I disagree. You can improve your product without the extensive use of trackers, especially external ones. Hire UX and PM that know what they are doing, do UX research, talk to your customers, do competitive analysis.
Just accruing swaths of data doesn’t help, you need to interpret it correctly. I think qualitative data will bring you a long way. Once you need to do A/B testing, you can also do it privacy friendly.
If you market your product and run a campaign? Why not offer discount codes or something to figure out how you got them.
How do you think a UX person knows what works? It's not that they were born jedi's worthy of understanding good design and human intuition. They test, test, test, and you know what...they tested more.
Tracking what button or page layout works better from a conversion perspective is not a privacy issue. It's a user experience benefit.
Having a SaaS business and not understanding the exact user funnel, conversion, abandonment, etc. will directly translate into a loss of your job and/or the failure of your business.
This isn't about personal preference which you have every right to. This is about building a business, which is why we're all here, and understanding how to successfully delight our customers.
Just accruing swaths of data doesn’t help, you need to interpret it correctly. I think qualitative data will bring you a long way. Once you need to do A/B testing, you can also do it privacy friendly.
If you market your product and run a campaign? Why not offer discount codes or something to figure out how you got them.