In a post early last week I asserted this:
Access to capital and raising a boatload of it is rarely the thing that wins the market.
And then later in the week I saw this tweet
Duck Duck Go ($3m VC) vs Blekko ($60m VC) http://t.co/92eE9PsUoO pic.twitter.com/iZeds7gTXT
— Scott Krager (@scottkrager) November 12, 2014
And then this one
@scottkrager @fredwilson When you remove the spaces from duckduckgo, it gets even more impressive. pic.twitter.com/PGRci2oQh4
— Andrew Brackin (@brackin) November 13, 2014
These tweets are about the competition between our portfolio company DuckDuckGo and another search engine called Blekko.
Blekko has raised $60mm to date and DuckDuckGo has raised $3mm (and never spent it).
In that post last week, I also asserted this:
Product execution, network effects, go to market strategies, and a few other things are what allows companies to win the market
It is what you build, how you go to market with it, and how you monetize it that will determine your success. By all means raise money, from USV if at all possible, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that raising money is the secret to success. It is decidedly not.
