🏅7. Paul Jarvis (Fathom Analytics)
Episode description
Their bio (from the AmA post)
Hi all, I’m Paul Jarvis.
I’ve worked for myself in tech since 1999. I started out as a freelance designer working with companies like Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Yahoo, Warner Music and even Shaquille O’Neal.
I’ve also written several books, including Company of One, which has been translated into about 20 languages so far.
Several years ago I had an idea: “What if website analytics weren’t ugly and didn’t invade anyone’s digital privacy”. So I spent a few hours in Photoshop and mocked something up, tweeted it, and the tweet took off like wildfire (queue: Fry from Futurama “TAKE MY MONEY” memes). From there, I worked with a cofounder to build Fathom Analytics, which started out open-source (1+ million downloads), and then moved to a hosted, paid SaaS.
Fast forward to today: that original cofounder left in 2018 and my new cofounder Jack Ellis has been working with me to get Fathom to where it is today: 1000s of customers, profitable enough to be infinitely sustainable and pay us both salaries, and enjoyable enough to work on every day and still love doing it.
Our model has been very similar to my book (obviously the title was never meant be literal, since we’re a company of TWO 😂): question growth, focus on retention over acquisition, and never outspend our revenue.
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Links
Reddit SaaS: https://www.reddit.com/r/saas
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/chddaniel