How Simple Analytics got its users

Buy the room before you have anything to show. Adriaan had no following. He bought access instead: a desk at TQ in Amsterdam, membership of the WIP makers community, a reactivated dormant Twitter. Those rooms produced the launch assets he could not make himself, a designer and filmmakers. Copy the mechanic, not the city: one paid maker community, one physical room where founders sit. Membership is purchasable in an afternoon. An audience is not.

done whenBefore you ask them for anything, can you name five people who would react to your landing page copy within 24 hours? If not, you do not have a launch, you have a URL.

Pick the fight, accept the lottery. His Hacker News post went up at 7am PST from Amsterdam, framed as a cookieless Google Analytics replacement installed with two lines of code, the year GDPR landed. HN rewarded the position, not the founder: a technical crowd that already hated consent banners. The ranking itself is a lottery, say so. What you control is picking a fight the room is already having, and being awake when the US morning starts.

done whenWrite the one sentence your buyer already complains about unprompted. If your product is not the direct answer to that exact complaint, no launch post will rescue it.

Publish the cost lines, not the feelings. From October 2019 he ran a public open page: monthly revenue, the hosting bill, what he paid freelancers, customer count, plus a note on what shipped. Numbers with a cost line are why strangers link to you, and they work at zero followers because the artifact travels, not the person. He started this long after launch, so small numbers are not a reason to wait.

done whenPick the number in your business you would least like to publish. If publishing it would make you look small rather than dishonest, publish it this week.

Follow regulators, not trends. The blog tracks rulings: Austrian and Dutch authorities on Google Analytics, a German court on Meta's tracking, the EU move to kill cookie banners. Each is a dated public document, free to read the morning it drops. Being first needs no audience, only a calendar. The limit: Simple Analytics now has staff writing these, so run it as one recurring slot you will actually keep.

done whenName the regulator, standards body or platform whose decisions change your buyer's job. Is their announcement page in your reader right now? If you cannot name one, this step is not yours.

Make the product carry the founder. Customer dashboards can be made public and carry a powered by Simple Analytics link, and the sign-up button on those public pages was swapped for an affiliate link giving both sides a free month. Their own site's dashboard is public too. This keeps working the week the founder posts nothing. Founder-led without a product that introduces you is just a posting habit with a deadline.

done whenIf you went quiet for 90 days, name the thing inside your product that would still put your name in front of a stranger. If nothing, build that before writing the next post.