Above Board

Paul has once again quit the internet, but this time he’s left Twitter (namely, this personal Twitter account). What does this mean for Fathom, if anything? NFTs were the final (minor) straw Fathom’s recent launch of FathomCatz was the final straw in my decision to leave Twitter behind. I was excited to launch this fun new project, thought through the environmental aspect of blockchain things, and...

Jack and Paul get into the pros and cons of indie companies sharing their MRR and MRR milestones publicly. There’s definitely an appeal to sharing this, as many companies do, but is it worth doing, or more importantly, actually helpful, useful or beneficial to do so? Or, is sharing your gross revenue, just gross?

In today’s episode Jack and Paul get into why they had to roll back a piece of a new feature they spent a year building (and had to delete an episode of this show). As well as touching on why ad-blockers hate us in the most misguided way, why our EU isolation is such an important feature, and most importantly, why Fathom doesn’t simply guess at privacy laws - we hire multiple experts to inform our...

Sometimes Jack and Paul feel like every day is groundhog day, and that not much changes day-to-day. But in reality, lots has been launched, updated, changed, and made progress on. Including: a content survey, a new freelance writer, Fathom NFTs, open-sourcing a Fathom project, disabling MRR emails and how we think about support as it relates to growth.

Jack and Paul get into all the things that have been happening behind the scenes at Fathom Analytics, including: a new graph, some nerdy details about infrastructure updates, better labels for data on our dashboard, the new high traffic page, and our latest multi-domains feature.

Jack and Paul discuss what it means to work in public and tweet about “coming soon” features. They also talk about how the momentum from releasing new features plays a pivot role in Fathom’s growth, and how it’s simply not possible to stay on the feature momentum train at all times. usefathom.com/above-board

On today’s show, Jack and Paul speak to the enigmatic and mysterious founder of Carrd, “AJ”. Carrd is a single page website builder that started in 2016 and now has over 2 million users, 3 million sites and is doing over $1 million in ARR. Our conversation covered how Carrd caught on and grew, what led Kim Kardashian to share a Carrd website, and why AJ decided to accept venture capital funding fo...

Should you compete on price? Should you go after lots of smaller customers or a few massive customers? In this episode Jack and Paul have an honest conversation about who Fathom is for, and who Fathom isn’t for. They discuss pricing, enterprise customers, and how they are adapting the business to be more in line with the specific type of customers that best suit the software.

Jack and Paul figure out live, on-the-air, how they want to approach bringing more people into Fathom to work on the core product and integrations. They also cover the “VC vs non-VC: fight!” debate and where Fathom’s operating philosophy fits.

Jack and Paul get candid about the behind-the-scenes of launching a major software product release (previously known as “v3). What went wrong, what went right, how feedback is going, and of course, what’s next.

In this episode Jack and Paul speak with Julia Angwin, the co-founder and editor in chief of The Markup, a newsroom who uses technology to investigate technology (Big Tech). The conversation covered why The Markup is a non-profit, what their methods for investigating are, why digital privacy is important, and what the potential solutions are to fixing Big Tech’s inclinations towards deviousness.

Caffeine is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the world. Jack’s gone from 6 or more shots of espresso daily to cold turkey—and has been noticing a clearer head and improved thought processes. As well as a lively discussion about caffeine, Jack and Paul chat about the latest news from WWDC as it relates to privacy, as well as a brand new (secret) Fathom podcast project which Paul is worki...

Jack and Paul share their views on the turmoil at Basecamp and why they deleted the episode of this podcast that featured DHH. They also talk a lot about what’s coming as far as updates to Fathom (and v3), and why Fathom has switched from “coming soon” marketing to “now” marketing… and what that means. https://usefathom.com/podcast/basecamp

Today Paul caught up with Rand Fiskhin, co-founder of Sparktoro (market research + audience intelligence SaaS). They spoke about starting a business at the start of the pandemic, why aggregated data (i.e. trends) can useful, why Rand isn’t growing a huge company but hiring consultants instead. And, of course a lively debate about digital privacy and targeted advertising.

https://usefathom.com/podcast

Jack and Paul give their professional(ish) opinion the weight and risks of using external scripts on a website. They talk about what is considered with Fathom's embed script and what the ramifactions are of other scripts (like Facebook). There's also a touch of cryptocurrency, pair programming and a smattering of database migration too.

A quick catchup with Jack “and team” about what’s going on with Fathom and our upcoming V3 release. As well as why we believe ad-blockers got it wrong about unilaterally blocking all third-party scripts… and why that’s fired us up to create something that’s (as Jack puts it), “completely unblockable”. Here more episodes at usefathom.com/podcast

A virtual cornucopia of topics in this week’s show. We cover getting an amazing new customer using Fathom, the DogeCoin revolution and investing in general, and of course, some very specific details and features that are coming soon to Version 3 of Fathom.

If you’re starting a new business (like a SaaS) you may think, “let’s make this a really low price so that everyone will use it because it’s really cheap”. A race to the bottom in pricing is never a good idea (both for you or your customers). Jack and Paul discuss why the best-case scenario with that idea is you’ll get screwed by your own growth. usefathom.com

What happened when Paul quit the internet? What does it mean for Fathom? What does it mean for Jack now having to field every Paul-related tweet? This, and talking about professionalism/tone as a business, all in today’s episode. usefathom.com

In this episode Jack and Paul speak with Bron Gondwana, the CEO of Fastmail and how they’ve managed to run their privacy-focused email software since 1999. The conversation covers balancing privacy with real-world usability, competing with one of the worlds biggest tech company, why they no longer offer a free product, and much more. usefathom.com

A malicious person decided they wanted to have a go at ruining our company and it’s reputation. In this episode Paul interviews Jack about a high level attack that was targeted at Fathom Analytics. We cover what happened, how we responded and talked to our customers about it, and then what we’re doing to mitigate this type of threat in the future. usefathom.com

Jack and Paul connect with DuckDuckGo’s Communications Manager, Daniel Davis to chat about their search business, DDG's take on digital privacy, and how DDG competes with big tech (Google). This is the first of many episodes where we speak with other companies in the digital privacy space. usefathom.com

Jack and Paul talk about taking a short break from this show until November or so. Also hear Paul lose his sh*t about the state of banking in Canada, a bit more on enterprise sales processes, and how they're slightly tweaking their charitable donations. usefathom.com

Jack and Paul get into a smorgasbord of topics on today’s show including: Jack’s Laracon talk, building an audience, what to do about all the virtue signalling in the ethical product space and much, European privacy laws and their impact on American businesses and services, and much more. usefathom.com