It's 9:47 AM on a Tuesday. You open Google Analytics 4, hoping to understand a sudden drop in signups. An hour later, you've built custom reports, googled "GA4 event parameters" more times than you want to admit, and watched half a tutorial only to end up with more confusion than clarity.

If this feels familiar, it's not just you. And it's not a lack of effort or skill.

You’re Not Imagining It

You know you need data. Every business book, every advisor, every investor says the same thing: "Be data-driven." But every simple question becomes a mini-investigation:

• How many visitors does my website get?

• Why did conversions drop?

• Which marketing channel is actually driving results?

Tools like GA4 offer endless metrics but very few explanations. You receive a lot of data but no answers.

A recent survey revealed that over 75% of SEOs were frustrated using GA4, with the platform facing criticism for being designed more for enterprise users than small businesses.

The Gap Nobody Talks About

What most people don't realize is that tools like GA4 were shaped by the needs of large enterprises with BI teams and data engineers. Throughout my career, I've worked in enterprise environments where entire data teams manage what looks like "simple" dashboards. Behind the scenes are pipelines, schemas, QA cycles, and analysts who translate everything for stakeholders. If it takes a full team to answer "Why did signups drop?" with major analytics tools, what chance do solo founders or small teams have?

Most businesses don't need every metric. They need a few insights that actually explain what's happening.

Instead, they spend hours sifting through overwhelming data, losing productive time that should go into improving their product, fixing friction points, or optimizing sales funnel. The tool meant to help you make faster decisions becomes the bottleneck.

Current Analytics Market Landscape

The analytics market splits into two camps, with neither serving small teams well.

Simple & Beautiful, but Incomplete

Tools like Plausible, Fathom, and Umami excel at what they do. Their scripts load instantly and their dashboards are clean, but they lack analytical depth. They won't show you user journeys, profile-level insights, or audience segments.

Powerful & Complex, but Overwhelming

On the other end: Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Contensquare, PostHog. These tools can track almost everything: user journeys, event streams, cohort analysis, the works. But they assume you have time to configure dozens of custom events and build reports from scratch. These aren't beginner tools. They're power tools that require training and a data team.

Why We're Building Poterna

We got tired of choosing between "simple but limited" and "powerful but overwhelming."

Imagine opening your analytics on Monday morning and immediately understanding what changed, why it changed, what yesterday's efforts actually influenced, and what to focus on next. Not through 20 charts and googling "what website hits in GA4 mean," but through simple explanations backed by clean data.

Our vision is to build analytics that shows your complete user journey without needing a data team. Simple enough to get insights in minutes, powerful enough to answer the questions that actually matter for growth.

This isn't about fancy dashboards or AI buzzwords. It's about removing the friction so analytics supports decisions rather than slowing you down.

Join Us on our Journey

We're inviting teams to try Poterna now.

Register for early access and you'll:

• Get immediate access to the platform

• Work directly with our founding team to shape Poterna's vision

• Influence the features we build next based on your real needs

Early adopters are co-creators. Your feedback doesn't go into a suggestion box; it goes straight into our product roadmap.

Ready to stop fighting your analytics? Create your account and see the difference.