Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
1–10 of 12 posts
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#2Not really sure what to say; I was looking forward to this and it didn't live up to the expectations in my head.
I would have liked to hear more about the Philly startup scene, Gabriel's angel investments, etc.
Even after Gabriel mentioned that the click through rate on email was going down, Andrew asked a ton of follow up questions on it. Same with asking about receiving the cheque for the acquisition of namesdatabase.
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#3Interesting... Not at all what I expected. I have a lot of respect for Duck Duck Go.
But it's interesting to learn that his first startup got very close to a lot of what would be considered now gray areas... Creating thousands of dummy pages to get traffic from Google... forcing people who sign up to give 5 email addresses to promote the service...
Let's put it this way: my impression from that interview is that Gabriel got really close but eventually stayed on the right side of the fence. Kind of a success story :-)
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#4Interesting... Not at all what I expected. I have a lot of respect for Duck Duck Go. But it's interesting to learn that his first startup got very close to a lot of what would be considered now gray areas... Creating thousands of dummy pages to get traffic from Google... forcing people who sign up to give 5 email addresses to promote the service... Let's put it this way: my impression from that interview is that Gabr…
I wouldn't consider them gray areas; more like clever hacks to discover a market without having to spend a lot of money.
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#5Not really sure what to say; I was looking forward to this and it didn't live up to the expectations in my head. I would have liked to hear more about the Philly startup scene, Gabriel's angel investments, etc. Even after Gabriel mentioned that the click through rate on email was going down, Andrew asked a ton of follow up questions on it. Same with asking about receiving the cheque for the acquisition of namesdataba…
Gabriel:
What's your view of the Philly startup scene?
Why wouldn't you move to to Silicon Valley?
What's your experience been like so far with angel investing?
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#6Interesting... Not at all what I expected. I have a lot of respect for Duck Duck Go. But it's interesting to learn that his first startup got very close to a lot of what would be considered now gray areas... Creating thousands of dummy pages to get traffic from Google... forcing people who sign up to give 5 email addresses to promote the service... Let's put it this way: my impression from that interview is that Gabr…
Thx. I'm actually very sensitive to ethical issues and was constantly evaluating them. When we got our first complaint (for lack of understanding what the site did) we actually took down the entire site for a while and looked everything over from a user's perspective from top to bottom. At that point, we added even more explanations and such. So I really do believe everything was crystal clear.
As for dummy pages, this was not business related. I had just put up random stuff for the fun of it to see what would happen. This wasn't explained in the interview (I think), but when we got going as a business we replaced those pages with our real database. So we were exposing our entire database, for free, without having to sign up at all.
Also, wrt to the email addresses. This wasn't in the interview either, but if you didn't enter the addresses, you'd get a skip link within 30 minutes to get into the site without having to do that. Also, our free unlock and upload address book features were never forced. People did those completely on their own, and as I mentioned in the interview, the upload address book had really no incentives along with it.
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#7Not really sure what to say; I was looking forward to this and it didn't live up to the expectations in my head. I would have liked to hear more about the Philly startup scene, Gabriel's angel investments, etc. Even after Gabriel mentioned that the click through rate on email was going down, Andrew asked a ton of follow up questions on it. Same with asking about receiving the cheque for the acquisition of namesdataba…
Gabriel: What's your view of the Philly startup scene? Why wouldn't you move to to Silicon Valley? What's your experience been like so far with angel investing?
> What's your view of the Philly startup scene?
It is certainly trending upwards. When I moved here I created a monthly startup hackathon group (http://www.groupomatic.com/haqsm3vj) that now has ~200 members in it, and attracts 20-40 good people each month working on cool stuff. PSL and other groups (http://phillystartupleaders.org/resources/network-around-phi...) have also created good communities and Dreamit (http://dreamitventures.com) has brought in some great companies. Also, First Round Capital (http://firstround.com) is based here, though they haven't made many Philly investments.
That said, it is way behind Boston, NYC, and of course SV. I couldn't be a good active consumer Web angel investor in Philly alone. But I'm trying to do my part to improve it.
> Why wouldn't you move to to Silicon Valley?
I like the life we've developed here--location, friends, family, etc., and there are many things I don't like about CA (price, distance, etc.).
> What's your experience been like so far with angel investing?
It is a very different challenge than doing a startup, and I've learned a lot on just the three investments I've done and the many many more I've evaluated. I've been trying to write up what I've learned on my blog when appropriate: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/angel-investing/
I've built my companies in somewhat of isolation, so it is really great to get more involved in other startups. I've been trying to add as much value as I can without being annoying or controlling in any way. Alexis Ohanian described it well at Angel Boot Camp--a good angel investor is a combination between yoda and a fire-firefighter. He/she is there when you need him with somewhat incomprehensible sage advice :). I'm also highly technical so I try to add value there as well when needed/wanted.
Happy to answer follow-ups, or more questions here, by email, or formspring: http://formspring.me/yegg
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#8[deleted]
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#9I'd love to hear more about the bit earlier on about when and how to decide whether a particular idea is worth continuing putting time in to.
Re: Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy
#10I'd love to hear more about the bit earlier on about when and how to decide whether a particular idea is worth continuing putting time in to.