Startups need track growth metrics like MAU, web page visits, most used features etc. But how to do it in a privacy friendly way since there should be some kind of tracking anyway?
Is anonymizing data not good enough? That's what most of these trackers do. Something like Firebase Analytics even refuses to track if there are below a certain number of users.
The most important privacy consideration is who gets to see this data. If you just use it internally and not share it with 3rd parties, then you are already ahead 99% of the businesses in terms of privacy.
To keep the data for yourself, it's best to use a self-hosted analytics platform. Most of them also allow for more granular settings, where you can set exactly which data is stored and how.
I use a service called Plausible for this - they are privacy focused (do not even use cookies) but there are some drawbacks (like not being able to really know MAU since user identifiers reset daily)
It depends on what you need to track. For my startup the thing is that open-source developers are sensitive about data and do now want to share them with you.
As pointed there:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35358384
For the website you can create a cookie cosent or use a privacy focused alternative like https://matomo.org/
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 42.7 ms ] threadDeidentification is not always anonymization, and deanonymization is far more trivial than expected in many cases.
Those two search terms should get you to the studies/case studies.
To keep the data for yourself, it's best to use a self-hosted analytics platform. Most of them also allow for more granular settings, where you can set exactly which data is stored and how.
https://plausible.io/privacy-focused-web-analytics
For the website you can create a cookie cosent or use a privacy focused alternative like https://matomo.org/