Jack Ellis: Fathom Analytics from Tweet Mockup to Independent Privacy SaaS
A technical founder joined a near-shutdown privacy analytics project in 2019, rebuilt the stack, and bought out his co-founder to stay independent.
- MRR
- Not publicly disclosed (publicly discussed early $10k milestone)
- ARR
- Not publicly disclosed
- Users
- Thousands of paying customers; millions of websites
- Founded
- 2018
- Team
- Small remote team
- Stack
- Laravel, AWS / serverless, ClickHouse, privacy-first collection
How did Fathom Analytics begin?
Fathom started with a tweet. On April 16, 2018, designer and author Paul Jarvis posted a mockup of a simple analytics dashboard and asked what people thought of analytics software that did not mine visitor data for advertising. The response was strong enough that he moved forward. He partnered with developer Danny van Kooten (known for MC4WP) to build an open-source version first. That version gained traction on GitHub and Product Hunt.
They followed it with a hosted PRO product so non-developers could use it without self-hosting. Revenue started to appear. Then Danny stepped away at the end of 2018. He had a new child and another product generating more income. Paul considered shutting the PRO side down and letting the open-source project fade. Around the same time he was collaborating with Jack Ellis on an unrelated project. When Jack heard Danny had left, he offered to step in as technical co-founder. They incorporated in Canada and kept going.
Jack’s first major task was a full rebuild. The original system was written in Go, used a distributed multi-server setup with one database per customer, and was not structured the way he preferred for long-term maintenance. He rewrote the hosted product in Laravel, moved it toward better scaling architecture (initially Heroku, later serverless options), and split concerns so collection, API, and billing could scale independently. They later migrated large volumes of data with zero-loss requirements. By late 2019 they had shipped a V2 that felt like a solid foundation rather than a fragile early version.
What is the product and why does it exist?
Fathom is a privacy-first, cookieless website analytics tool. It gives site owners useful numbers (visitors, page views, referrers, campaigns) without collecting personal data or requiring cookie consent banners for the analytics themselves. The business model is straightforward: charge a fair price for the software instead of selling visitor data. The official about page notes that the company has processed billions of pageviews, serves millions of customer websites, and has thousands of paying customers. Customers include companies that care about privacy (examples mentioned publicly over the years have included GitHub, IBM, and Buffer).
The product has always been positioned against the bulk and tracking of Google Analytics. Simplicity is a deliberate constraint. Adding every possible chart and filter would recreate the complexity they set out to avoid. Pricing is based on pageview volume, with plans starting in the mid-teens of dollars per month and scaling upward. Every plan includes multiple sites. They have run a referral/partners program that pays 25% lifetime commission; Jack has publicly noted that affiliate partners have earned $250,000 over the life of the program.
The company remains self-funded and customer-funded. There has been no venture capital. Official materials repeatedly emphasize independence, zero personal data sold, and sustainability through charging for the product.
How has ownership and the team evolved?
Jack joined as technical co-founder in early 2019. For years the business was run by the two of them, later with a small remote team. In December 2024 Jack announced that he had acquired full ownership. Paul was ready to step back after years of building online businesses; Jack wanted to continue. They reached an agreement quickly and formalized it. Paul remains available for some design work on a freelance basis. Jack wrote that nothing fundamental would change about the product, ethics, or team, and that he would put more effort into enterprise conversations and paid channels while remaining independent.
The company has grown every month since launch according to the founders’ public statements. They have discussed early milestones (including the first $10k MRR) on their podcast and blog. Exact current monthly or annual recurring revenue figures are not regularly published by the founders themselves. Third-party estimates circulate online, but those should be treated as estimates rather than audited numbers. What is clear from primary sources is consistent growth, profitability, and a deliberate choice to stay small and independent rather than raise outside capital or sell to private equity.
Jack continues to share technical details publicly: database migrations (including large moves involving billions of rows), security practices around the analytics script, infrastructure choices, and lessons from outages or incidents. The company has also made at least one acquisition (Gauges, an older real-time analytics product).
What does distribution and growth look like?
Early growth came from Paul’s existing audience (newsletter and Twitter), the open-source project, Product Hunt launches, and word of mouth from people who preferred a simpler, privacy-respecting alternative. The product itself reduces friction: no cookie banners required for analytics, fast script, clear dashboard. Referral commissions create a secondary channel. Later they have experimented with more structured partners programs and, after the ownership change, indicated willingness to spend more on sponsorships and advertising while keeping the core model intact.
Support and product decisions stay close to the founders and small team. Public writing (blog posts on migrations, security, pricing philosophy, and the acquisition announcement) serves both as documentation and as ongoing trust-building. Jack’s X account is used for technical updates rather than daily revenue screenshots.
Lessons that still feel relevant
A single validating tweet or mockup can create enough signal to start, but the hard part is deciding to continue when a co-founder leaves. Jack’s willingness to take over the technical side at a fragile moment turned a possible shutdown into a multi-year business.
Rebuilds are sometimes necessary. Moving from Go and a distributed setup to Laravel and better architecture bought maintainability and the ability to handle growth without constant firefighting. The cost was months of focused work, but it created a foundation that has lasted.
Independence is a choice that has to be defended repeatedly. Offers from private equity and other buyers have appeared; the founders declined them. When one co-founder wanted to exit, they structured an internal buyout rather than selling the company. That preserved the original constraints: no VC pressure, customer-funded, privacy as a non-negotiable.
Finally, not every metric needs to be public. Fathom has shared enough about early milestones, affiliate payouts, customer scale, and operational decisions for outsiders to understand the shape of the business, while keeping exact current revenue figures private. That choice reduces some of the performative pressure common in build-in-public circles and still leaves a clear, durable story.
The result is a profitable, bootstrapped analytics company that has outlasted the initial open-source experiment, survived a co-founder transition, and remains under the control of the person who rebuilt the product. In a category dominated by free tools that monetize data, charging for privacy and simplicity has proven sustainable.
More stories
Meta
The Portfolio Pattern: Why Top Indie Makers Run Multiple Products
Product Origin
Marc Lou: The Week ShipFast Changed Everything
Mature
Pieter Levels (Part 2): Nomad List & Remote OK — The Original Audience Engine
Profitable
Jon Yongfook: Bannerbear — Automated Image Generation to Solid ARR
Educator + Builder
Arvid Kahl: From FeedbackPanda Exit to Teaching Bootstrappers
Early Growth
Fernando Mendes: ScanQueue — QR Queues for Real Businesses
Scale
Danny Postma: HeadshotPro — AI Headshots to Six-Figure Months
Scale
Tony Dinh: TypingMind from 5-Day Build to $130K+/mo
Mature Solo
Pieter Levels: Photo AI to $100K+/mo with One PHP File
Portfolio Scale
Marc Lou: From 20+ Failed Projects to $80K+/mo Solo Portfolio
Mature Solo / Small team
Justin Jackson: Transistor.fm from $33 MRR to a Calm Multi-Million Business
Scale
Charlie Clark: Liinks from Side Project to $31K+ MRR Solo
Scale
Marko Saric: Plausible Analytics from Cold Email to 21k+ Subscribers
Scale
Marie Martens: Bootstrapping Tally from a Failed Travel Startup to $6M ARR
Scale
Tibo Louis-Lucas: From Repeated Failures and an Earnout Exit to a Self-Reported $1M+ MRR Portfolio
Scale
John O'Nolan: Ghost from Kickstarter to $10M+ ARR Non-Profit
Mature / Profitable
Sahil Lavingia: Gumroad from Unicorn Dream to Profitable Creator Platform
Acquired
Josh Pigford: Baremetrics from 7-Day Side Project to $4M Exit
Scale
Damon Chen: Testimonial.to from $1.99 in Failures to $100K+ MRR
Scale
John Rush: From VC Startups to a Bootstrapped Portfolio Built on Unicorn Platform
Mature
Courtland Allen: Indie Hackers from Failed Startups to Stripe Acquisition and Back
Scale
AJ: Carrd from Side Project to $1.2M ARR on $19/Year Pricing
Scale
Dmytro Krasun: ScreenshotOne from Solo API to $33K+ MRR
Growth
Steven Tey: From Vercel Side Project to Modern Link Attribution with Dub.co
Growth
Ashraf Samhouri: Activepieces from Closed Automation Frustration to Open-Source Platform
Scale
Jan Oberhauser: n8n from Side Project to AI Automation Platform
Scale
