Funemployed

Jan 5, 2021

Adriaan is taking on Google Analytics with his privacy-focused analytics company Simple Analytics

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Automated transcript

Adriaan van Rossum (00:00):

Something that I really needed to learn is building a product that was okay and not perfect.

James Daly (00:04):

Adriaan van Rossum is the founder of Simple Analytics, an alternative to Google Analytics. However, with a full focus on user privacy, he's built his indie business from scratch to his full-time job today. And in this video, he takes us through the whole journey, how he first started it, how he learned what he needed to know to set up and run the business, how it runs today, and his plans for the future. Let's jump right into it.

Adriaan van Rossum (00:28):

My name is Adriaan van Rossum. I never know how to pronounce it correctly in English, but I think this will do. I have my business, and it's called Simple Analytics. So basically it's Google Analytics, but then privacy friendly. And within these times it's super important to care about privacy because a lot of business, so there's definitely a use for businesses that do. And I started when I was 14 with programming. I think programming is a great skill if you want to build a SaaS product. And I have been interested in privacy since I started programming because then you can do so many different things that you can do. You can read the clipboards like a very old browser, internet Explorer, maybe some people know them still. They were around for quite a bit, but there was, I think Internet Explorer 6 or something, and you could even read the clipboard of all your visitors online.

(01:35):

And then I thought, yeah, this is bad. Technology is great. You can do so many things, but you can also read clipboard from people that's very privacy invasive. So that's where the starting point basically was for my interest in privacy. And since then I've been working for bosses, I've been having my own businesses, but when it really clicked was when I started working on Simple Analytics. And I think that is because my expertise, like development was linked together with my passion and it was privacy. So I think it's great to have a motivational force within your product that you can rely on because there are so many times in building a product that you don't really have motivation. And it's great if you then can get the motivation out of your own passion. So what the job entails I think, or the function entails is so many things.

(02:45):

It's doing your own sales, it's doing your own marketing strategy, it's building your product, it's building your product in code or no code, whatever you prefer. And there's so many things that you don't know yet. There's always some kind of thing that's outside of your comfort zone. For me, it's doing the sales and marketing. I think for a lot of founders, that is the problem or the challenge and for a lot of other founders, it's getting the product out there, which is also very hard if you are detailed oriented like me, for example. So yeah, that's basically what you do. You have to do everything that's inside of your business and you have to make it fun if you don't enjoy it at that time. And usually if something is difficult to do, you can always convert it to something that like, Hey, I dunno how to do this yet.

(03:39):

Let's figure out how we can do this. And for example, at the moment I'm focusing on sales and marketing way more than I was in the beginning. I was lucky that I got some exposure on Hacker News and stuff like that because I wrote some blocks, some articles, but I wasn't really approaching businesses and getting businesses into my subscriptions. And now I'm doing that way more with way more tools like I developed myself. And it's great to see that it works. So especially if something is hard for you and you can make it work, the reward of you doing it finally and it works and it works out. That's great.

James Daly (04:29):

Before you were doing what you're doing now, before you were running Simple Analytics, what were you doing before then? Were you working in 9 to 5? Did you have a full-time job? What was the most recent thing you were doing before you were self-employed?

Adriaan van Rossum (04:41):

Yeah, before Simple Analytics, I was working at a business as a developer here in Amsterdam, and I was doing another, I was basically a 9 to 5 job, but then three days a week I never believed in working full time. And also I had the advantage of being a programmer, so then you can charge a little bit more and have a little bit more free time. So I did that and I used that perks as well to travel around the world. I was allowed to work remotely, so I lived in Las Palmas for half a year. So that was great. There was all possible within that business and it felt okay, but it also felt like I was missing something. I wasn't getting to my full potential, I would say. So yeah, I knew I needed to run my own business and start on something, but I was too comfortable in the situation. I wasn't. So then I realised, okay, I need to change this. And so I quit my job before I had another business, and then I started working on my business and then all of a sudden there was this urge to make this business successful because otherwise you don't have income. So I worked very hard on Simple Analytics for two months and then launched it, and that was how it started basically. So I was just working for a boss as a front-end developer, working for them like three days a week and that was it.

James Daly (06:20):

That's really cool that you ended up being able to travel whilst still working at a job and it would give you the time to start setting up for your own business, I guess if you're only working three days a week, that's an ideal scenario to transition.

Adriaan van Rossum (06:32):

But the funny part for me was that I didn't really start my own business because I was still feeling comfortable with the situation I was in, and I really started doing my business when all those perks were gone. I didn't have any income anymore. And then I started working hard on my own business because I wanted to succeed, and otherwise I was always working on the site a little bit. But yeah, I don't believe in side projects that much, but it's different for everybody of course. But for me, it works to throw away your old shoes and then buy new ones very quickly.

James Daly (07:08):

You're right, there's no real incentive. Not being able to afford food is there. You really need to make it work then if you have no other income.

Adriaan van Rossum (07:17):

And I'm also like, I don't have a family, I don't have responsibilities. So that's also something that should be taken into account. Not that everybody can do that, but I was in, I could do that because of that.

James Daly (07:33):

I guess When you left your previous job, you hadn't started Simple Analytics then, had you? No. So when you left your previous job, what was in your mind? Were you thinking I'll start a business? Did you already have Simple Analytics in your mind or were you just thinking, I need freedom, I need some time to myself and then I'll figure out what to do next?

Adriaan van Rossum (07:50):

So when I left my previous role or job, I didn't have any idea what I was doing next. So I went to, oh, yeah, that's an important factor that I didn't tell yet. I also had some freelance gigs as well, so I was starting

(08:15):

Working on those after my job, but those are limited. There's a limitation on amount of jobs you get and you can get more, but then you're in the same situation as comfort and then you don't work anymore on your own business. So what I did, I remember I was working in rif, also one of the Canary Islands. I was working there on a freelance gig and then I realised I was implementing Google Analytics for some client and I was like, this is bad. There's no real good alternative and I'm implementing Google Analytics again. And I already developed a little bit of a thing against big data collection companies like Google and Google Analytics. And then I realised, okay, let's change this. And I was having this freelance gig and then I also had more of a feeling like, okay, now I have an idea, I can work it out and now I can also stop the freelance gig. And then I focused on Simple Analytics, but at the same time I didn't know where to start, so I didn't know what to do, how to stay motivated, all those things. So I was looking for an online community as well. And that's I think a very important factor. Having a community build it out in the open works for me very well. So you get some kind of, how do you call it? Not commitment, but

James Daly (10:08):

Accountability.

Adriaan van Rossum (10:09):

Accountability, yeah. Perfect. So you get some accountability to keep going and it worked very well. So I think for me, the feeling moving from that freelance gig previous, I thought it was the job, but it was a freelance gig. Moving from the freelance gig to my own business, it was feeling like, okay, finally I'm going to start it and I'm going to do it right. And you never know if it's going to be right. The first company usually fails, but I had done so many projects already, so I hope like, okay, this is maybe the 10th project and the 10th will probably succeed. And that's what I say, right? If you do a project, the first one is very likely not to succeed, and if you do 10, you have maybe one that works. So yeah, that's what I

James Daly (10:58):

Did. You mentioned at the very beginning, there's so many things that come with being an indie founder. You've got the actual building of the product, but then there's also the marketing, managing income and tax and customer acquisition. How did you learn all of that side of things? I mean, you learned development through your own interest in the previous job. What about the rest of all the stuff that comes with it? Did you learn it on the fly? Did you read any books, follow any blogs, or you just kind of figured it out as you went along?

Adriaan van Rossum (11:25):

Yeah, there's a few different aspects that you have to learn as an indie founder, and one of the aspects is you need to build your product. And that's something that I already knew. So I learned that before I started my business, but it still is not the full picture of building a product. Something that I really needed to learn is building a product that was okay and not perfect. Something that a lot of founders, and especially with founders of a technical background, are very, very, yeah, how do you call it? Find it hard to stop at a certain moment and say like, okay, this product is finished perfections, they're not using them most. Yeah, exactly. They're not using the latest tools and all that kind of stuff. So within development, I already learned how to develop with what I needed to learn in my business is to stop at a certain moment, use the tools that I already know and use those to build my product.

(12:25):

So there was one part that I really needed to learn, and I learned that by seeing people doing it online, saying, okay, I need to validate my product within let's say a few months or a month, and then if people are interested in your product. So I thought, okay, let's do that as well. Let's focus on getting validated and getting your product out there instead of making it perfect from the start. So that's what I did for the development and building the part, building the product. And then indeed, you also have doing the sales and marketing. There are so many examples still. I'm just looking around and there's so many different tactics, so many different ways to do it, but what made it easier for my business is that I care about privacy. So there's a lot of tactics that already are impossible to do because I don't want to track a user, I don't want to use retention, I don't want to use ads.

(13:28):

So there's so many things that I don't want to use. So there's some logical things that are left over which I can focus on, but then still you have to choose. You have to choose. For example, I recently added a little pop-up on my website where potential customers can say, Hey, what is your biggest challenge? And they can then pick for like, okay, I don't want a cookie banner, or I have to comply with privacy laws, or I want an easy to use platform so they can pick what they want. And then I ask, okay, what other tool do you use? Most of them say Google Analytics, and I ask their website. So then they will fill in the website and their email address, and then later it's all what a customer does or a potential visitor or visitor does for you. And it's not like data I get from another party or from some smart marketing tool.

(14:25):

It's all from a user that is just visiting my website and they don't get into some system that will spend them all the time. It'll be just me responding to that email and saying like, Hey, we have this product and it might help you because you answer these questions. So then you have certain marketing tools that work from privacy perspective and also from a user perspective. And you maybe get a little bit less of customers because of that. But I'm fine with that because my whole business is around privacy, and I don't want to have my lending page full with trackers and privacy invasive tools for my visitors of course, because it's basically the image of my business that gets hurt if I don't do that. And then learning how to do taxes and how to do all the other stuff like content, basically it's just doing, it's not really going into the books and try to find out how to do it best because there's no one way to do it. There are so many ways. So you just try and what works you keep doing and what doesn't work you stop doing. And I think that's the most important thing is keep doing it.

(15:48):

Even, I don't know if you have a new idea or you, there's a great podcast about how to get more customers, try it. And if it works for you, it works. And if you stay motivated on doing so, please keep doing it. That's basically my advice for if you want to do the marketing of your business, try out so many things and keep trying.

James Daly (16:14):

It's one of the best things about being a solo founder is you have that freedom to quickly try things, to test something out in one day, see the result, adjust. There's no marketing team to go through, no committee, nothing. No, you can just do it. It's great. Have that kind, just do it. Yeah, I never thought about actually the limitations Simple Analytics would have in marketing due to being private, but you're right, that is something to consider. But you're right, it really does give you higher quality customers, I think, because they then see that you walk the talk, you do what you talk about even in your own marketing, and they trust you further because of that. That is very interesting.

Adriaan van Rossum (16:51):

Yeah, you have to practise what you preach, right?

James Daly (16:54):

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Especially in the privacy space. Yeah.

Adriaan van Rossum (16:57):

Yeah.

James Daly (16:58):

What's the best thing about being self-employed? What do you enjoy the most about working for yourself?

Adriaan van Rossum (17:04):

Well, it's funny that you asked that because it's very hard to, let me rephrase this a bit. When I was working for a boss, it was very easy for me to say, okay, I want to work three days a week and not anymore and not any longer. I would just go home after my eight hours or whatever and I'll do my thing at night and meet friends or I don't know, do some hobby, and now I'm working for my own business. And it's way harder because you have all the freedom that you do, but you're also responsible for those next customers, for doing the customer support. You get an email from a customer, you want to reply to it, you get an alert on your system and you want to look what's going on, or there's so many things that you're now responsible for. And if you're working for a business, you're usually responsible for one or two things.

(18:01):

In my business or in my job, I was responsible for the front end code. So if that's on production and there's a bug, yeah, I will fix it. And if it's after office hours, of course I'll fix it, but that's maybe an hour work, and then I will never have that for a few months because that doesn't happen often. But it's very hard to do that as a solo founder because you feel responsible for everything that you're doing. So yeah, it's a good question. I think recently I'm starting to force myself more into things that I enjoy. So I started to do kite surfing quite a bit and it feels great, but I really have to make myself do it. So I challenge myself to do this every week and then during the week, so not on the weekends, but just an advantage of a solar foundry.

(19:00):

You can do it right in the middle of the week. You don't have any other things that are super required for that certain day. So if you don't have meetings or appointments, you can just go guide surfing. So that's something that I do now, and it feels great because then you're just out on the water. It's like almost nobody is there and you come home and you're completely tired, but tired in a different way than you would be tired from working, right? So yeah, it's good to keep yourself also on a, how do you call it, and not professional or outside of work skill, keep yourself entertained or do stuff that you really like to do because it is possible. And if you don't do it now, you're probably not going to do it later as well. So keep on doing the fun stuff.

James Daly (19:54):

Yeah, that's really good advice. It's so hard to force yourself to switch off from work when you're working for yourself.

Adriaan van Rossum (20:02):

Yeah, right.

James Daly (20:03):

Oh God, yeah. What's been the high point so far? Has there been an accomplishment you've hit or a career goal you've hit or something you've done that you've thought, this feels incredible, this is why I've started my own company, this is what it's all about. Has there been a high point yet?

Adriaan van Rossum (20:19):

If I have to describe my high point in my business career, I would say it feels just great to have a business that can sustain yourself, and it's something that you work for. You work towards something that, okay, I can live from my own business, but it's a little bit vague, but once you have this certain threshold or this certain milestone, I sometimes realise, oh, I'm super lucky with this position. I don't have to do freelance work. I don't have to have a part-time job. I can just live from a business that I really enjoy. And obviously you don't enjoy it, all of it. You also have to do the taxes or you have to do some things you don't like. But most of it is just like, oh, everything that I do is for my own business. And that feels great, and that's definitely a great achievement in what I think business should be. It's too bad it's around money, but it's more like, it's also some kind of a feeling that you are independent now, and maybe it's the same feeling when you're living at your parents and then you finally go leave the house and you go live by yourself. I think that's a similar feeling. So you're then doing it on your own, and that's a great feeling.

James Daly (21:48):

I think a lot of people, when they get to the point where they are, you are always looking ahead at the next thing, but the fact that you are independent financially is such a huge achievement. That is a high point on its own. Yeah, I love the metaphor for moving out of your parents' house as well. It feels just like that. Okay, so what does your typical work day look like? You can set your own schedule, you work for yourself, run through an average day. Do you sleep in, do start work really early? What does your average day look like at work?

Adriaan van Rossum (22:22):

My average day at work looks a bit like all over the place, but recently how my life works is I do something in a certain way and I do it a few times, then I realise I don't want to do it, and then I'm changing it over, do something else. So what I'm saying now is probably not so relevant in a few months, but this is how I do it now. When wake up, my girlfriend usually is already awake. She starts working in the living room, and then I'm waking up slightly later, and then I go to my coworking space. I have a coworking space here in Amsterdam, and I really love to have some kind of workspace where you meet other people. So you are not by yourself alone or always is the same person. It's good to have some workplace, even in the house, you have a different room where you work or something like that. So that's how I start my day. I just bike to my workplace, my coworking space, get some coffee. Usually I plan some calls in the morning, so basically at nine o'clock or 10. So I have a motivation to be in the office on time, because otherwise I might be a little bit later in the office, like 11 or 12. So it's great to have this motivation to set, call, set an appointment at nine or 10, and then I'm in the office.

James Daly (23:59):

It's very smart.

Adriaan van Rossum (24:00):

It works. Little life hacks. But yeah, it works. And then I just start working on something that I put in my calendar before. So I usually have my calendar with time slots, and I just move time slots around during the week where they seem to fit best. Usually after a call, I will do something that's not intensive for the brain, so just some little coding or something. And if I have the first time slot of the days totally free, then I will write some content or something that's for my brain a little bit tougher. So that's how I feel my days. And then I try to stop working around six or seven, then I bike home and start relaxing at home or doing some renovating the apartment with, I dunno, stuff like that. Just like entertainment and something that's not a digital hobby. Basically doing something with boots or doing something to entertain myself without the bits and the bites

James Daly (25:16):

Always a challenge, isn't it?

Adriaan van Rossum (25:19):

It is. Yeah.

James Daly (25:20):

If you had to give your past self from a few years ago, some advice with Simple Analytics, with working for yourself to make what you do now a bit easier, make your journey a bit easier, is there any advice you would give your past self?

Adriaan van Rossum (25:31):

If it would give my future self advice when I was a few years younger, I would say stop studying and start working on your own business. I spent too much time finishing some degree that you don't really need.

(25:48):

And eventually I finished a non-related programming, how you call it course, basically in the Netherlands it works like this. If you study, you get a certain loan and if you finish your study, the loan will become a gift. But if you don't finish a study, you have to pay back the loan. That's how it worked a few years ago when I studied. So I spent a lot of time finishing that study and I switched a few studies and whatever. So eventually I finished that. And yeah, it's good from a money perspective, it's saves you a few thousand euros, not that much, but it's bad. From an entrepreneurial standpoint, I would say I would've been happier I think if I didn't do the studying, but I was working on my own business and I was always doing side projects next to my study and I enjoyed it way more.

(26:58):

But if I would've found a community within Amsterdam or within the Netherlands where I could work on my own project and align businesses and I got motivation from other people around me, then I would definitely be way younger and already have a successful business, I would say. And that would've made me happier at that time. I think. I also believe that the time when you study is also important. It's a certain age and you meet new people and you have a lot of time to meet new people, which is also great. So it's not like that the whole time is something that's bad in my life. But I would say if I could replace the studying with building actual business, that would've been way better for me.

James Daly (27:47):

Do you have any resources that you could recommend that helped you in this whole journey? Is there any kind of books, audio books, podcasts, websites, blogs, anything that you read that really gave you, well not necessarily read or listened to, came across any sort of resources that you found very useful that you might recommend?

Adriaan van Rossum (28:05):

Yeah, I have a few resources I think that helped me work on my business. And one that I read when I started creating my business was a book from James Wat, he's the founder or one of the founders of the Brew Dock company. They have great IPAs. The punk IPA is one of their famous beers, and he writes about starting a business and it's physical business. He's selling actual beer, so it's not like a SaaS business or something, but he's telling about his marketing strategy and he's really thinking outside of the box. And it's a very nice way of writing. It really appealed to me. And for example, I don't know, bought a big old army tank, drove it in London Square and said, we're going to change things around here. Well, it's obviously very illegal to do stuff like that, but it said them in the spotlight directly in the whole town of London and outside of it.

(29:14):

But it was a great smart technique to get into the picture. And he describes as building a brand that you need to find an audience that can believe in something. So you need to sell. He is better wording for it than I do, but sell a mission, sell something that people can jump on, okay, go for, we going to fight this or we going to do this. We got to change this in the world. And my mission is to change the world into a more privacy friendly place. And if you can have people jump on the train and believe in your mission, then they are also likely to believe in your brand and be loyal to your mission and your brand. So he is not selling beers, but he's selling like, we're going to change the world with good beers and we're going to take over all the old breweries that are just brewing shitty beers.

(30:12):

We're going to change the world. And of course, changing the world's just tiny bit of the world. But I really enjoyed reading that book. So that was definitely a great inspiration for starting my business. And another inspiration that I still check regularly is marketing examples. Harry has some great examples and he always writes them very clear, just like with a little box, this is the right way, this is the wrong way. You see the difference. Okay. Point across. So it's super clear how he communicates. Yeah, his examples. So that's also great source of content that you can check regularly, subscribe to his newsletter. It's really good. Yeah, that's basically the two things that really helped me running my business.

James Daly (31:07):

What are you working on next? What goals do you have? Is there anything exciting on the roadmap that you want to tease a little bit?

Adriaan van Rossum (31:13):

What is next for Simple Analytics is something that I'm really excited about. There are a few things, but I will name the first thing, and maybe I hint to the next one. But the first thing is, what is important for so many businesses is that how good is my page and what is the quality of my page? And within analytics tools, there are so many analytics tools, it's not really clear what the quality is of a page. So you can see how many visits a page got. For example, you can see, okay, this page about this certain blog post goes like a thousand views last week. So it's really good blog post, but you don't really know that maybe someone shared it on LinkedIn or on Twitter, and that's because you got those thousand views. It doesn't say anything about the blog post itself. So what we are building at the moment is having an indicator next to your page view list, and that indicator shows this blog post or this page is good content and this is worst content.

(32:30):

And it doesn't use any data points like page views or anything like that. It uses two data points, basically how far someone scrolled on your page. So if you have a long blog post, it measures like, okay, they scroll to half of it, well then they probably didn't see the whole blog post. So it's probably not a quality reader or a quality read and how long someone is on the page. So if someone is reading your blog post for five minutes and it's scroll all the way down to the last word, it's probably a good blog post. And if a lot of people are doing this, it'll probably count to like, okay, this blog post is really good. So in that way you can calculate how well your content is doing instead of how well your content is doing traffic wise. So I think that will be a major difference in analytics for a lot of content creators, for article writers, if you have content on your website, it's super relevant to know, okay, people like this page more than my other page. So you all of a sudden start having a different metric that you didn't have before. So that's something I'm really excited about and I know a lot of customers will be really happy with this new feature. And there's also somewhere in the future we are going to do something with alerts, but that's all I'm going to say about that.

James Daly (34:04):

Where can people follow you in your work online? Where's the best place to keep up with what you're up to?

Adriaan van Rossum (34:10):

Well, for me it's usually that I post on Twitter. So @adriaandotcom, that's my Twitter handle. Everything that I do online, I usually post on Twitter. I don't really have other channels. I have a technical blog post, but that's super technical. So it's mainly Twitter. And if I think it's interesting for people, I will share it on Twitter.

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