

Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go interviewed on Mixergy - jmillerinc
http://mixergy.com/gabriel-weinberg-duck-duck-go-interview/

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alain94040
Interesting... 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 :-)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
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.

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jolan
Not 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.

~~~
staunch
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?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
> 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...](http://phillystartupleaders.org/resources/network-around-philly/))
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>

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sadiq
I'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.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
<http://ye.gg/pivot>

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ronnwer
Would love to hear more about your thoughts on twitter - you mentioned that
looking at people on twitter who are influencing the most is the best way to
spread the word... What data do you use to come up with that? And what
information are you looking for?

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ronnwer
Was NamesDatabase a social network? I'm not clear on what it exactly did and
how it made money. Affiliate, if so how? Thanks.

