Gabriel Weinberg
Founder & CEO, DuckDuckGo. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveauthorinvestor@yegg ↗gabrielweinberg.com ↗
Gabriel Weinberg is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, an internet privacy company and search engine launched in 2008. He is also the co-author of the business and decision-making books Traction and Super Thinking, and previously founded The Names Database.
2shows
2appearances
42statements
11resolved
9supported
0contradicted
82%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Gabriel Weinberg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Founder secondary liquidity enables greater long-term risk-taking
“From my perspective, I think it definitely makes sense because some of these founders, and, you know, myself included, have a lot of their net worth tied up into the company, and people are going after big visions, like, I'm already 12 years into DuckDuckCo, r…”
Digital ad duopoly will persist indefinitely without data monopoly intervention
“I think there needs to be something to be done about the data monopolies that underlie the duopoly. And unless something is done to kind of deconstruct that data monopoly, then this will persist ad infinitum because of the network effects involved.”
Modern tech ad monopolies are stronger than historical tech incumbents
“I think so. The scale of the market, and the way that the kind of advertising auctions and data asymmetry is in place is just much stronger than kind of these previous generations.”
DuckDuckGo evaluates employees on experiment execution rather than direct outcome results
“We don't hold people accountable for results in that way. We hold people accountable for running good experiments, running good projects, running a good postmortem process, which we have for every project.”
Weinberg: Google and Facebook hold a duopoly over digital advertising
“In the world, there's a duopoly in digital advertising, and it's Google and Facebook owns basically all the digital advertising on the web, which relates to all this data profiles.”
Google and Facebook's Ad Duopoly Is Bankrupting Media Companies
“And so they're locking up all the growth in the industry, and that's what's putting out a business, things like media companies, as well as small business ad tech Players and other advertisers. No one can really compete with it.”
The New York Times Increased Revenue by Dropping Behavioral Ads in Europe
“Like after GDPR in Europe, the New York Times Decided to ditch all the behavioral advertising and put up contextual advertising only and they increased revenue.”
Google Still Makes the Majority of Its Revenue From Contextual Keyword Ads
“And if you think about it, that's really still what Google does most of the time on Google search because all the search ads are still bid on keywords, right? They're just using your search history in addition to target ads of you on YouTube and Gmail and the …”
Government Surveillance Capacity Has Increased Massively Despite End-to-End Encryption
“If you look at, like, the overall information law enforcement and government has to surveil people, even with end-to-end encryption existing, it's way higher than it was 10 years ago, and way, way higher than it was 20 years ago before.”
Encryption Backdoors Built for Governments Will Inevitably Be Exploited by Adversaries
“If you enable a back door, which is what some governments are requesting it is really naive to think that that back door would only be accessed by that government who wants it.”
Gabriel Weinberg personally drafted Do Not Track legislation in 2019
“We actually spent time, and I personally, drafting a do not track legislation last year, and that's an example of what I think is a very simple but effective mechanism to help address the data monopoly issue, and what that is is, in every browser right now, th…”
Single dominant marketing channels drive most startup growth milestones
“And when you look back at achieving that and like what got you there, it's often one channel really drove the bulk of that. And it just has to do with like effectiveness at any given time. Usually the winning strategy, you often don't have equally effective st…”
Over 90% of consumers express privacy concerns, but only 30% act
“We're seeing 90% plus actual decent education concern rates about basic online privacy things, and about 30% in the U.S. And other major markets are people who have actually tried to take some significant action to protect themselves online.”
Distributed remote work completely negates the Silicon Valley hiring advantage
“Being distributed trumps that completely because your labor pool is the entire world. Which is, there are great people literally everywhere, and if you open yourself up to that possibility and are open to thinking about working with people on different time zo…”
Government Surveillance Relies Mostly on Commercial Corporate Data
“Corporate surveillance has really spiked and they're actually related because government surveillance actually uses
The data you give to corporations. That's where they're getting most of the data from anyway.”
DuckDuckGo Studies Found Location-Biased Search Results for Political Queries
“We've done several studies on political terms and people in different areas are seeing completely different results when you search for things like gun control or political candidate name or something like that.”
Google Tracks 80% of the Top Million Websites; Facebook Tracks 25%
“Google's on about 80% of the top million sites and a lot of that's Google Analytics, but also, like the Google Ads and stuff like that. Facebook's on 25% and that's this Facebook pixel where it could be the Facebook login, or just sites run Facebook ads, or th…”
Companies Will Unavoidably Monetize Collectible Data Without Government Intervention
“My general proposition I've been saying for years is, if the data can be collected, and if it can be used to make profits, it's gonna be used for that by people, unless The government stops it.”
True Tech Competition Requires Breaking Up Existing Data Monopolies
“Like if fundamentally you don't kind of break up these data monopolies in some way, then I don't think there's, I think it has reduced competition and there's no easy way for other people to compete.”
DuckDuckGo became profitable quickly and never spent its venture capital
“We set out to raise money just to give us some buffer, basically. Ended up being that we became profitable pretty quickly and didn't really use any of the money that we ever raised, but it really helped free up the mentality that we could take bigger risks.”
Profitability frees founders to focus on long-term product and growth
“Being profitable really, one opens up a lot of opportunities and takes fundraising risk off the table, but B kind of clears your mind a bit. So like people spend a lot of time focused on budgets and fundraising and all these different things. And when you're p…”
DuckDuckGo has reached approximately 30% brand awareness in major markets
“DuckDuckGo itself has raised its brand awareness to approximately 30% in major markets.”
DuckDuckGo's strict privacy policy prevents the company from tracking standard user metrics
“That said, we're in an interesting position that we can't really track our users. That's our privacy policy. And so we don't have great ways to measure these standard user metrics that other companies do.”
Distributed teams must build formal communication processes at 15 employees
“Now, a lot of those processes get developed as you're a much bigger company and you hear about companies who are 50 to a hundred to a 150 employees kind of breaking down in communication and having to start all over and develop those bigger company processes. …”
The other half of the tape: Gabriel Weinberg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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20VC 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Gabriel's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Founder & CEO, DuckDuckGo | 1 | 23 | 89% 8/9 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, DuckDuckGo | 1 | 19 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |