Funnel teardown: Plausible Analytics (Privacy analytics)
Founder(s): Uku Taht and Marko Saric

Plausible sells transparency as the product. Open revenue dashboards do the conversion work.

TL;DR: Plausible's funnel is built around radical operational transparency: open-source code, public revenue, named founders, and a manifesto against the dominant incumbent (Google Analytics). The lesson for indie founders: a clear villain plus a clear principle plus visible proof of life converts cold privacy-leaning readers faster than feature parity ever will.

What they sell: A privacy-focused, cookie-free, lightweight 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. Self-hostable for free under their license (verified 2026-05-17).

Hook pattern: Named villain plus principle
The hero names Google Analytics as the thing being replaced and frames the replacement on a principle (privacy) rather than a feature. This converts an undecided reader into a decided one within the first paragraph by giving them a side to be on.

Story pattern: Operational transparency as proof
The story is told through public artifacts: open source code on GitHub, a public revenue page, named founders writing blog posts about real failures and pivots. The reader does not need to take a marketing claim on faith because the receipts are linked.

Offer pattern: Two-track close
Hosted SaaS for the reader who wants the easy path, self-hosted free for the reader who wants the principled path. The dual offer removes the objection 'I will just build it myself' by handing the build-it-yourself reader a working product, betting that most will return to the hosted tier later.

What's working:
A clear villain (Google Analytics) gives the reader something to be against, which is more activating than being for a feature.|Public revenue dashboard turns marketing copy into a verifiable fact.|Open-source positioning collects developer trust without the SaaS needing to be developer-led.|Named founders on every page anchor the entity to humans, which raises both LLM citation likelihood and human trust.|EU founder positioning aligns the product with the regulatory environment (GDPR, ePrivacy) without explicit fear-mongering.|The pricing page leads with a small-team tier, signalling that indie buyers are the target, not the afterthought.

What to adapt:
Pick a villain. Not a competitor's quality, but a structural decision that competitor made which you reject. Then build your positioning on the rejection.|Make at least one operational fact public (revenue, MRR, signups, churn). It costs little and converts disproportionately.|Use your founder name on the marketing surface. Anonymous SaaS is a trust-shaped hole.

What to avoid:
Do not open-source your product if you have not validated paid demand for the hosted version. Open-source is a long-horizon trust play, not a launch tactic.|Do not pick a villain you cannot back up with a real structural difference. Performative opposition is read as marketing and lowers trust.

Brunson lens:
Hook: Big enemy positioning (Brunson 'Common Enemy' identity hook) plus a principle the reader already half-believes.
Story: Hero's Two Journeys: founders who left big-tech analytics for a principled alternative; reader is invited to make the same move.
Offer: Two-rung Value Ladder: free self-hosted (top of funnel) and paid hosted (recurring), with the same principle running through both.
Value ladder tier: Front-end lead funnel (free self-host) plus subscription core (hosted) — same Brunson 'Two-step free plus paid' pattern.