saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #11 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Marko from Plausible Analytics. He joins the podcast for a refreshingly honest conversation about what seven years of bootstrapped growth actually looks like.

Plausible started with one visitor from Google in an entire day. Today it has 16,000 paying customers, a team of 10, and a churn rate that's stayed below 4% for four years running. And it was all built on what Marko calls "boring marketing."

In this episode:

→ The single blog post that drove more traffic in 4 hours than the previous year combined

→ Why going open source almost became their biggest threat

→ What ChatGPT traffic actually converts like vs. Google

→ How word of mouth becomes a growth engine you don't have to manage

→ Why Plausible ignores every acquisition and investor email

----------- Episode's Chapters -----------

0:05 — Intro & Plausible Overview

4:49 — Going Open Source: Lessons & Pitfalls

8:58 — SEO, Content Marketing & AI Discovery

17:04 — Building Brand & Trust Over Time

20:24 — The Early Plateau & How Marko Joined

22:18 — Spotting & Solving Growth Plateaus

29:33 — The Boring Marketing Strategy & Growth Loop

32:36 — Metrics, Churn & Support as a Marketing Tool

38:56 — What Worries a Bootstrapped Founder

42:13 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure

45:01 — Founder Hack: Async, Autonomous Team Culture

Marko - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markosaric/

Plausible Analytics - https://plausible.io

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