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 :-)
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.
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.
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
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?
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 :-)