Quora in the next YC batch • Hacker News Board

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#171

Post by javadi82 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 12:49 PM UTC

dude_abides wrote: post #11

Hard to imagine what's in it for Quora. - Network connections? Their CEO is the former CTO of Facebook. - Help with fundraising? They raised $80mm at $900mm valuation not more than a month ago. I strongly suspect Quora is planning a huge pivot which they feel is ambitious but doable in 3 months, and YC believes in the value of this pivot; that is the only plausible explanation I can think of.

Regarding the "Why join YC?", Adam has answered this on Quora:

here are a bunch of reasons why it's valuable for Quora to be a YC company: We'll have Sam and all the other partners to help us. We get to be part of the YC community / alumni network of founders. We get access to all the resources of YC.

We were raising money anyway, so there was no overhead in letting YC participate. And independent of the benefits to Quora, I think it will be fun personally to participate in some of the YC events. I hope my perspective can help some of the other companies.

Link - http://qr.ae/yY9x4 (does not require login)

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#172

Post by jaredmcateer » Sat, May 10, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #63

joshdance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most normal people won't know how to do this.

And with Chrome soon hiding the urls, we will have hard time doing it too.

It's not hard you click the address or press ^L and it exposes the entire URL the only time it introduces more work is clicking in the start or middle of the URL instead of the end

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#173

Post by justincormack » Sat, May 10, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

grmarcil wrote: post #82

alain94040 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this will be interesting in light of yesterday's Founder Ethics post ( http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/ )

Are you suggesting that putting content behind a registration wall is somehow unethical?

Putting my content behind a registration wall was pretty unethical, so I deleted my account and all my posts.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#174

Post by yalogin » Sat, May 10, 2014, 2:21 PM UTC

chriskelley wrote: post #47

hnnewguy wrote: post #18

Funny thing, I visited Quora today, for the first time in a while. Years, maybe: Googled something, Quora near top results, clicked link, "signup" nag screen, results blurred out, left page. I guess I still don't get it. Curious to see what this will be about.

I rarely initialize my use of Quora by visiting the website - I have found immense value in the digest emails they send. They are a mix of things they know I'm explicitly interested in, and generally "interesting" things (presumably defined by popularity). Probably 90% of the time after receive a digest email, I open at least 2 or 3 of the links within. I have tried visiting the site directly and am rarely able to fi…

That would mean you signed up and so have no restrictions. But they are knowledge base, does not matter how they got the information or who posts them. Asking to sign up to see content is like asking to sign up to see google results. Also their traffic through google must be higher that their traffic coming from YC crowd. So I cannot imagine why they would restrict their site like that.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#175

Post by nilkn » Sat, May 10, 2014, 2:22 PM UTC

bashinator wrote: post #116

gedrap wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Quora is a totally different product, content wise. You don't go to Quora for programming help unless it's hello world in php. You go there for /r/iama type of questions. Or it's just my usage, largely influenced by the weekly email.

Reddit has semi-anonymous, unverified accounts. Quora requires FB. Kind of makes it a no-brainer for me.

The problem with reddit is that it's hard to ask random, potentially "dumb" questions. You have to find the right subreddit, and if you're wrong you'll just be downvoted and receive joke responses. Even in the right subreddit many questions will get instantly downvoted by people browsing /new/. Quota has none of these problems.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#176

Post by 3pt14159 » Sat, May 10, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #100

johnrob wrote: post #16

Keep a link to this for the initial office hours ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503910

PG isn't always right you know. :) He told the reddit guys that the logo was a distraction and if they must have it it should be at the bottom out of view. Sometimes he does make a mistake. This previous statement of his could be one of them.

He is right about this though. Just one of Quora's many problems.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#177

Post by icebraining » Sat, May 10, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

brianchu wrote: post #93

joshdance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most normal people won't know how to do this.

Most normal people don't care about having to sign up. Or how Quora is allegedly gaming Google.

Actually, research by UIE shows that requiring registration is a great way to massively increase the website's bounce rate.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#178

Post by evolve2k » Sat, May 10, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

StackExchange treats me with respect, Quora currently feels like they are playing the old 'Experts Exchange' game of shady techniques and firewalled user knowledge.

I hope joining YC they find a more open way to do business. Why should I answer questions to build their closed knowlege base?

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#179

Post by ivankirigin » Sat, May 10, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

mkempe wrote: post #134

sama wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we did invest. as a general rule, i think investors shouldn't disclose terms, but if the company wants to, fine w/me.

Hasn't the premise of YC --since the beginning-- been to explicitly state the investment amount and percentage? This move feels like dilution of both purpose and brand.

Exceptions don't change how open they are. Companies as successful as Quora joining YC is great for YC and the alumni.

The main reason I'm interested in the ownership amount is that other companies applying to YC should understand whether their valuation at a recent round is fair for YC to get, or if even Quora thought 7% is worth it.

If I were to apply to YC with my startup YesGraph (which took a large seed a year ago), this would be a really important question, especially considering I'm an alum and already how everything else works.

Re: Quora in the next YC batch

#180

Post by collyw » Sat, May 10, 2014, 7:35 PM UTC

gedrap wrote: post #92

meritt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direction probably. Quora has floundered for nearly 5 years, burned millions of dollars and still has a questionable product. Meanwhile Stack Exchange has been around only a year longer, a fraction of the funding, and pretty well owns the entire question-answer niche.

I think Quora is a totally different product, content wise. You don't go to Quora for programming help unless it's hello world in php. You go there for /r/iama type of questions. Or it's just my usage, largely influenced by the weekly email.

Actually I have started using Quora for the stuff that gets pedantically closed on Stack Overflow, for exactly that reason.

It is useful to get an opinion on which library / language / framework is better for a particular task, or what the pros and cons are. Stack Overflow has a real attitude problem, closing these questions as "not constructive" despite the fact the question has hundreds of upvotes.

Quora is not tech focused, and still feels a bit more like facebook (questions feel more like they are based on how recently they were asked as opposed to outright relevance - though that may the way I view the site, and the way it markets itself to me). But there is a huge opportunity to pick up where Stack Overflow is failing its users.