traction and the next step is a growth system that scales, I can join as a fractional growth lead while the team grows.
