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Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

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Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#1

Post by epi0Bauqu »

(This is my old username, which I thought fit well with this post. You may know me now as yegg.)

I launched DuckDuckGo on HN (then Startup News) seven years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315142 and the idea of Traction book five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098068. If I hadn't gotten encouragement and excitement in these threads (which I did!) then I might have quit each shortly after. So thank you for that!

In 2009-2010, when I was struggling to get traction for DuckDuckGo, I started doing a series of interviews on my blog with successful founders about how they got traction in an effort to uncover a structured process for doing so. Naturally, I interviewed a lot of HN greats like patio11 (Patrick McKenzie), justin (Justin Kan), garry (Garry Tan), kn0thing (Alexis Ohanian) and other startup icons like Eric Ries, Jimmy Wales, etc. Last year I put a bunch of these early interviews on YouTube if you want to check them out: https://www.youtube.com/user/tractionbook

If I hadn't been part of the HN community I probably wouldn't have done these interviews or the series of blog posts that led to writing Traction, which in turn led to getting traction for DuckDuckGo.

A lot of people on HN have used DuckDuckGo and read the book and gave excellent feedback on both, a lot of which we have acted on to make these things what they are today today. The proximate cause for thinking about this was the second edition of the book came out yesterday, and I'm in a reflective mood.

I'm extremely grateful for being part of this community. Ask me anything, and I'll try to help where I can.

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#3

Post by epi0Bauqu »

yyz_rush wrote: post #2

What are your future plans for DuckDuckGo? Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently with DuckDuckGo over the last seven years?

Two good questions!

There is a recent PEW study showing that 40% of people would prefer a no-tracking search experience. And yet a very small percentage of people have ever heard of DuckDuckGo. As a result, we think we have a lot of room to focus on making the product better and growing, and that is really our future plans in a nutshell.

In hindsight, there are always activities you realize now were a waste of time, and it is easy to say you wouldn't do them now, but in the moment it is much harder. So in general, what I've been trying to work on is making sure we're always working on the right projects, and scoping them right, given the information we have in front of us. I would have liked to be better at that earlier, but in general I wouldn't have done that much differently.

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#6

Post by epi0Bauqu »

mackwic wrote: post #5

As a user, I am always a bit afraid that DuckDuckGo might be gone one day. How do you keep the DuckDuckGo afloat ?

DuckDuckGo is actually profitable! It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search. Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that's why you're tracked across the Internet with those same ads.

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#7

Post by jihip »

Are you working on any new business dev for DuckDuckGo? I feel that no-tracking is a soft value add and I imagine keyword-based targeted ads is limiting when competing with large search engines that tracks more information about the users. Which direction are you taking DuckDuckGo that further differentiates your product?

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#8

Post by eevilspock »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #6
mackwic wrote: post #5

As a user, I am always a bit afraid that DuckDuckGo might be gone one day. How do you keep the DuckDuckGo afloat ?

DuckDuckGo is actually profitable! It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search. Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that's why you're tracked across the Interne…

I think it's great what you're doing (DDG is my default search engine). And I'm glad you're profitable so you can stay alive.

But I'd like to think that if you could find a way other than ads, you'd take it in a heartbeat, even if you made less profit, but as long as you could be self-sustaining. Is that true?

I have a very strong opinion about advertising and its effects on the web. I would love to hear your feedback on them:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961025
I'm trying to spin up a movement to shift the web away from its reliance on ads. Let me know if you can be an advisor or resource for that. One day I might thank you in the way you thank all those other founders you listed above. :)

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#9

Post by epi0Bauqu »

eevilspock wrote: post #8
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is actually profitable! It is a myth you need to track people to make money in Web search. Most of the money is still made without tracking people by showing you ads based on your keyword, i.e. type in car and get a car ad. These ads are lucrative because people have buying intent. All that tracking is for the rest of the Internet without this search intent, and that's why you're tracked across the Interne…

I think it's great what you're doing (DDG is my default search engine). And I'm glad you're profitable so you can stay alive. But I'd like to think that if you could find a way other than ads, you'd take it in a heartbeat, even if you made less profit, but as long as you could be self-sustaining. Is that true? I have a very strong opinion about advertising and its effects on the web. I would love to hear your feedbac…

Yup, that's very true but the numbers just don't add up well on search in terms of subscription or donation. We have tried to do much less advertising, making it up on affiliate revenue, but we can't do that much because of our privacy policy. We can only use programs that can be anonymous, which means the companies run them themselves through URL parameters, and that's really just Amazon and eBay.

Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA

#10

Post by epi0Bauqu »

jihip wrote: post #7

Are you working on any new business dev for DuckDuckGo? I feel that no-tracking is a soft value add and I imagine keyword-based targeted ads is limiting when competing with large search engines that tracks more information about the users. Which direction are you taking DuckDuckGo that further differentiates your product?

Our long-term product vision is community-driven instant answers for most searches: DuckDuckHack - http://duckduckhack.com/

We think partnering with thousands of the best sites on the Web with great answers in all niche categories (lego parts, municipal bonds, anything) is a win-win-win for everyone (us, partners, users). Right now anyone can suggest an instant answer source, and anyone can develop it. The answers themselves and the entire platform is open source.

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