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Quora collects $80 million in funding

cnet.com

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Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#21

Post by fidotron »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

I've wondered along these lines too. There is clearly something else going on in the VC business beyond strictly evaluating company value based on ability to generate it directly. One factor I'll project (since I can't tell where you're based) is that companies with proven engineering staff in the Bay Area get a boost in inherent value just from acquihire potential. Bonus points for famous and connected founders, as Quora has.

Bay Area VC activity looks a lot like Wall Street to me, with the same disconnect between price and value happening.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#22

Post by mccr8 »

feintruled wrote: post #14

Quora seems to have taken a strange turn recently - their email digest is full of creepy racial questions like "do white girls find Indian men disgusting?" and "do Asian men mind if Asian girls date white men?" I guess you can't stop such questions being asked, but they frequently appear as the top question in the digest and thus in the subject line. I deregistered off the back of that. (Come to think of it, not sure…

The digest seems to be custom created based on topics that you follow. If you decided to follow the generic "Relationships" topic, you'll end up with things like that in your digest. I'd guess questions like those attract a lot of controversy, so they will have a lot of voting and answers, which their algorithms may decide indicate that it is a topic people would be interested in.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#23

Post by seizethecheese »

feintruled wrote: post #14

Quora seems to have taken a strange turn recently - their email digest is full of creepy racial questions like "do white girls find Indian men disgusting?" and "do Asian men mind if Asian girls date white men?" I guess you can't stop such questions being asked, but they frequently appear as the top question in the digest and thus in the subject line. I deregistered off the back of that. (Come to think of it, not sure…

I just scanned some updates in my inbox and none had anything like this. What's going on is that these updates are custom for each user, so either you haven't used the site and are getting the least common denominator, or for some reason you've lead Quora to believe that you're interested in such questions.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#24

Post by mccr8 »

yalogin wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise. Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions. Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startu…

There's nothing particularly technically focused about Quora's content. I think of it as a sort of directed mini-blogging site, where instead of being oriented around following everything that a person said (though you can do that to an extent), it is oriented around following particular topics you are interested in. It is a good source for little entertaining essays pontificating about various topics.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#25

Post by josh-wrale »

adventured wrote: post #3

Am I the only one that suspects Quora's future is more likely to be similar to an About.com (to be sold off for $300m in the future when a great business fails to materialize) than a Wikipedia? It seems like they latched on to the Q&A space originally when it was hot, and are now pivoting because competing with Answers.com et al. has a lot less of a runway than they previously expected.

My guess is that Yahoo will buy it in a broad "upgrade" to Yahoo Answers.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#27

Post by smackfu »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

Consider that Quora basically forces mobile users to access the site via their app.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#28

Post by hitchhiker999 »

fidotron wrote: post #21
hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

I've wondered along these lines too. There is clearly something else going on in the VC business beyond strictly evaluating company value based on ability to generate it directly. One factor I'll project (since I can't tell where you're based) is that companies with proven engineering staff in the Bay Area get a boost in inherent value just from acquihire potential. Bonus points for famous and connected founders, as…

I'm nowhere near the 'bay area' or any US state, nor even in Europe. I'm British, but living abroad, have never known anyone else in the IT industry. HN is my only contact :)

When I hear and see the things people in SV say and do - I honestly wonder what the hell is going on out there. It seems people who can put a bit of html + css together are getting paid 10 million these days.

-- good luck to them and everything - but it's a bit mental (imho).

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#29

Post by nilkn »

yalogin wrote: post #11

Can someone explain how there a place for Quora? The only niche I can think of is generic technical advise. Stackoverflow answers all the tech questions but they are overly pedantic to the point of ridiculous when it comes to generic tech questions. Hackernews should have been the correct place for generic tech advise but we don't see questions of that nature here. May be as far as tech advise goes people from startu…

There are a lot of questions that can't be asked on StackOverflow, especially ones that don't necessarily have a right or wrong answer.

HN is more focused on sharing news and less on asking questions, especially potentially silly ones.

On Quora, you can ask basically anything. It's like Yahoo! Answers, but with a much better interface.

It's a lot easier to ask a question on Quora than a place like reddit because you don't have to worry about finding the "correct" subreddit. Make a mistake with the wrong subreddit and you'll just be instantly downvoted and get nothing but joke responses.

That said, the site does have a Sillicon Valley "I want to be rich" twist to it, and I think it's necessary for that tendency to die off for the site to succeed in the long run. Far too many times have I looked at Quora only to see a lot of threads about getting rich, what's it like being rich, what would you do it you got rich overnight, what's it like to date someone richer than you, how do I be rich without being arrogant, etc.

Re: Quora collects $80 million in funding

#30

Post by wpietri »

hitchhiker999 wrote: post #16

I have a q&a site with 4 million visitors a month - an ESL learning site. We have 2 employees, total cost https://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ they have only a million visitors a month??? - I'm guessing that must be wrong. My question: What in pickled f*s are these people doing with 80 million on a Q&A site? How far out of the reach of reality is this industry?

It is a really good Q&A site.

I was a Quora Top Writer in 2012 and 2013, and I've also built a lot of web stuff and spent a lot of time studying web communities. Purely from a craftsmanship perspective, they've done an incredible job. The visual design, the interaction design, the writing and reading experiences, the social incentives, the notification system: all of it is top notch.

That said, I have never understood what their economic plan is. I have a very good understanding of the economics of content businesses, and the people at Quora are either incredible geniuses or totally nuts. Since they won't say how they plan to make money, we can't say. If I had to bet, It be "totally nuts", just because so many content businesses get seduced by a creative vision that current revenue streams just can't support. But having met some of them, I know they're very smart, so I am hoping that I am wrong and that they have some clever monetization strategy that will let them justify their very large valuation.

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