Join the Ballpoint Paid Social Accelerator

First cohort applications now open

Getting paid social working is hard. And if you're a new founder or very early founding team, it's very easy to give up and 'wait until you can hire someone to do it.'

This is dangerous.

For 95% of consumer products paid social will be a large share, if not the entirirty, of your early acquisition engine.

Paid social is one of the fastest ways to understand if you've got the "market" side of "product-market fit" right.

But it's a hard set of channels to get right. On the one hand, it's the greatest gift entrepreneurs have had: before this, growing a business was significantly more expensive. But on the other it's so easy to burn money without learning anything.

Is paid social for me?

The question you have to ask yourself as a early stage founder is: ‘how many people actively search for my product category. If the answer to that is many tens of thousands per month, I’d prioritise paid search over paid social. But if people don’t yet know that, then social allows you reach people cost effectively.

Ballpoint Paid Social Accelerator. Cohort 1.

We are trialling something new.

It’s a Paid Social Accelerator.

We want to teach you the minimum viable approach to running paid social. You won’t learn anything unnecessary here. There won’t be lectures on ad features that you just don’t need. This will be the fastest possible route to what we consider to be a best practice ad account.

The lessons themselves will take place in a lecture + seminar format – both virtually and in-person in our offices.

In addition, you will also gain access to the accelerator Slack group. This will be a place to learn alongside fellow members, as well as the Ballpoint team.

Who is this good for?

Access to the first cohort will be free while we get the material right and work out how best to think about the community aspects.

While we’ll keep the community slack open indefinitely, we will see this first cohort as a two-month project. That includes lectures, seminars, and ongoing management of the community via Slack. .

The entry criteria for this will be:

• Consumer brands or consumer internet companies

• Very early stage: either pre-seed, or bootstrapped

• Currently spending between £1-5k/month on ads

• Pre- or post- Product Market Fit

• Committed to spending at least £1k/month for the duration of the two-month accelerator

• Ability to produce creatives for paid social