#9: How to Build Traction, Gain Customers, and Grow with DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg

Gabriel Weinberg is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, an Internet search engine that doesn’t track you or your personal data (https://duckduckgo.com/). And in an industry dominated by goliaths like Google and Yahoo, DuckDuckGo does more than 3 billion searches per year. Weinberg is the author of Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers, and it has become the field manual for tech entrepreneurs, growth hackers, and marketers around the world. This framework has been used by founders like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), and Paul English (Kayak.com) to build some of the biggest companies and organizations in the world. You can find Gabriel on Twitter at (@yegg), but he’s also a prolific writer on the blogging platform Medium, and fairly active on AngelList with more than a dozen investments he’s made into innovation-driven companies (@yegg). This conversation with Weinberg is a masterclass on getting more customers for your business or idea. Today Gabriel and I talk about: — The best strategies from his book Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers — Why he decided to compete against big companies like Google — How he gained traction as a search engine — And why he’s growing his tech company from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Download show notes and transcripts at www.powderkeg.co This episode of Powder Keg is brought to you by DeveloperTown. If you’re a business leader trying to turn a great idea into a product with traction, this is for you. DeveloperTown works with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies who want to build and launch an app or digital product. They’re able to take the process they use with early stage companies to help big companies move like a startup. So if you have an idea for a web or mobile app, or need help identifying the great ideas within your company, go to developertown.com/powderkeg. Thanks again to everyone who has shared an episode of Powderkeg, subscribed to us on iTunes, or left us a review. It’s the only way we’re going to spread this message and reach new people and we could do it without you. We’re coming out with new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe on iTunes or at powederkeg.co/itunes