Funnel teardown: Fathom Analytics (Privacy analytics)
Founder(s): Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis

Fathom's funnel runs on founder-led indie credibility. Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis write the marketing, build the product, and answer the support emails — and the audience trusts them for it.

TL;DR: Fathom Analytics's funnel is built on founder-led indie credibility. Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis are visible across Twitter, the blog, and customer support, and the marketing leans into the small-team-shipping-quietly aesthetic that privacy-leaning buyers respond to. The lesson for indie founders: when your audience is values-aligned, founder visibility IS the brand and beats anonymous-SaaS positioning at scale.

What they sell: A privacy-focused, cookie-free web analytics SaaS positioned as the ethical alternative to Google Analytics.
Who it's for: Indie founders, small SaaS, and privacy-leaning teams in the EU and beyond who do not want to deal with cookie banners or GDPR overhead.
Pricing: Volume-tiered subscription starting low for hobby sites and scaling with pageviews. Hosted only (no self-host) (verified 2026-05-17).

Hook pattern: Founder-led-as-trust-signal
The hero leads with the same principled positioning Plausible uses (privacy, no cookies, GDPR-by-construction) but with a different texture: Fathom feels like a small focused product run by two recognizable humans. The founder-led trust signal compresses category-evaluation time because privacy-aligned buyers are buying from a person they can verify, not a faceless SaaS.

Story pattern: Quiet competence narrative
The story is told across Jack and Paul's individual blogs, podcast appearances, and Twitter presences. The marketing site is calm and confident; the broader content arc reinforces 'we ship steadily, we do not chase venture money, we answer your support emails.' This narrative shape converts buyers who actively dislike VC-funded marketing aesthetics.

Offer pattern: Subscription with structural cap on free trial
Free 30-day trial; paid tiers scale by pageviews after that. No self-host (unlike Plausible). The offer mechanics are conventional but the brand voice carries the conversion work — buyers trust Jack and Paul to ship what they promise without aggressive upsells.

What's working:
Two founders visible across Twitter, blogs, and customer support — the brand is the humans.|Quiet-competence aesthetic differentiates against louder venture-funded analytics players.|Volume-tiered pricing aligns the bill with customer success and platform cost.|Same principle stack as Plausible (privacy, GDPR-by-construction, cookie-free) — the category fight is values-aligned not values-divided.|Long-running founder content (Jack's Calm Fund work, Paul's writing) gives prospects a deep prior on the operators before they buy.|Active customer support visible publicly — buyers see Jack and Paul responding to issues on Twitter, which is its own credibility signal.

What to adapt:
If your audience is values-aligned, founder visibility IS the brand. Get on the marketing surface yourself rather than hiring marketers to speak for you.|Long-running personal content (Twitter, blog, podcast) compounds into a deep prior buyers can verify before purchase.|Active visible customer support is a trust signal that scales — buyers who see you respond to other customers conclude you will respond to them too.

What to avoid:
Do not adopt founder-led-as-trust if you cannot sustain the visibility. The aesthetic only works when founder presence is continuous; visible absence converts against you.|Do not pretend to be small if you are not. The quiet-competence narrative is fragile when buyers discover the team is larger or VC-funded than the brand implied.

Brunson lens:
Hook: Attractive Character hook (Brunson Expert Secrets) — Jack and Paul ARE the marketing.
Story: Hero's-Journey-via-founder-content: years of writing about indie software, calm-company values, and customer-first ops build the prior buyers carry in.
Offer: Two-rung Value Ladder: free trial as front-end, volume-tiered subscription as core. No high-ticket back-end — the offer matches the indie aesthetic.
Value ladder tier: Front-end trial plus subscription core; no continuity upsell or back-end.