Tools for Scale

Jun 16, 2021

In episode 8 of the Tools for Scale podcast, I chat with Adriaan van Rossum, founder of Simple Analytics on creating a competitor to Google Analytics and building products without invading user privacy.

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Automated transcript

Grant Trahant (00:00):

Well, thanks so much, Adriaan for joining us, founder of Simple Analytics or first interview I've done in person in a couple years here now here in Amsterdam. So I appreciate you taking the time and kind of talk about what you're building. Super interesting, super important now at the ever-changing force of life that is the internet now and all the moving parts that go into it. So let's start a little bit about maybe your background and why you sort of decided and maybe what led up to founding Simple Analytics.

Adriaan van Rossum (00:29):

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me. I love to do this in person. It's the next level, right?

Grant Trahant (00:34):

Yeah. So much better. It's way better. It's so much better.

Adriaan van Rossum (00:37):

Yeah, so I started Simple Analytics more or less three years ago, and I was on a holiday in the Canary Islands with my girlfriend and I was working remotely there for a freelance gig and they asked me, Hey, can you instal the Google Analytics script just to track the pay shoes? And I was like, yeah, yeah, this question always comes up. If you build a website, they wanted analytics and always ask for a Google Analytics because that's ...

Grant Trahant (01:04):

Free and easy.

Adriaan van Rossum (01:05):

The big one, free one, and people already are familiar with it. For me, it didn't feel right. I don't want to send all the data of their customers or their visitors to one big corporation that's pretty known for profiling and using that information for the ad network and stuff like that. So I wasn't very comfortable with that and I decided, okay, I need to change this. And I think it's quite easy to build something simple, but still powerful enough. So I pitched that to my girlfriend, he said, yeah, let's just do it. So I did it and then two months later I had my first prototype, put it on Product Hunt. It had a little bit of success, but then I put it on Hacker News and it was like boom, on the front page number one for the whole day, or at least nine hours on the phone page for longer. So that was amazing. And then I thought, okay, this is really something people want. So then I got my first paying customers, and then yeah, I took it from there.

Grant Trahant (02:07):

So it was paid right of the gate?

Adriaan van Rossum (02:09):

Yeah, yeah. I had a free version for I think 30 minutes. Then I taken out, I was like, okay, now I go back to pay.

Grant Trahant (02:20):

So the one thing I usually like to chat about is sort of the tech acronym, how you think about building products. You don't have to divulge everything, this e secret sauce or anything, but maybe go through the simple tech stack of how Simple Analytics is built.

Adriaan van Rossum (02:36):

Yeah, I don't have secret sauce or anything. I'm very transparent on everything. So yeah, I'm happy to discuss this. What I built it first with was with the tools I know, and before I had a lot of ideas and was building with different new tools and whatever, and then I never finished it. So this time I said to myself, okay, I need to finish it, so do it with the stuff

(02:57):

So it'll be way faster and finish it on time. So that's what I did. So I know gs, I know JavaScript of course, and I know Postgres the database. So I combined all those into that simple product. It was very amped. It was like a graph if some stats

(03:17):

On the bottom. There was nothing more than that sub login system, and that was about it. So I built it all in Postgres, and in hindsight, I'm very happy that I did because I finished it on time and until at some point I wanted to add new features like searching on specific stuff or filtering or certain stuff. Then Postgres became a little bit too complicated. It couldn't do the things without 50 tables of aggregations and stuff. So then I decided, okay, now I need to switch to something that is built for this kind of stuff.

(03:53):

Then I switched to Elasticsearch, hired someone with experience with Elasticsearch. So he built a whole API for that. And then we had a system that was advanced enough for the new features that we wanted to build, but in hindsight, I'm super happy with that choice. I finished the product on time because I use the tools that needed and at some point I wanted to add new features, then a new database system was needed. So then we switched to Elasticsearch and yeah, I think that's a great decision.

Grant Trahant (04:21):

Nice. So when we talk about I guess privacy and the importance of it, I guess where are we now with privacy? We have the Apple ecosystem and then we have Android, which is open source and can do a lot of things and you can hack it up so to speak and make it your own. And there's pros and cons

(04:43):

With that. But how we see Google has all these products and they're all really good, whether it's email or Google Analytics or Google Docs, it's sort of this easy ecosystem that everybody plays in, especially small businesses, they might not have $10 a month or $19 a month to spend on a privacy analytics software or whatever it might be, maybe Canva or something like that, design software, something simple. So Google provides all these free things, but there's always a trade off. I guess. What's the pitch for Simple Analytics? Why should businesses and founders really look at privacy for tools that they use to build their companies?

Adriaan van Rossum (05:30):

Well, it's like one of the reasons is your visitors and your customers are getting way more aware of privacy. If you would talk about privacy four years ago and nobody would really listen, it wouldn't be that interesting or there wouldn't be an audience for it. And now way more people thanks to the cookie banners and the annoyances of privacy.

Speaker 3 (05:54):

Well. Yeah, for sure.

Adriaan van Rossum (05:55):

There's a lot more awareness. So I think if you want to keep up with your customers and you want to give them the best experience, you should do something about privacy. You can't just ignore what they care about. So then you need to do something about it, and you can still give all your data, for example, to Google, or you can decide, okay, I want to do it differently. I want to go with something better for my customers. And there's also a lot of customers from Lytics that add a batch to the website saying, Hey, we use something privacy friendly. So they want to share it with the customers as well, saying, Hey, we care about you, we take care of your privacy. And we are not sharing it with all the companies.

Grant Trahant (06:43):

When users, for a Simple Analytics user, do companies put the simple analytics badge on their footer or whatever to notify

Adriaan van Rossum (06:52):

People or put it somewhere in the privacy policy like, Hey, we care about your privacy, so we use Simple Analytics, stuff like that.

Grant Trahant (06:59):

So it's almost because I think what GDPR did was you have to have that if you even use Google Analytics, I think not even just using cookies or using ads against it, but I think it's something as simple as using Google Analytics, I think qualifies, then you have to do GDPR. I'm not sure because it's so diverse.

Adriaan van Rossum (07:22):

Yeah, there's a difference between GDPR compliant and what a lot of people confuse is that you don't need a cookie banner if you are GDR compliant, but that's not the case. GDR compliant means that you comply with GDR rules, but you still need to take care of a cookie banner, for example, and if the cookie banner is there, then it's compliant. So there's a little bit confusion about that in the privacy space, and there's a lot of different signals from different people saying, oh, you should do this and you should do that. But the general thing is if you use Google Analytics with the defaults, you will require a cookie banner and for example, Simple Analytics, you don't need any cookie banner, and there's no personal data that ends up in our systems. So you are a hundred percent sure that you never violate any gdpr. That's huge problems because yeah, you can't get a lawsuit for that.

Grant Trahant (08:21):

So if you're a simple site that provides information and maybe you're not running any ads on third party sites or anything like that, and you use Simple Analytics that in sense it's an easy way to become GD PR compliant. You don't need the cookie bag

Adriaan van Rossum (08:39):

Without the annoyance of the cookie banner.

Grant Trahant (08:41):

God, that's huge, man!

Adriaan van Rossum (08:42):

Because people don't really like that banner.

Grant Trahant (08:44):

Needs to be on the homepage.

Adriaan van Rossum (08:47):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there's a lot of differences also coming to that cookie banner in the future, there's very likely that there should be a yes and a no button. Now I imagine how many people just click the no button? Yeah, I think a lot of people will just hit no, and then the cookie banner is gone and you can't track your users anymore. So what do you do? Then you have this whole gap in your Google Analytics account where there's no data coming in. So then you think like, okay, I'm missing out now, but what portion do I miss out? You don't know. And that's also why some people that use Google Analytics, they also use Simple Analytics next to it. So then they enable Google Analytics at the moment when people consent to the cookie.

Speaker 3 (09:32):

And Ahh

Adriaan van Rossum (09:32):

Then they trigger Google Analytics. But before that, they have simple analytics also running because then they get the whole picture, the big picture of their visitors.

Grant Trahant (09:42):

Interesting, interesting. What would you recommend, is there such thing as, is there enough tools out there to create a privacy tech stack for a small business or a founder or even personally? Is there ways to have different tools that you would recommend to start building more of a privacy ecosystem for yourself or your small business

Adriaan van Rossum (10:07):

Analytics? I think we neared one and you see a lot of copycats or at least a lot of more tools in that space. But what I don't really get is that there's so much other space within privacy friendly tools where there's not that much products yet, but there's coming more and more. I also had a website where I would list all privacy products, but I took it down because it wasn't that popular.

Grant Trahant (10:40):

What email do you use because you use it?

Adriaan van Rossum (10:42):

I use Proton Mill.

Grant Trahant (10:43):

Okay.

Adriaan van Rossum (10:44):

But I wouldn't recommend it because Protein Mill does a very good thing about being privacy friendly, as in they encrypt their mill very well, so it's encrypted as in if it's in your mailbox, they can't view it anymore, they can't see it anymore. You still need to trust them because emails are sent in plain text to their server so they can make a copy. But I think they're a trustable business that doesn't do that. But it comes with a lot of downsides. For example, you can't search in the body of your email, so if you search in your search bar, you can only search on subject and recipients and stuff, but not on the body text

Grant Trahant (11:23):

Copy,

Adriaan van Rossum (11:24):

Which is super important for email. And that's something they are trying to build and it's still not there. So I think if that feature is there, then I would recommend using Button Mill until that time. I don't really know a good alternative for email.

Grant Trahant (11:39):

What about browser wise? Brave? Would Brave be?

Adriaan van Rossum (11:42):

Brave would be a good option. Safari also cares about privacy and Firefox. I personally use Firefox with a few extensions and block trackers and stuff like that, including the privacy friendly trackers, unfortunately. But that's all different subject. And so yeah, I use Fire Folks and I use Megas for somewhat more privacy friendly os, which I'm doubting recently because they have telemetry set up with the apps you use and stuff like that. So there's a little bit of debate of the Apple marketing versus the real Apple.

Grant Trahant (12:21):

I always think about whether Apple could do it or another company could do it where they build a competitor search to Google and I think Apple still hasn't for, I don't know, they still haven't looked at sort of the business market to go to and say, Hey, you get search and you get whatever. They have a Google Docs equivalent, but it's not great and they try their business email. The email has been bad, but I think they could still do, I feel like they could do a business suite around privacy and people would pay. If you bundled search with

(12:57):

A tonne of other Google Docs equivalent or sheets and email, business email, I think there's still an opportunity for them to do it or have another company come in and offer the business suite like Google has. There's really not a suite like that out there. I'm like, I can't use Microsoft, I just can't do it. I can't do it. So Google is really the only kind of option right now. But you think there's an opportunity for a startup or for Apple to come in and be a competitor to Google Workplace right now? I think now it's what it's called.

Adriaan van Rossum (13:30):

Yeah. I think that you'd come from Europe. I'm a very big fan of the EU as in it's, a lot of countries get together, it is a bit the same as the us also a lot of states working together, but in Europe there's no real tech vibe or there's no big tech companies right? In Europe. And I think there's a lot of funding coming from the EU to build tools that are similar to a US product, but then in the eu, just from a privacy perspective.

Speaker 3 (14:02):

Interesting.

Adriaan van Rossum (14:02):

So if a lot of good companies going after the money, then we can expect a few tools like Google Docs and Sheets and stuff like that working seamlessly together at the same time. I think it's very hard to build a good product like that. So as long as they copy almost everything, then it's fine. But if they go their own way, it'll probably be a ship product. So yeah, my hope is a little bit on that Money of the eu.

Grant Trahant (14:33):

Yeah, no, I think it's just from being here four months or so or five months now, there's a lot going on here from I think just an investment standpoint and just startups being invested throughout the EU and specifically just around the region here is pretty interesting. There's a lot of companies moving here. There's a lot of really big US companies that have sort of their quasi headquarters here, which is really interesting. So I think you'll get a little bit of innovation around a lot of different areas. To go back to Nalytics real quick, what sort of analytics do you get? Is it pretty much the same as you would get through Google Analytics platform?

Adriaan van Rossum (15:17):

Well, the big difference is that Simple Analytics doesn't track users or visitors. So it's definitely different than Google Analytics because Google Analytics tracks your visitors, which is super useful as well. It's not only bad, but it's super useful. So you can say like, oh, visitor that yesterday visited my website, is now a returning visitor. For example, with Simple Analytics, you can't do that because you don't know the person visiting is the same person as yesterday. So you have no clue who the person is and also know that he's returning. So there are some differences between Google Analytics and Simple Analytics or between cookie based analytics or tracking analytics versus non cookie non tracking. So there's a few things that are impossible. So one of them is Sessions. You don't record sessions. So for example, you can't say, oh, a user has five page views in a session or

Speaker 3 (16:16):

Whatever.

Adriaan van Rossum (16:17):

So those things you can't say, but with the data you can still do a lot. For example, you can still get uniques because browser always sends the referral of the previous page to the next page. So you're basically saying, oh, this person comes from to go navigates to Simple Analytics. I can see it's coming from Duke to go for example. That way you can say, oh, this is unique visitor. Because if the person was coming from simple Analytics slash contact going to another page, then you can see like, oh, this person is coming from simple Analytics. So it's a non-unique visitor, so you can still do some smart things to get uniques and stuff like that. And what tics does very well is making it very easy in the overview. So

Grant Trahant (17:07):

That's the big one that I saw is that you still get the overview of the main

Speaker 3 (17:11):

Stuff,

Grant Trahant (17:12):

You still get location, you still get page views, you still get the overall big things for just like that is a simple overview of what's going on.

Adriaan van Rossum (17:23):

And at the same time we make it look very simple from the surface, but you still can do a lot. For example, you can search everything and there's a search icon with every type of data point basically. So you can search refers, you can search UTM codes, you can search pages, maybe you have long tail pages and you want to just go very quickly to that. Well try to do that in Google Analytics. It's complicated.

(17:51):

It's already complicated to see where your long-term pages are. So stuff like that is very important for Simple Analytics. And also from a privacy point, we don't see that, well, we don't say that the data is our data. The data is from our customers. So if you add data to our platform from your visitors, it is your data. We don't say like, oh, we own it or we transfer, right? Or whatever. No, it's your data. And that's also how we act on it. So you can download it in so many ways. If you have no code tools, you just have URLs with CS V, you can download, you have email reports that you can get in your email and very extensive APIs that people use to build their own reports. Interesting.

Grant Trahant (18:34):

How's installation? Is it the same as Google Analytics? As far as it is just a simple snippet of,

Adriaan van Rossum (18:40):

It's a bit simpler as well than Google Analytics. I recently did a comparison with Simple Analytics and Google Analytics, and Google is obviously slowing your website down quite a bit, Simple Analytics, so that was pretty great to measure. But then I also went into their tool to grab their snippet just for copy pasting in the website. It is complicated already. You have so many options, you can do so much. It is very overwhelming. And in the office here, the coworking space, I hear a lot of people complaining like, oh, I need to instal Google Analytics. It's not copy pasting a script anymore. It's like finding out bot script unique and all that stuff. And the big difference is with Google Analytics, you need a website id and with Simple Analytics, we thought every website already has an id that's URL. So it's unique for every website. So we just use that. So you can just copy the paste, copy and paste the same script on all your websites without changing website IDs and it just works.

Grant Trahant (19:46):

Awesome. When we go down the path of making the tool better and being at it, you are trying to simplify everything. Is there room for what are some room for innovation and more features? How would that work? But yet to keep it simple, is there ways to make it do more things without being complex, without getting out of control? What happens with Google products?

Adriaan van Rossum (20:13):

Yeah, we have to watch out for that. It's very hard because you have lot of requests from customers, oh, I want this, I want that. And you can all cram it in the tool, but then you become Google Analytics, right? Complex analytics,

Speaker 3 (20:28):

Yeah,

Adriaan van Rossum (20:29):

You don't want have that made. So yeah, that's definitely difficult. So we try to do is make it still accessible but not for the simple user. So if you just visit the dashboard, it feels simple to understand

(20:48):

And that's important. And the things that are more complex and for example, search in it, it is just hidden a bit. So you need to know it's there and you click it and then it triggers some more advanced search. For example, events is also a good example that can be complicated quite quickly. It's hard to grasp how events work, how conversions work, stuff like that. So most of the time developing that feature is like, okay, talk with customers. How would you understand this? Making it more simple, making it more simple and even more simple, and eventually you have something that people understand from the start.

Grant Trahant (21:26):

Could it work for e-commerce?

Adriaan van Rossum (21:29):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. So for example, if you have a flow, let's say a signup form or a checkout form, you can say like, okay, we have a landing event for example, and a checkout event on that signup form. And then you can see, okay, 50 people started the form and only 40 people submitted the form. There's something going wrong or Well, I think it's quite okay conversion in this case.

Grant Trahant (21:58):

Yeah, that's pretty good. I think something's going right,

Adriaan van Rossum (22:01):

Something's going, 80% is checking out, so that's good. But yeah, in case it's different numbers, then you know where to work on.

Grant Trahant (22:11):

Go back into tools real quick. Personally, you running the company, what is the tech stack that you use tools wise to kind of navigate every day, every week, just sort of running the company.

Adriaan van Rossum (22:26):

So we use a bunch of tools. One very privacy friendly tool is Keybase, it is a Slack, but then end-to-end encrypted. Also, it's hard to recommend this one because it's not as polished as Slack is, for example. Sometimes you need to wait for a download or whatever. It is not perfect, but that's bit, that's the downside of privacy friendly products that are not doing, trying to do too much or something like that. Same with Signal. It's a little bit off topic, but Signal is also, it doesn't have that same feeling as Telegram, for example. But I think we'll get there. Other tool I use is VSCode for coding..

(23:13):

Use HelpScout for email support to run our support team. GitHub for the code and Telegram for alerts and stuff. So sometimes you want to have server alerts or you want to have errors from server, you want to get it on your phone, stuff like that. And a few tools on the road. So on my phone I can also log into my servers, I can code and I can change stuff and code on the phone. I don't really code on the phone if it's really needed, can change some files on my phone. Interesting. Just by logging into the servers.

Grant Trahant (23:51):

You said HelpScout and so that's sort of a customer service type of tool

Adriaan van Rossum (23:55):

Yeah.

Grant Trahant (23:56):

Okay. We talk about privacy and maybe end on a little bit of the future and maybe what's coming and what's possible. I guess more things are becoming possible, like you said, maybe Telegram and Signal, not quite there yet, but three to five years eventually could change pretty drastically. So what do you see coming down the pipe in regards to privacy? Google can't really talk about it, right? Facebook, there's some companies that are just like, they're almost irrelevant to the conversation. Their whole reason for existing is against that mantra. Apple is in a good space. I think anybody who has built their own infrastructure and ecosystem from the ground up has an opportunity to build out more privacy. So where do you see the space going and is it a positive way to go? Even privacy social network, very weird to say, but I think people would pay for Twitter without having all the BS that comes along with it.

(25:01):

I think they're starting to do something right, but I see tonnes of people that would pay for platforms like Twitter rates like five bucks a month or something like that to have all the BS out and have it how you want it.

Adriaan van Rossum (25:14):

Yeah, I think the group that cares about privacy is getting bigger, so then it becomes more easy to develop products for that group because the group is growing and especially the group that wants to pay for tools is also growing I guess. So that's great because then you can build tools and earn money from it because I think it's very important for businesses, even if they're in a privacy space or especially in a privacy space to charge money. We don't charge money. For example, you have CloudFlare Analytics, it's free. It's like, okay, but how I'm paying the servers cost money. You develop the tool, it costs money. Where's the money coming from? So you have all these questions where you don't really have answers to. Same with Google Analytics. They don't create Google Analytics, which probably costs millions to run per month.

Grant Trahant (26:08):

The team is huge, I'm sure.

Adriaan van Rossum (26:10):

Team is huge, infrastructure is huge, and they have tonnes of data, so they need to be paid from somewhere. So they have the great way for fueling ads with the data, which is also in their terms. So they have reasons to not charge money.

(26:28):

But for all the others that just starting out, if you charge money, you don't have to look for different business models, which I think is great because then I would rather pay if I download the new app or whatever, I'd rather pay for it than not knowing where my data ends up, especially if it's an App where I put personal photos or whatever.

(26:52):

So I think that that area is changing a bit for the good. I also think regulations are definitely pushing us in the right directions. Well, in the EU it started with the GDPR and then before that the EPR directive, you see a lot of other countries now following up on that, which is great even outside of Europe. That's awesome. So I think the legal aspects also will improve, but I don't really see happening soon is free products to be successful that much. I think social network for example, I think it's very hard to make social network being a big network. Maybe it works, but I don't think you'll reach the mass with

Grant Trahant (27:33):

Social networks probably a bad word. I guess more like communities where it's much more niche where you don't need to be on the platform with a billion people.

Adriaan van Rossum (27:44):

Substack for example. It's a good example of the paid works in communities. Also, when I started Simple analytics, I really wanted to be surrounded with people that are similar. So I also paid for a work in progress, for example. It's also a paid community, which really helps for accountability and stuff like that. So I really believe in paid communities. But the mass, I'm not sure how that would work.

Grant Trahant (28:09):

Yeah, no, I paid for a few communities, but they just have an annual fee or just a lifetime thing rather than a monthly thing. It's almost like buying a pair of shoes or something. You don't continually pay, even though you wear 'em a lot, you don't pay monthly for your shoes. And that's what I'm going to try out with the platform we were talking about earlier, the investor platform, it just a one one-time payment for just access to it and I'll keep building in it and keep going, but it helps the creator and the builder to invest more time in the product and keep building it and making it better rather than you just dedicate so much time to it and to be free. It is so hard. It is nearly impossible to build a good product, especially by yourself for free. It needs to be a little bit up there, whether it's just something small. And I think to me, I like doing the one time payment thing because it's just, again, it's like buying a backpack or something like that. You just do it one time and that's sort of it. Then you can access forever, which I think is a really, it's a different approach for a media product. Like digital products we're kind of used to being free or monthly, this SaaS model, and I think that might change a little bit. I think people will probably actually get away from doing

Adriaan van Rossum (29:28):

From the monthly payments.

Grant Trahant (29:29):

I think monthly because I think companies, I think you do a great job of offering the annual price is so much better than the monthly price and I'd rather just pay it annually because one, you just get such a better price, but then it's just like you don't have to worry about it as much. I don't know. I like the annual thing and then the lifetime thing more, especially for early stage just ideas companies or startups that are bootstrapped in one person. I think it's a good way to just get early funding and try to build what you want to build.

Adriaan van Rossum (30:06):

Especially at the start, I think it's good to have more customers than, for example, with Simple Analytics, I kind of regret to not make it available for a bigger public in the beginning, but at the same time you want to validate your product for a price that you eventually want to charge. So I think I started with $9 per month, but maybe in the beginning I should make it cheaper, but then it's hard to validate. So this choice is very hard because when you make it cheaper, people expect it to be cheaper and then all the next customers will also want to have it for the price. And then if you increase it, it will maybe push down all those customers or whatever.

Grant Trahant (30:48):

Are you bootstrapping everything?

Adriaan van Rossum (30:50):

Yeah. Yeah.

Grant Trahant (30:51):

What's your thoughts on funding if somebody started a privacy fund? I think, I don't even know if they exist, but I mean there might be one out there that invest in privacy startups, but it should if it doesn't I guess. But would you think about raising money? What your thought process around bootstrapping versus raising a little bit of money to kind of scale

Adriaan van Rossum (31:12):

Faster? If I have a clear target for the money or clear goal for the money, I would probably do it. But at this time I basically want to have a comfortable life and I want to do work that I actually enjoy. So I combine those two, building my own business. And I think if you attract outside the money, you will get a different job. You will be more of a manager, have less to say in your own business and eventually they'll maybe grow to, I know millions a month, but your job changed quite a bit and I still want to have a fun job. So I'm not sure if that would be a fun job for me.

Grant Trahant (31:53):

Yeah, yeah. Well I appreciate you taking the time, man. This is great to get to chat in person and get to chat about the product and everything that you've had going on, everything you've sort of built so far. So congrats on the project, the project and the progress and cheers to the next sort of five years of 10 years of having fun and building a cool product, my man. Thank you.

Adriaan van Rossum (32:17):

Thanks a lot.

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