Duck Duck Go – Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing
from Union Square Ventures:
When I first got into the venture capital business in the early 90s, it seemed to me that half of the deals I brought to the partnership were dismissed with the line “sure it’s cool but what the heck do they do if Microsoft decides to enter this business.” Today the role of the dominant player is played by Google (and increasingly Facebook). So as an investor, one has to consider how a potential portfolio company can thrive in the shadow of Google. No where is this more true than in Search.
So, as you can imagine, we had a lot of interesting conversations in the process of evaluating our latest investment in Gabriel Weinberg’s alternative search engine,DuckDuckGo. Our confidence in Gabriel and DuckDuckGo is informed by having watched the decline of Microsoft’s hegemony in the 90’s.
