---
title: "Fathom"
date: 2024-12-01
tags: post
---

I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly good reason to do so until [the news broke that Paul Jarvis was selling his share of the company to Jack Ellis, the technical co-founder](https://usefathom.com/blog/acquired). [^1]

Anyway, the two thoughts:

1. I think Fathom is a _picture-perfect_ example of how to succeed in a niche that would otherwise be considered a fool's errand. Their biggest competitor is Google who is considered to own the industry and gives away the product for free, and almost entirely through counterpositioning and branding they are/were able to carve out a significant amount of revenue.
2. Paul is, to my knowledge, the _only_ person who achieved significant success from branding and marketing themselves as a thought leader and then, rather than double down on the onanistic meta-spiral of "here's how you become an author/creator", completely pivoted to SaaS and left the zeitgeist behind. Incredible!

The market for [Google Analytics alternatives](https://buttondown.com/comparison-guides/google-analytics-alternatives) is crowded in 2024 compared to 2020; I'm still very happy that Buttondown's using Fathom. (Though, Jack and Paul, please — funnel support would be really nice.)

[^1]: The blog post itself is a great example of Fathom's deftness at threading the needle between being annoyingly clickbaity and being effective. [See also the cake](https://x.com/usefathom/status/1676679375717285891).