By Rafa Jiménez

Everyone talks about focus.

Books, podcasts, Twitter threads, conferences. “The key is to stay focused.” Right. Thanks. Very helpful.

The problem isn’t that nobody tells you. The problem is that knowing it is useless. Because focus isn’t a concept you understand. It’s a discipline you practice. And practicing it hurts.

I’d say it’s the hardest part of building a company. Not because it’s complex, but because it goes against everything that makes you an entrepreneur in the first place.

The enemy isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s the excess.

When you build something, your brain becomes an idea factory. Every customer conversation opens a door. Every podcast inspires a pivot. Every competitor launch creates urgency.

And you — a capable person (if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be building) — see opportunities where others see noise.

That’s exactly the problem.

Because the ability to see opportunities without the discipline to ignore most of them isn’t a strength.

It’s a trap.

The focus trap has a name

The interesting thing is that lack of focus doesn’t look the same in every role. But the result is always the same: lots of noise, little impact.

If you’re a Founder, your trap is trying to be everything at once. Product, sales, marketing, operations, culture. You believe that if you’re not on top of every piece, it falls apart. And maybe that was true at the beginning. But there comes a point where your presence in everything is exactly what prevents anything from working without you. Your company doesn’t scale because you don’t let go.

If you’re a CMO or leading marketing, your trap is the shiny new channel. SEO, paid, content, influencers, partnerships, events, webinars, TikTok, podcasts… every week there’s a channel you “should be testing.” And the pressure to prove ROI fast pushes you to spread budget across 8 channels instead of mastering 2. The result: presence everywhere, traction nowhere.

If you’re in the C-suite (COO, VP, C-level), your trap is the meeting. Your calendar is packed with “alignment sessions” and “syncs” that give you the illusion of progress. But at the end of the quarter you look at your OKRs and nothing has actually moved. Because being informed is not the same as being focused. And most meetings are about the former, not the latter.

The pattern is universal: the more capable you are, the more things you can do. And the more things you can do, the harder it is to choose the few that matter.

Geoffrey Moore already said it: this is a crisis

In Zone to Win, Geof

frey Moore dedicates his first chapter to something he calls “A Crisis of Prioritization.” And while Moore is talking about large tech companies, the lesson applies just as much to startups, scale-ups, and anyone leading a team.

His argument is devastating: disruptive innovations — whether they come from outside or you initiate them yourself — create a crisis of prioritization because there are never enough resources for everything. And the question most people avoid answering is: how much of what I have do I keep investing in what already works, and how much do I divert into what’s new?

Moore gives examples that sting. Companies with brilliant management teams — Nokia, Netscape, 3Com — that didn’t die from lack of talent or money. They died because they couldn’t manage that crisis of prioritization. They tried to be everywhere and mastered nothing.

And here’s the part that hit me hardest: Moore says the CEO must choose ONE — and only one — transformational initiative. Not two. Not three. One. Because putting two transformational initiatives in the transformation zone at the same time is, in his words, a “showstopper.” They cancel each other out.

Think about that. If a company with thousands of employees can only afford ONE big bet at a time, what makes you think that you — as a founder or CMO with limited resources — can chase five?

The crisis of prioritization isn’t a big-company problem. It’s THE problem for anyone who wants to build something that matters. And the solution isn’t more resources. It’s more discipline to choose.

What nobody wants to hear

Focus isn’t choosing what you do.

Focus is choosing what you DON’T do.

It’s saying no to that client who asks for a feature that takes you off the roadmap. It’s not opening that second acquisition channel when you haven’t mastered the first one. It’s resisting the temptation to build what’s fun and building what’s necessary instead.

And it hurts. Because every “no” feels like a missed opportunity.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: companies don’t die from a lack of opportunities. They die from chasing too many at once.

The brutal focus test

Ask yourself this right now:

If you could only work on ONE thing for the next 90 days — one single thing that would move the needle in your business — what would it be?

If it takes you more than 5 seconds to answer, you don’t have focus.

And that’s okay. It’s not a judgment. It’s a diagnosis. And diagnoses are the first step to getting better.

What I’ve learned (the hard way)

I’ve had weeks where I played CEO, CMO, sales, support, product, and strategy — and by Friday I felt like I hadn’t moved forward on anything.

Lots of motion. Zero progress.

The feeling is the worst: you’re exhausted, you’ve worked 60 hours, and you can’t point to ONE thing that actually changed in your business. Because you spread your energy across 14 fronts and on none of them did you go deep enough for anything to happen.

The lesson was brutal but necessary: speed without direction is just agitation.

Focus isn’t sexy. But it’s what works.

Nobody’s going to post on LinkedIn saying “Today I said no to 7 ideas that seemed great.” There’s no applause for quiet discipline.

But the entrepreneurs who win — the ones who actually build something that lasts — share one trait. They’re not the smartest, or the hardest working, or the ones with the best product.

They’re the ones who best choose where to put their limited energy.

Because energy is finite. Time is finite. Attention is finite.

And the market doesn’t reward whoever does the most things. It rewards whoever does ONE thing better than anyone else.

Your assignment this week

I’m not going to give you a 12-step framework. I’m going to give you one step:

Write on a piece of paper the most important thing you need to achieve in the next 90 days.

One single thing.

And every time something new feels urgent, look at that paper.

If it doesn’t contribute to that thing, it’s noise. And noise, no matter how good it sounds, is still noise.

Focus-hack: how to train focus with discipline

Knowing you need focus is easy. Maintaining it on a Tuesday at 11am when a brilliant idea hits you — that’s a different story. Here are tactics that work for me:

1. The “not yet” rule Every new idea that comes your way, don’t kill it. Write it on a list called “Not yet.” It’s not a no. It’s a “now is not the time.” This takes the anxiety out of your brain without derailing your execution. Review it every 90 days. You’ll be surprised how many ideas that felt urgent make zero sense three months later.

2. The filter question Before saying yes to anything, ask yourself one question: “If this works out, does it get me closer to my 90-day goal?” If the answer isn’t an immediate yes, it’s a no. It sounds radical. It is. But the alternative is saying yes to everything and finishing nothing.

3. Block the doing, not just the thinking Focus doesn’t live in your head. It lives in your calendar. If your #1 priority doesn’t have time blocks reserved in your schedule, it’s not a priority. It’s a wish. I block a minimum of 3 hours a day for pure execution. No Slack, no email, no “just one quick thing.” Those 3 hours produce more than the other 8 combined.

4. Weekly 10-minute audit Every Friday, before closing shop, answer this: “What percentage of my time this week went to my #1 goal?” If it’s less than 50%, something is wrong. You don’t need more hours. You need fewer distractions disguised as work.

5. Make your focus public Tell your team, your co-founder, your partner what your single priority is. When others know, they protect you from yourself. And when they see you drifting, they remind you. This hack is uncomfortable because it makes you accountable. And that’s why it works.

6. The “anti-roadmap” I do this every quarter. In addition to deciding what I’m going to do, I explicitly write down what I’m NOT going to do. And I share it. “This quarter we are NOT opening a paid channel. We are NOT launching feature X. We are NOT going after segment Y.” It seems unnecessary. But when temptation comes (and it will), having the “no” in writing gives you the strength to stick to it.

A final thought for those who lead teams

If you lead people, your lack of focus doesn’t just affect you. It multiplies.

Every time you shift priorities, your team gets the message that whatever came before didn’t matter. Every “new urgency” erodes their trust that the plan makes sense. And after a few months, your team stops committing to goals because they know those goals will change before they can reach them.

A leader’s focus isn’t just a matter of personal productivity. It’s an act of respect toward the people who execute.

When you have focus, your team can have it. When you jump from one thing to another, your team learns that the plan is a suggestion, not a commitment.

The question isn’t just “What do I focus on?” It’s “What am I asking my team to stop doing so the important thing can happen?”

Focus isn’t found. It’s defended. Every day. Against everything that shines.

That’s the default. And the default is profitable — for everyone except you.

Privacy isn’t about paranoia. It’s not about hiding criminal activity or going off-grid. It’s about one simple thing: who controls your data. Right now, the answer for 99% of people is “not them.” Corporations control it. Advertisers use it. Governments can access it. And you signed away the rights in a 47-page terms of service you never read.

The good news? You can change this. Not completely — no one can — but enough to matter. I’ve spent years building a privacy stack that doesn’t require you to be a developer, live off the grid, or give up modern convenience. It requires something simpler: intentionality, layer by layer.

Here’s exactly what I use, why each piece matters, and what it actually protects you from.

This is my real tech stack: 9 layers of real privacy

01 · NextDNS — Network layer

Every time your browser loads a page, it makes dozens of DNS requests — tiny lookups that translate domain names into IP addresses. Most people use whatever DNS their ISP provides, which means their ISP logs every single domain they visit. Every. Single. One.

NextDNS replaces your default DNS with a privacy-first, configurable resolver that blocks tracking domains, ad networks, malware, and surveillance scripts before they even load — at the network level. This means the block happens before the request leaves your device. It’s not an ad blocker that hides elements on the page. It’s a firewall that refuses to even resolve the domain.

You can configure custom blocklists (over 40 curated lists covering ads, trackers, malware, phishing, and more), see real-time logs of every DNS query your devices make, and block by category. It works across all apps on your device — not just your browser. That fitness app phoning home to 12 ad servers? Blocked. That smart TV calling surveillance domains every 30 seconds? Blocked.

Why it matters: DNS is the most overlooked privacy attack surface. You can have HTTPS everywhere and still have your ISP building a complete profile of your browsing habits through DNS. NextDNS closes that gap at virtually zero cost — free up to 300k queries/month, then €1.99/mo for unlimited.

🔗 nextdns.io

02 · Proton VPN — Network layer

Even with HTTPS, your ISP, coffee shop router, or mobile carrier can see which domains you visit and when. A VPN encrypts all your traffic between your device and the VPN server, masking your IP address and making it significantly harder for network-level observers to build a profile on you.

But here’s the critical nuance most people miss: a bad VPN is worse than no VPN. Many free VPNs monetize by logging and selling your traffic — they’ve simply replaced one surveillance infrastructure with another. Proton VPN is different: it’s based in Switzerland (one of the strongest legal privacy frameworks in the world), independently audited, fully open source, and has a strict no-logs policy that has been tested in court.

Proton VPN also has a feature called NetShield that adds DNS-level ad and malware blocking on top of the VPN — a second layer of filtering that complements NextDNS. Their Stealth protocol can even bypass VPN blocks in restrictive networks.

Why it matters: Your IP address is a persistent identifier. It reveals your location, your ISP, and can be cross-referenced across sites to track you even without cookies. Masking it — consistently — removes a major tracking vector.

🔗 protonvpn.com

03 · Proton Mail — Communications

Gmail is not an email service. It’s an advertising intelligence system that happens to also deliver your email. Google processes the content of your messages to build behavioral profiles, improve ad targeting, and train its models. When you use Gmail, you are paying for email with your personal information — and so is every person who emails you, without their consent.

Proton Mail uses end-to-end encryption for all messages between Proton users — meaning the encryption and decryption happens on your device, and Proton’s servers never see the content of your emails. Not even Proton can read them. For messages to non-Proton users, you can send password-protected encrypted emails that expire automatically.

Proton Mail supports custom domains, has a clean calendar and Drive integration, and doesn’t show ads. It’s a complete Google Workspace replacement for people who don’t want to trade their communications for cloud services. Proton is incorporated as a foundation in Switzerland and has been audited by independent security firms.

Why it matters: Email is the backbone of your digital identity. Your inbox contains your bank statements, medical records, contract negotiations, and personal relationships. Encrypting it isn’t paranoid — it’s basic digital hygiene.

🔗 proton.me/mail

04 · Proton Authenticator — Access control

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is not optional anymore — it’s the minimum bar for any account you care about. But not all authenticator apps are created equal. Google Authenticator, until recently, had no encryption and synced your TOTP codes to Google’s cloud in plaintext. That means the second factor protecting your accounts was being stored by the same company whose data practices you might be trying to avoid.

Proton Authenticator is end-to-end encrypted, open source, and syncs across your devices without exposing your codes to anyone — including Proton. It’s integrated with the broader Proton ecosystem but works as a standalone app. You import your existing 2FA codes via QR scan and you’re done.

The key principle here: your second factor is only as secure as the infrastructure storing it. If your authenticator backup lives unencrypted in someone else’s cloud, it’s not a second factor — it’s a second vulnerability.

Why it matters: 2FA is the single highest-impact security action most people can take. But the implementation matters. Encrypted, open-source authenticators ensure your second factor doesn’t become a liability.

🔗 proton.me/pass/authenticator

05 · Password manager — Access control

The average person reuses 5–7 passwords across dozens of accounts. This is not a character flaw — it’s a rational response to an impossible cognitive load. You cannot memorize 80 unique, 20-character random passwords. Nobody can. The solution isn’t to try harder. It’s to use a tool designed for exactly this problem.

A password manager generates cryptographically random, unique passwords for every account. It stores them in an encrypted vault that only you can unlock with one master password (or biometrics). It autofills them when you need them. When a site gets breached — and sites get breached constantly — the attacker gets only that one password, which works nowhere else.

Top options:

• Bitwarden — open source, self-hostable, free tier is genuinely excellent. This is my family option, they don’t want to pay for a password management solution.

• 1Password — polished UX, great for teams and families. I started with 1Password a lot of years ago.

• Proton Pass — integrated with the Proton ecosystem, end-to-end encrypted. I moved from bitwarden to proton.

Avoid browser-native password managers — they tie your credentials to a browser ecosystem and have weaker security models.

Why it matters: Credential stuffing attacks — where stolen username/password pairs from one breach are tried against thousands of other sites — are responsible for the majority of account takeovers. Unique passwords per site make you immune to this entire attack category.

🔗 bitwarden.com · 1password.com · proton.me/pass

06 · Jitsi instead of Google Meet — Communications

Video calls are rich data. Who you speak with, when, for how long, what topics come up in captions and transcripts — this is valuable profiling data for advertising platforms. Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams all collect and retain metadata from your calls. For Google specifically, this data integrates directly into your advertising profile.

Jitsi Meet is a fully open-source, browser-based video conferencing platform. No account required. No download required. You create a room, share the link, and start the call. End-to-end encryption is available for 1:1 calls, with server-side encryption for larger groups. You can self-host your own Jitsi instance for maximum control.

For teams that need more structure, Signal is excellent for 1:1 or small group calls. The core principle: choose tools where the business model doesn’t depend on mining your communication data.

Why it matters: Meetings contain strategic information — negotiations, product plans, personnel discussions. Running them through ad-supported infrastructure is a business risk, not just a personal privacy concern.

🔗 meet.jit.si · signal.org

07 · ASUS router with NextDNS + VPN at network level — Infrastructure

Here’s the problem with per-device privacy tools: they require setup on every device, every time. Your phone, your laptop, your smart TV, your partner’s devices, your guests — each one is an unprotected endpoint unless you manually configure it. Most people configure one device and consider themselves done.

The solution is to move privacy enforcement upstream — to your router. ASUS routers running AsusWRT-Merlin firmware support native VPN client configuration (so all network traffic exits through your VPN by default) and DNS-over-HTTPS directly to NextDNS. Every device that connects to your WiFi is automatically protected — without touching each one individually.

Smart TVs are particularly aggressive data collectors, phoning home constantly. They have no meaningful privacy settings. Router-level DNS blocking silences them completely without any modification to the TV itself. The router becomes your household’s privacy enforcement layer.

Why it matters: Most smart home devices have no privacy settings worth using. Router-level protection is the only way to control their data transmission. It protects devices that don’t support VPN apps — which is most of them.

🔗 ASUS routers on Amazon · AsusWRT-Merlin

I bought this Router Asus

08 · Self-hosted server on Hetzner — Sovereignty

This is the layer that separates the privacy-conscious from the privacy-sovereign. Everything else on this list reduces your exposure to surveillance. This one eliminates the dependency entirely — for your business-critical operations.

I run a private VPS on Hetzner — a German provider with strong privacy practices and excellent price-to-performance. On it, I self-host:

• Twenty CRM — open-source CRM, replaces Salesforce/HubSpot

• DocuSeal — open-source document signing, replaces DocuSign

• Plane — open-source project management, replaces Jira/Linear

• Obsidian with Syncthing — local-first knowledge base, replaces Notion

None of this data touches AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. My business relationships, contracts, project plans, and knowledge base live on infrastructure I control, in a jurisdiction with strong data protection law, on a server I pay for directly.

Setup takes a weekend and some basic Linux comfort. The payoff is permanent: no vendor lock-in, no surprise price increases, no terms-of-service changes that give the provider rights over your data, and no risk of your business data being used to train someone else’s AI model.

Why it matters: The cloud is just someone else’s computer. That’s not a metaphor — it’s a legal and technical reality. Self-hosting moves your most sensitive business data to a computer you actually control.

🔗 hetzner.com · twenty.com · docuseal.co · plane.so

09 · Sealmetrics instead of Google Analytics — Data sovereignty

Every website running Google Analytics is making a choice — often unconsciously — to donate their visitors’ behavioral data to Google’s advertising infrastructure. Every page view, every scroll, every click your visitors make is logged and used to improve Google’s targeting models. Your traffic funds Google’s intelligence. And you get a free dashboard in return.

But here’s what most marketers don’t realize: Google Analytics with consent mode only sees 40–60% of your actual traffic. Users who reject cookies, use ad blockers, or browse in privacy mode are invisible. Your ROAS calculations, your funnel analysis, your channel attribution — all based on a partial, biased sample of reality.

Sealmetrics is a consentless, cookieless analytics platform. It captures 100% of web traffic without cookies, without consent banners for analytics, and without feeding data to third parties. It works by measuring human events — actual user interactions — rather than setting tracking identifiers. Fully compliant with GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive.

For ecommerce businesses especially, this matters enormously. Your real ROAS is almost certainly better than Google Analytics is telling you — because a significant portion of converting users are invisible to cookie-based tracking. Sealmetrics shows you the full picture.

Why it matters: Using Google Analytics while building a privacy stack is contradictory. You’re protecting yourself while surveilling your own customers. Sealmetrics closes that gap — accurate analytics without compromising your users’ privacy or your compliance.

🔗 sealmetrics.com

“Privacy is not about hiding. It’s about who has power over your information — and therefore, over you. When corporations know more about you than your own government, the power imbalance isn’t abstract. It shapes what you see, what you buy, who you vote for, and what you believe is possible.”

Reading list: the intellectual foundation

Three books that will permanently change how you think about this topic.

Privacy Is Power — Carissa Veliz The strongest philosophical case for why privacy is a political issue, not a personal preference. Veliz — an Oxford philosopher — dismantles the “nothing to hide” argument completely and explains why surveillance capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Start here.

1984 — George Orwell You’ve heard of it. You may have read it in school. Read it again now, as an adult who carries a tracking device in their pocket and has a microphone-enabled speaker in their kitchen. The surveillance state Orwell imagined didn’t arrive as a dystopia — it arrived as a convenience.

V for Vendetta — Alan Moore & David Lloyd Not just a graphic novel — a meditation on what happens when populations trade freedom for security. Moore’s core argument: totalitarian systems don’t require force if the population consents through passivity. Building a privacy stack is, in a small way, an act of refusal. That matters.

You don’t need to implement all of this at once. Start with one layer — NextDNS takes 10 minutes to configure and immediately protects every device on your network. Add Proton Mail when you’re ready. Move one project to self-hosted infrastructure when it makes sense.

The goal isn’t to become invisible. It’s to make mass surveillance economically and technically expensive enough that it stops being trivial. Right now, tracking you costs fractions of a cent. Every layer you add increases that cost. Enough people doing this shifts incentives at scale.

And if you run a website or an ecommerce business: look at your analytics setup. If you’re using Google Analytics, you’re part of the problem you’re reading about. There are better options.

If this post made you think differently about your digital life — forward it to someone who still believes privacy is about hiding something.

It’s not. It’s about owning something. Your attention, your data, your identity. They belong to you. Act like it.

We saw it in the previous post. Attribution as they sell it to us is dead — don’t burn your money.

Now the buzzword is Server-Side Tracking. The thing is, whatever Google wants to push, everyone will talk about — then the rest of us humans follow, especially those selling implementations to keep the wave from crashing down.

I have nothing against Server-Side Tracking, nor against any technology that respects privacy and regulations. That said:

This is the pain point. We’ve spent years — I repeat, years — thinking that being able to measure without consent is a technology problem. It’s the complete opposite!

Measuring without consent is a regulatory matter. The regulation says it very clearly:

1. I don’t care about the technology.

2. You cannot measure individuals, because this means there’s a possibility of identifying that person.

And on point 2, let me give you a very clear example for Server-Side lovers.

If tomorrow the data protection authority in your country shows up and asks you to pop the hood on your database and run the following query:

“Show me all hits in chronological order for SessionID X — the one that nobody knows, no one can tell who it belongs to.”

If your query returns results, IT REQUIRES CONSENT.

Got it?

In other words:

If our technology is capable of measuring a user individually — even anonymously — IT REQUIRES CONSENT.

The million-dollar question:

So how does SealMetrics manage to attribute conversions to traffic sources?

Ah, my friend! That’s where SealMetrics’ value lies.

But since Unmodeled isn’t the place to talk about SealMetrics, let’s complement this post with more Rock n’ Roll. Here’s a list of tracking technologies showing whether each one requires consent or not, and why!

Enjoy! Next time someone tries to sell you on “this is the future… it doesn’t require consent…” — send them this list and tell them… HA!

I put together the ultimate tracking consent cheat sheet — 40+ technologies, whether they need consent, and the legal reason why. Next time someone tries to sell you the 'no consent needed' dream… just send them thi

Get the full Tracking vs. Consent list

From 2014 to 2024, I was actively “selling” attribution internationally. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve spoken with more than 2,000 marketing leaders, all looking for the answer to the same question:

“I need to know how to allocate my marketing budget to sell more.”

That’s what Adinton does. It’s still alive and has clients. But I’m no longer its commercial engine.

THE PROBLEM (If you’re in Europe, pay attention)

This is your business’s REAL funnel:

1. 45% of your traffic does NOT accept cookies = Attribution doesn’t exist.

2. Of the 55% who accept cookies, 50% don’t accept them on the landing page = Wrongly attributed to Direct traffic.

3. We’re talking about attribution based on 27.5% of your total traffic.

4. You might think 27.5% isn’t that bad. But it’s absurd. Why? Because 45% — double that amount — doesn’t accept cookies and you’re NOT solving it. So why do you want attribution from 27.5% when you’re missing 72.5%?

5. Of that 27.5%, a high percentage is returning cookies. Users who already interacted with your brand. Hence, bias.

This is math. And it’s clear.

THE JOURNEY: Who’s selling you attribution (and why)

But there will always, always, be a current of:

• Attribution companies who want to sell you their solution. That’s why the vast majority are annual contracts. Gotta keep developers paid.

• Consulting firms who build a “special and unique” model just for you. Not cheap, built on Google Analytics data. Gotta keep consultants paid.

WHEN TO RUN: The Red Flags

• Your team can’t recall last month’s traffic. If they can’t answer that from memory, they don’t care about attribution, visits, or your business. 100% of the demos where I asked “How many visits did you get last month?” and they couldn’t answer quickly — they NEVER bought the tool.

• “It’s server-side tracking, no consent needed.” Wrong! Total BS! Alert! Your provider is going to get you in legal trouble.

• “The tool needs 1 year to learn.” 1 year? Next month I’ll already have 1, 2, 3 more competitors that will completely change my reality.

• “You need a minimum of gazillions of daily visits.” A model that requires that much data is designed to avoid mistakes, not to help you sell more. Would you rather have an agile business or a heavy one?

• “We use Markov, or this other model, or that one...” Ask them: if my competitor launches a massive promo or a new product, how long does the algorithm take to recalculate?

THE REALITY (What I learned analyzing thousands of customer journeys)

This comes from someone who’s geeky enough to have analyzed, studied, THOUSANDS of customer journeys:

Human beings browse however they damn well please. They’re completely free.

The marketer, out of ignorance of what attribution really is, asks for: “The typical journey: enters through PPC, then SEO, then email, and buys.”

That journey happens 2% of the time or less. Statistically without basis.

The reality, as a marketer (not as an analyst):

You need to be in every single channel. ALL of them. But at a cost that’s profitable.

The key to attribution, when you have a statistical base that supports it in both volume and navigation quality, is knowing the INFLUENCE of a channel on the user.

THE CHANNEL THAT DOESN’T CONVERT

If you have a channel generating 30% of your page views, capturing new and returning cookies, showcasing your products, but NOT converting... is the problem with the channel? Or is it the pricing, the shipping costs, the UX...?

That channel isn’t bad. It’s EXCELLENT. You need to make it convert.

It’s like saying someone is ugly because they can’t get a date. Maybe they just lack conversation skills.

Marketers think about attribution in 2 dimensions. Reality has 3. There are many variables at play.

THE DARK FUNNEL

And we haven’t even talked about this:

• How much traffic do your Social Paid and Organic impressions generate?

• How many sales or visits did your podcast interview generate?

• How much traffic does the AI that’s talking about your company generate?

THE LESSON

Look, I’ll be honest with you.

I can’t conceive of my professional life as a marketer without an attribution model adapted to my business (as long as what I bill, and its growth projection, supports it).

But having an attribution model based on 27.5% is garbage. It’s useless. All it does is burn budget, time, and focus. Those are the 3 assets you should be protecting in a company.

And what’s even worse: you don’t know if it’s 27.5%, 35%, 50%, or 5%... because you don’t know the real total of your traffic.

I’m not anti-attribution. Quite the opposite. I’ve invested time, money, resources, and focus into an attribution tool. And since I saw GDPR coming, I shifted my strategy to markets outside Europe where I could start with 100% of data tracked.

So, however long your customer journey is, however non-impulsive your purchase may be... if you’re in Europe, don’t burn money, time, or focus on sophisticated attribution based on 27.5% of your traffic.

First, make sure you’re measuring 100%.

Why this. Why now.

I’ve been in marketing for 25 years.

I’ve built 3 SaaS companies. Had over 2,000 conversations with CMOs, VPs of marketing, and agency owners across Europe and the US. Spent a full decade building and selling attribution tools internationally.

And somewhere around year 8 of that decade, I started having a conversation with myself that I wasn’t having with my clients:

What if the data we’re all basing decisions on is fundamentally incomplete?

Not a little off. Not “needs calibration.” Fundamentally broken.

In Europe, 45% of your website traffic rejects cookies. They don’t exist in your analytics. Of the 55% who accept, roughly half don’t complete consent on the landing page. Your attribution model — the one you’re paying thousands of euros a year for — runs on 27.5% of your actual traffic.

I know this because I was the one selling you those models.

That realization changed the trajectory of my career. I stopped selling attribution into European markets and built Sealmetrics — a consentless analytics tool that measures 100% of traffic, legally, without cookies, without consent banners, without the data gaps.

But this newsletter isn’t about Sealmetrics. It’s about something bigger.

It’s about the 72.5% that nobody in the analytics industry wants to talk about honestly. The dark funnel. The invisible signals. The podcast listener who Googles you three weeks later. The AI chatbot recommending your competitor. The campaign that “doesn’t convert” but drives a third of your page views.

The unmodeled part.

I’m launching Unmodeled because I’m tired of watching smart marketers make bad decisions based on data that’s lying to them — and an industry that profits from keeping it that way.

What kind of space this will be

Unmodeled is not another marketing newsletter that curates links and tells you what you already know in a friendlier font.

This is a space for marketers, founders, and agency leaders who suspect their data isn’t telling the whole story — and want someone to confirm that suspicion with numbers, not opinions.

Here’s what Unmodeled will be:

Honest. I’ve been the vendor. I know the playbook. I know why attribution companies push annual contracts. I know why consultants build “proprietary models” on Google Analytics data. I’ll tell you what’s real and what’s theater.

Technical, but readable. I won’t dumb it down, but I won’t hide behind jargon either. If a concept needs explaining, I’ll explain it with real examples from real businesses.

Opinionated. I have 25 years of opinions backed by data. Some of them will be uncomfortable. That’s the point. The analytics space is drowning in corporate fluff and diplomatic non-answers. Unmodeled will not be that.

A conversation, not a broadcast. Reply to any issue. I read every response. Some of the best newsletter issues will come from questions you ask me. This is your space too.

If that sounds like your kind of thing:

What to expect — specifically

I respect your inbox. So here’s the deal:

One email. Every Sunday. 08:08 AM Barcelona time.

That’s it. No daily drip. No “5-part sequence.” One issue a week, timed so it’s sitting in your inbox before you start thinking about the week ahead.

Each issue covers what a Founder or CMO actually needs to know — but nobody is explaining without an agenda:

Data — what your analytics are really telling you, and what they’re hiding. The 72.5% problem. The bias in your attribution. The metrics that look healthy but are lying.

Marketing — what’s actually working in acquisition, retention, and brand. Not theory. What I’m doing, what I’m seeing in outbound, what’s converting and what’s burning money.

Sales — how I sell a SaaS in Europe, what objections I hear every week, what closes deals and what kills them. The real pipeline, not the CRM fantasy.

Privacy — GDPR, AEPD 2024, consent banners, server-side tracking myths, and what compliance actually means for your measurement stack. This one matters more than most founders realize.

AI — how artificial intelligence is reshaping analytics, attribution, and the competitive landscape. What it means for your traffic, your data, and your business model.

Every issue comes from experience. Not from a research tab I opened 20 minutes before writing. I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’ve made the mistakes. I’ve seen what works at scale and what collapses under pressure.

No fluff. No smoke. No recycled takes.

Here’s what I will never send you:

• Sponsored content or paid placements

• Affiliate links disguised as recommendations

• Vague advice that could apply to any business

• The same thing you already read on LinkedIn last Tuesday

Who this is for (and who it’s not for)

Unmodeled is for you if:

You’re a CMO or VP of Marketing making budget allocation decisions and you’ve started to wonder if your attribution data is actually reliable.

You run an agency and you’re reporting channel performance to clients using tools that only see a fraction of the traffic.

You’re a SaaS founder scaling in Europe and you’ve realized that GDPR didn’t just change compliance — it broke the entire measurement stack.

You’re a data-driven marketer who wants to understand what “consentless analytics” actually means, technically and legally, without the sales pitch.

Unmodeled is probably not for you if:

You’re happy with your GA4 setup and don’t want anyone questioning it. That’s fine — but this newsletter will question it. Frequently.

One more thing

I could have launched this newsletter years ago. I had the knowledge. I had the data. But I was still on the other side — selling the very tools I now know are incomplete.

Starting Unmodeled is, in some ways, a public reckoning with that. I benefited from the status quo. Now I want to dismantle the parts of it that don’t serve you.

Every issue will be grounded in real experience, real data, and real businesses. Not because that’s a content strategy. Because after 25 years, I don’t know how to do it any other way.

First issue drops this Sunday at 08:08 AM.

If you want in:

Welcome to Unmodeled. Let’s see the full picture.

— Rafa