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The Sudden, Mysterious Exit Of A Quora Cofounder Has Silicon Valley Baffled

247 points by steve8918 14y ago

davidtyleryork 14y ago
Seems like they were going to split directions at one point or another. Sad to see this happen as I love Quora but unfortunately, investors are in the business of making money, not building amazing user-friendly webapps. Is Quora a great service? Absolutely. Is Quora something I would be incredibly sad to see die? Without a doubt. Is Quora ever going to make enough money to cover costs? Probably not. This leaves a sale as the only possible exit. Adam is taking the unsexy role of being the business guy that drives Quora towards this conclusion. Great product and engineering minds will quit (especially with the departure of Charlie). People will cry out about how "the Quora I loved is dead" and new features will prompt blog posts like this one: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/09/10/the-misstep-of-quora-and-the-importance-of-trust-amongst-your-community/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/09/10/the-misstep-of... . But Adam has no choice, either he does this or the company dies and everything that is good about it is lost.
- yo-mf 14y ago
  That blog post by Mark was 100% on point. There are legitimate growth tactics, and then there are growth tactics that go over the line. Quora recognized they crossed the line on that one. That being said, they will sell, probably by year end or early next year.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    The question is, who's going to buy a Q&A site with a small user base for $400MM+?
    - samstave 14y ago
      As RDL said, Yahoo is the best likely acquirer and IMO specifically because they need to hedge against Google and FB grabbing up everything in their path.
  - marcos123 14y ago
    As a former quora user, I definitely did not get the impression that they "recognized they crossed the line on that one." The impression I did get however was that the "views feature" was very much a consciously thought out decision, as I would assume most decisions are that are made in the context of building a company with millions of invested dollars in it. I also got the impression that they clung for dear life to that ill-intentioned decision, until their folly was making headlines for one-too-many days, and they made another decision to feign like they had no idea people wouldn't like strangers and friends knowing what they read in their private time. That's just my impression though. As a former quora user.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
001sky 14y ago
We all knew one of the commonsense edicts of Hollywood is “never invest in your own movie."* -- With the sound of silence, the Market has spoken.
- paulgb 14y ago
  Why is that? Simply because you have all your eggs in one basket? Or is it for the social proof and connections that comes from having someone else make the investment?
  - astrodust 14y ago
    Having others buy in to your idea validates it. If you can't get investment for a movie it's probably a sign it's not very good, or the market for it is exceedingly narrow and might consist entirely of you.
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      I'm reminded of Klaus Kinski, who wanted to make Paganini desperately, but couldn't convince Werner Herzog it was a good idea. Kinski ultimately made it himself, and it's supposedly quite bad (I haven't seen it). At least that's the impression My Best Fiend gives. Then again, Clerks was famously paid for by a bunch of credit cards. I guess there's an exception to every rule.
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Clerks budget was under $30K, about what a handful of people could pay for any adventure vacation. More of a labor of love than an investment.
        fusiongyro 14y ago
        True. I'm not even sure he tried to find outside investment.
jpdoctor 14y ago
> The answer makes one good point, though: D'Angelo did invest his own money in Quora, basically buying sole control over the company. The first clause (investing money) is a much less profound statement than the second clause (buying sole control). In order to buy sole control, he set the valuation of the new shares at something that washed out the "A" round guys. That should be a giant red-flashing signal to everyone involved.
- campnic 14y ago
  I've recently started trying to understand how these dilution events occur. I was wondering if you could better explain what happened in this case so I could further my understanding.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Its fairly straightforward. There is 'money' and there is 'stock'. Money funds day to day operations, pays salaries, power bills etc. Stock determines ownership, and in most corporations governance. Now day to day you spend money and ideally you also get revenue. If the revenue that comes in for any given month/quarter is more than the money going out that month/quarter then you are 'operationally cash flow positive' meaning that other than something like a big lawsuit or a promissory note coming due or some big financial event you can keep working and the lights on. It doesn't necessarily mean you can hire anyone or 'grow' or fund a PR campaign. Then there is stock which represents ownership in the company, there can be multiple classes of stock which convey different rights, and there can be corporate bylaws which change how decisions are made while private vs public, but for the simple case we'll assume that 1 to 1, one share of stock is worth 1/(total-stock) of the company and exerts an equivalent amount of control. When you make a decision for the company you at the board level you effectively 'vote your stock' when you vote. If 50.1% of the stock votes one way that is the way the decision goes. So lets consider a couple of scenarios: Lets say the Company is : 1,000,000 shares Investor A - 10% stock (100,000 shares) Investor B - 15% stock (150,000 shares) Investor C - 15% stock (150,000 shares) Founder A - 25% stock (250,000 shares) Founder B - 25% stock (250,000 shares) (everyone else in the company) - 10% remaining stock. Now the two founders, if they agree they can get their decisions ratified by the board with one additional investor voting with them. The 'value' of the company is price-per-share * total shares. So lets say this company was valued at $10M so each share is 'worth' $10. Now you need more money (revenues aren't covering it) so you try to sell more stock which is going to change the numbers around. Lets say you need $10M for the next 24 months and none of the investors want to invest any more money. You've got a crisis. But if you are also independently wealthy you can say "I'll put in the $10M but I'll take 2 million shares." So the 'totals' after that transaction are 3 million shares in total (up from 1 million) and as a strict percentage we've got: 3,000,000 shares Investor A - 3.3% stock (100,000 shares) Investor B - 5% stock (150,000 shares) Investor C - 5% stock (150,000 shares) Founder A - 8.3% stock (250,000 shares) Founder B - 75% stock (2,250,000 shares) (everyone else in the company) - 3.3% remaining stock. Founder B now has 'sole control' because they have enough stock to make any decision, vote their own stock, and have that decision be ratified.
dbloom 14y ago
For what it's worth: this article is syndicated from Business Insider. It wasn't written by San Francisco Chronicle staff. Here's the original: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sudden-mysterious-exit-of-a-quora-cofounder-has-silicon-valley-baffled-2012-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sudden-mysterious-exit-of...
webjprgm 14y ago
I just went to Quora.com and see nothing that would convince me to spend more than 30 sec. there. They need a better home page to engage potential users who are curious about what that site is. A one sentence blurb about solving all my problems doesn't make me believe it. I want to see examples so I can see exactly what kind of problems and how they will be solved. E.g. on Stack Overflow there is a list of questions and answers that are being asked.
- astrodust 14y ago
  Quora's Expert's Exchange inspired blurring of text to hold content hostage is anything but encouraging. It's user contributed content. Stop treating it with such disrespect.
  - moe 14y ago
    Amusingly the hipster SV-startup is doing it even worse than the venerable expert-sexchange (on the latter you can at least scroll down to see the unblurred content). And to add insult to injury quora-accounts are free anyway. Why do they strong-arm users into creating what will ultimately be 99,9% throwaway accounts?
    - edwinnathaniel 14y ago
      They ask your FB account to "confirm" who you are if you want to interact (view is still free for throwaway email), not just e-mail. Of course the FB account can be a throwaway as well :).
      - samstave 14y ago
        I don't think that was always the case. I joined Quora very early, and I have never had an account on theFacebook. I did, however, recently delete my Quora account after I didn't like what they were doing with privacy (Lack thereof) I haven't been back, and while I thought there was some good conversations - the UX at Quora is atrocious. I had a hard time sort wheat from chaff in their feed, the visual differentiation between textual elements in the feed emphasized the wrong stuff. Their mobile view, desktop view and native mobile client view all had separate experiences ad visually didn't match. There are a lot more things I can say about the UX/UI - but in the end, I am happy I deleted my account.
dude_abides 14y ago
We still have ridiculously high engagement rate for 8% of our users, but that number hasn't gone up and nothing else we've done has managed to move the needle to get further users hooked. This leads me to think: does the needle really have to go up? According to pg's latest awesome essay on growth, the answer seems to be yes. But as the hacker news site has shown, no can also be a valid answer. pg's goal with hacker news is to keep a high quality of discussion, and not to grow the site to more users. As you bring in more users, you are bound to reduce engagement of existing users; this is justified if the growth is an order of magnitude higher (eg. when Facebook went from ivy leagues to colleges to high school to public). But for a site like Quora, I doubt if growth at the cost of pissing off existing users is justified at all.
- moocow01 14y ago
  All depends on your financials and business model - For most consumer internet startups the path to profitability is directly tied to user growth and user engagement. If your unprofitable and your not moving those numbers up all you have is a liability from an investment standpoint.
  - dude_abides 14y ago
    User growth and user engagement often tend to be mutually conflicting goals.
- ganjianwei 14y ago
  Growth matters because Quora raised a ton of venture capital and needs to eventually generate revenue to justify the high valuation, and there's a limit on revenue/user they expect to generate. Simplified version of web apps' revenue calculation: Total revenue = revenue per user * no. of users There's an upper bound on how much each user generates in revenue (either through ads, subscriptions), e.g. imagine paying > $200/yr to use Quora, unlikely that more than 100,000 people are willing to do that. So the fastest way to grow is through having more users. On top of pure revenue/user number, there's the network effects of having more users, as well as becoming a key part of cultural fabric e.g. most celebrities have Twitter accounts now.
timpeterson 14y ago
Is Quora really struggling? My posting there is getting more and more engagement all the time (more importantly, this compete.com profile looks quite promising: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/) Also, how much does running Quora actually cost? If Adam D'Angelo has many Billions of dollars, I can't see them ever having a financial issue.
- thedufer 14y ago
  That profile shows pretty clearly that they've increased their monthly uniques by about 100k since February, when they'd been increasing by 100k _per month_ for the 5 months before that. I would not call that "promising".
  - timpeterson 14y ago
    is your point that given the expectations, growing at the level of 100,000s users isn't good for Quora? cause most sites would be happy with that performance
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - thedufer 14y ago
      Yeah, most sites would be happy with that. But most sites didn't have the momentum to grow 8 times as quickly less than a year ago. Slowing of growth is important, not the absolute numbers.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  >"If Adam D'Angelo has many Billions of dollars, I can't see them ever having a financial issue." If they're not making money, they have a "financial issue" from day one.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    This. I'm not sure GP understands the difference between company finances and personal fortune?
kinkora 14y ago
"The final straw was Matt Cohler joining the Board at the end of August. Matt's with Benchmark, and his involvement is there for the sole sake of getting the website turned around, on an upward trajectory, and in shape to be sold so he could get a return on his investment." I think the italicized bit is the most interesting part of the comment. It seems that that Adam wants to sell the site at some point? but to who? Also, interesting that he is building Quora to flipped it instead of making it into a valid business.
jusben1369 14y ago
"We decided it was best for Charlie to step away from his day-to-day role at the company." Whatever happened it feels like Adam wants to make the point that Charlie was essentially fired. "We" is a lovely ambiguous term. They royal "We"? I suppose it's meant to imply that Charlie also agreed. But "Best for Charlie to step away" is pretty telling. There's a whole slew of options you could use to make it sound like it was Charlie's idea (although he's probably too young to 'focus on his family' I always thought Quora should monetize around an RFP type concept. It feels to me like 80% of users are there for technology recommendations from the horses' mouth.
- bduerst 14y ago
  I think Stack Exchange has Quora beat in the technical question market. An RFP concept would be rife with scams and low quality work.
  - nancyhua 14y ago
    Quora has more mass appeal and is more of a time waster site than Stack Exchange. It's like a smarter, more gamified, Facebook-y version of Yahoo answers. The friends I introduced to it said they can spend all day reading about "what it's like to be a hitman" and asking Mark Cuban questions about his youth and stuff like that. Some of the questions re: what server to use, etc are answered by founders promoting their companies but nevertheless I think Quora has 2 valuable virtues: 1) You can get firsthand info from the horse's mouth, like read about what it's like to be a 25 year old self made millionaire, or what it's like to work with ashton kushter, or what it's like to get an investment on shark tank. You can ask what it's like to get a life sentence in prison and a real prisoner will respond. You can ask Larry Summers his opinion on something and he'll respond. 2) Quora organizes the information on the internet. Some of the stuff you could find by googling, but who just googles random questions? The flow of the site is pretty nice because you go from one interesting answer to suggested related questions. (I am just a Quora user although I know a bunch of people who work there.)
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
breck 14y ago
Eh, it happens. Reminds me of the PG quote: "Practically all start-ups internally are disasters... and they just hide this from the outside world."
- raverbashing 14y ago
  It's never pretty to know how sausages are made
sethbannon 14y ago
Looks like Business Insider is sneaking it's way onto the HN frontpage.
antonpug 14y ago
What the hell is Quora?
- kdizza 14y ago
  It's looks like stack exchange but they hide the answers behind a facebook login.
- droithomme 14y ago
  It's a site that if you go to it you see only a login page allowing either Facebook or Twitter sign in, with no explanation of what it is or why you would want to give your Facebook or Twitter passwords to them or what they might do with them. (Yes, I understand how it really works but I am presenting how it looks to normal people.) http://www.quora.com/ http://www.quora.com/ If you manage to find pages they expose to google to capture searches for information, you find it is like Yahoo Answers, except the answers are all blurred unless you agree to sign in and be tracked. Not surprisingly, this user-hostile abomination of usability has commercially failed. For some bizarre reason the designer who created this nonsense is described as a usability design genius in the referenced article when it is clear from even a moment's glance at the site's usability that its designers are not fit to design a hole in the ground for tossing refuse.
  - kdizza 14y ago
    I was able to get in through the employee page: http://www.quora.com/about/team http://www.quora.com/about/team
    - desbest 14y ago
      And that's their home page? What do these people do all day? Blow bubbles for shits and giggles?
  - hristov 14y ago
    You just do not get it do you. I suppose you do not realize the enormous potential of asking people for a twitter/facebook logon when they throw refuse in a hole in the ground. You can then track each person's refuse relate it to the refuse of their friends and you will have billions worth of data to be mined.
volandovengo 14y ago
I LOVE QUORA. They have produced a system which is creating some of the best authored information online. Each time I get their weekly email, I lose about half of my day because each item in it is so amazing that I have to read it. Watch Charlie Cheever's interview with TechCrunch recently. I think it's pretty telling that he was done with the company, it might have been the best call for him to leave. http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/quora-we-have-an-explicit-non-goal-of-not-selling-the-company/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/quora-we-have-an-explicit-n...
rdl 14y ago
The best speculation I've seen is that someone (Yahoo?) is buying Quora, with onerous earn-out provisions (1/2/3/4?), and letting Charlie leave now would accelerate his vesting compared to remaining until acquisition and then leaving, if he didn't want to work for the acquirer. I've met both Adam and Charlie (and Marc and much of the rest of the Quora team), and I can't see Adam/Charlie having a falling out over any personal or professional issues as a likely cause. The weirdest thing IMO is that Charlie has totally disappeared from online (FB, Quora, etc.). Either it's to avoid being asked questions, or some kind of personal issue. Either way, I wish him the best.
- samstave 14y ago
  While I am all Quora'd out -- I really do hope that Yahoo would buy them. I've said many times on HN that Yahoo needs to start getting REALLY aggressive in the valley to stay alive; they need to be investing in every startup that comes along and acquiring many more. All the brain trust is being gobbled up by google and (even moreso, recently) facebook. I personally think that Acquihires are a bad thing (TM) for the state of our industry... but if Yahoo has any hope in hell, they need to inject some innovative blood into themselves in a damn hurry. (with that said, I am not sure that Quora is really all that innovative - their UX model was only good when they were tiny - but now they have far too large a signal to noise ratio that is exacerbated by their UX implementation (hijacking typed text, @s etc etc etc)
  - rdl 14y ago
    IMO yahoo needs to exit more bad people than bring in new good people. I wouldn't sell to them (well, I would, but only for FY money for both me and everyone on the team, with a 2y earn-out) until it is clear they've liquidated all the dead wood. (although I'd love to get to be the liquidator-of-dead-wood... the Romney quote would be appropriate.)
    - samstave 14y ago
      >yahoo needs to exit more bad people than bring in new good people. Totally agree that they really need to shake things up, and whilst they sit on their laurels, the valley keeps moving and every day we see salesforce, google and facebook churning through the acquisitions that either bring in good tech or good people removing them from the pool completely.
endlessvoid94 14y ago
I hate sensationalist headlines. This is not "baffling".
caycep 14y ago
Why is this baffling? Founders quit or change all the time.
ericpete 14y ago
One suspects there's a lot less going on than what everyone would like to think. (Thanks, ChuckMcM, for the nice post about money and stock.) Mr Cheever is "something of a product design genius, and lots of people give him credit for Facebook's best features;" even the now-removed-from-Quora post says "to him the user came first and growth features would sacrifice that." That puts him in complete opposition to the guy (Mr D'Angelo, who to his credit is putting his money where his mouth is) who is paying the bills. The problem is that almost every Q&A type site has the same issue as Quora: only a small percentage of its membership is actively engaged. The number cited by the article is eight per cent, and in my experience, that's about par for the course. Since revenues (and therefore stock performance) are directly tied to use, there are two ways to increase revenues, with implications regarding the user experience for both: 1. Increase traffic, AKA "make the pie bigger". This means doing the kinds of things Mr D'Angelo probably championed -- the SEO Solution, playing nice with Google, low barriers to entry (i.e. Free). This is the tactic taken by most startups, since they're generally looking at Mountain View and saying "Gee, if we could just get our hands wet in THAT revenue stream, we'd be rich." 2. Keep your existing userbase more engaged, AKA "get your customers to eat more pie". This means doing the kinds of things Mr Cheever championed -- making the experience better, providing more services to them, concentrating on getting lifelong customers rather than more customers for less time. Most startups aren't in it for the long haul; they're in it for the big payday. The NYTimes obit of Arthur Sulzberger pointed out the difference. His family has always wanted to be in the business of disseminating the news; their competitors are in the business of selling advertising. Mr Cheever wanted to take care of users; Mr D'Angelo wants to see a return on his investment. If there was ever a startup in the position to do the former, it's Quora; I know my colleagues would dearly love to have enough money to where they wouldn't have to worry for a while how to keep the lights on. But as William F. Buckley noted a long time ago, "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive," and that's when someone like Mr Cheever moves on to his next venture.
Rhino55 14y ago
Um. The website and app are now blocking access unless you log in. I feel like this is a case of geniuses doing stupid shit that any normal person would never do. They probably have some subtle economics/psychology argument to justify this decision. I understand wanting to associate contributors with real world identities, but it is SAD to see this sort of dysfunctional behavior from such a promising and valuable service.
douglee650 14y ago
uhh, baffled? "founder loses control, leaves, or is pushed"
douglee650 14y ago
uhh, baffled? "founder loses control, leaves, or is pushed"
kgosser 14y ago
It's just four comments, but they are worth reading on the SF Gate article: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/The-Sudden-Mysterious-Exit-Of-A-Quora-Cofounder-3912160.php http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/The... Pretty good example the bubble we live in here on HN.

247 points by steve8918 14y ago

Seems like they were going to split directions at one point or another. Sad to see this happen as I love Quora but unfortunately, investors are in the business of making money, not building amazing user-friendly webapps. Is Quora a great service? Absolutely. Is Quora something I would be incredibly sad to see die? Without a doubt. Is Quora ever going to make enough money to cover costs? Probably not. This leaves a sale as the only possible exit. Adam is taking the unsexy role of being the business guy that drives Quora towards this conclusion. Great product and engineering minds will quit (especially with the departure of Charlie). People will cry out about how "the Quora I loved is dead" and new features will prompt blog posts like this one: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/09/10/the-misstep-of-quora-and-the-importance-of-trust-amongst-your-community/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/09/10/the-misstep-of... . But Adam has no choice, either he does this or the company dies and everything that is good about it is lost.

yo-mf 14y ago
That blog post by Mark was 100% on point. There are legitimate growth tactics, and then there are growth tactics that go over the line. Quora recognized they crossed the line on that one. That being said, they will sell, probably by year end or early next year.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  The question is, who's going to buy a Q&A site with a small user base for $400MM+?
  - samstave 14y ago
    As RDL said, Yahoo is the best likely acquirer and IMO specifically because they need to hedge against Google and FB grabbing up everything in their path.
- marcos123 14y ago
  As a former quora user, I definitely did not get the impression that they "recognized they crossed the line on that one." The impression I did get however was that the "views feature" was very much a consciously thought out decision, as I would assume most decisions are that are made in the context of building a company with millions of invested dollars in it. I also got the impression that they clung for dear life to that ill-intentioned decision, until their folly was making headlines for one-too-many days, and they made another decision to feign like they had no idea people wouldn't like strangers and friends knowing what they read in their private time. That's just my impression though. As a former quora user.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

001sky 14y ago

We all knew one of the commonsense edicts of Hollywood is “never invest in your own movie."* -- With the sound of silence, the Market has spoken.

paulgb 14y ago
Why is that? Simply because you have all your eggs in one basket? Or is it for the social proof and connections that comes from having someone else make the investment?
- astrodust 14y ago
  Having others buy in to your idea validates it. If you can't get investment for a movie it's probably a sign it's not very good, or the market for it is exceedingly narrow and might consist entirely of you.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    I'm reminded of Klaus Kinski, who wanted to make Paganini desperately, but couldn't convince Werner Herzog it was a good idea. Kinski ultimately made it himself, and it's supposedly quite bad (I haven't seen it). At least that's the impression My Best Fiend gives. Then again, Clerks was famously paid for by a bunch of credit cards. I guess there's an exception to every rule.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Clerks budget was under $30K, about what a handful of people could pay for any adventure vacation. More of a labor of love than an investment.
      - fusiongyro 14y ago
        True. I'm not even sure he tried to find outside investment.

jpdoctor 14y ago

> The answer makes one good point, though: D'Angelo did invest his own money in Quora, basically buying sole control over the company. The first clause (investing money) is a much less profound statement than the second clause (buying sole control). In order to buy sole control, he set the valuation of the new shares at something that washed out the "A" round guys. That should be a giant red-flashing signal to everyone involved.

campnic 14y ago
I've recently started trying to understand how these dilution events occur. I was wondering if you could better explain what happened in this case so I could further my understanding.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Its fairly straightforward. There is 'money' and there is 'stock'. Money funds day to day operations, pays salaries, power bills etc. Stock determines ownership, and in most corporations governance. Now day to day you spend money and ideally you also get revenue. If the revenue that comes in for any given month/quarter is more than the money going out that month/quarter then you are 'operationally cash flow positive' meaning that other than something like a big lawsuit or a promissory note coming due or some big financial event you can keep working and the lights on. It doesn't necessarily mean you can hire anyone or 'grow' or fund a PR campaign. Then there is stock which represents ownership in the company, there can be multiple classes of stock which convey different rights, and there can be corporate bylaws which change how decisions are made while private vs public, but for the simple case we'll assume that 1 to 1, one share of stock is worth 1/(total-stock) of the company and exerts an equivalent amount of control. When you make a decision for the company you at the board level you effectively 'vote your stock' when you vote. If 50.1% of the stock votes one way that is the way the decision goes. So lets consider a couple of scenarios: Lets say the Company is : 1,000,000 shares Investor A - 10% stock (100,000 shares) Investor B - 15% stock (150,000 shares) Investor C - 15% stock (150,000 shares) Founder A - 25% stock (250,000 shares) Founder B - 25% stock (250,000 shares) (everyone else in the company) - 10% remaining stock. Now the two founders, if they agree they can get their decisions ratified by the board with one additional investor voting with them. The 'value' of the company is price-per-share * total shares. So lets say this company was valued at $10M so each share is 'worth' $10. Now you need more money (revenues aren't covering it) so you try to sell more stock which is going to change the numbers around. Lets say you need $10M for the next 24 months and none of the investors want to invest any more money. You've got a crisis. But if you are also independently wealthy you can say "I'll put in the $10M but I'll take 2 million shares." So the 'totals' after that transaction are 3 million shares in total (up from 1 million) and as a strict percentage we've got: 3,000,000 shares Investor A - 3.3% stock (100,000 shares) Investor B - 5% stock (150,000 shares) Investor C - 5% stock (150,000 shares) Founder A - 8.3% stock (250,000 shares) Founder B - 75% stock (2,250,000 shares) (everyone else in the company) - 3.3% remaining stock. Founder B now has 'sole control' because they have enough stock to make any decision, vote their own stock, and have that decision be ratified.

dbloom 14y ago

For what it's worth: this article is syndicated from Business Insider. It wasn't written by San Francisco Chronicle staff. Here's the original: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sudden-mysterious-exit-of-a-quora-cofounder-has-silicon-valley-baffled-2012-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sudden-mysterious-exit-of...

webjprgm 14y ago

I just went to Quora.com and see nothing that would convince me to spend more than 30 sec. there. They need a better home page to engage potential users who are curious about what that site is. A one sentence blurb about solving all my problems doesn't make me believe it. I want to see examples so I can see exactly what kind of problems and how they will be solved. E.g. on Stack Overflow there is a list of questions and answers that are being asked.

astrodust 14y ago
Quora's Expert's Exchange inspired blurring of text to hold content hostage is anything but encouraging. It's user contributed content. Stop treating it with such disrespect.
- moe 14y ago
  Amusingly the hipster SV-startup is doing it even worse than the venerable expert-sexchange (on the latter you can at least scroll down to see the unblurred content). And to add insult to injury quora-accounts are free anyway. Why do they strong-arm users into creating what will ultimately be 99,9% throwaway accounts?
  - edwinnathaniel 14y ago
    They ask your FB account to "confirm" who you are if you want to interact (view is still free for throwaway email), not just e-mail. Of course the FB account can be a throwaway as well :).
    - samstave 14y ago
      I don't think that was always the case. I joined Quora very early, and I have never had an account on theFacebook. I did, however, recently delete my Quora account after I didn't like what they were doing with privacy (Lack thereof) I haven't been back, and while I thought there was some good conversations - the UX at Quora is atrocious. I had a hard time sort wheat from chaff in their feed, the visual differentiation between textual elements in the feed emphasized the wrong stuff. Their mobile view, desktop view and native mobile client view all had separate experiences ad visually didn't match. There are a lot more things I can say about the UX/UI - but in the end, I am happy I deleted my account.

dude_abides 14y ago

We still have ridiculously high engagement rate for 8% of our users, but that number hasn't gone up and nothing else we've done has managed to move the needle to get further users hooked. This leads me to think: does the needle really have to go up? According to pg's latest awesome essay on growth, the answer seems to be yes. But as the hacker news site has shown, no can also be a valid answer. pg's goal with hacker news is to keep a high quality of discussion, and not to grow the site to more users. As you bring in more users, you are bound to reduce engagement of existing users; this is justified if the growth is an order of magnitude higher (eg. when Facebook went from ivy leagues to colleges to high school to public). But for a site like Quora, I doubt if growth at the cost of pissing off existing users is justified at all.

moocow01 14y ago
All depends on your financials and business model - For most consumer internet startups the path to profitability is directly tied to user growth and user engagement. If your unprofitable and your not moving those numbers up all you have is a liability from an investment standpoint.
- dude_abides 14y ago
  User growth and user engagement often tend to be mutually conflicting goals.
ganjianwei 14y ago
Growth matters because Quora raised a ton of venture capital and needs to eventually generate revenue to justify the high valuation, and there's a limit on revenue/user they expect to generate. Simplified version of web apps' revenue calculation: Total revenue = revenue per user * no. of users There's an upper bound on how much each user generates in revenue (either through ads, subscriptions), e.g. imagine paying > $200/yr to use Quora, unlikely that more than 100,000 people are willing to do that. So the fastest way to grow is through having more users. On top of pure revenue/user number, there's the network effects of having more users, as well as becoming a key part of cultural fabric e.g. most celebrities have Twitter accounts now.

timpeterson 14y ago

Is Quora really struggling? My posting there is getting more and more engagement all the time (more importantly, this compete.com profile looks quite promising: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/) Also, how much does running Quora actually cost? If Adam D'Angelo has many Billions of dollars, I can't see them ever having a financial issue.

thedufer 14y ago
That profile shows pretty clearly that they've increased their monthly uniques by about 100k since February, when they'd been increasing by 100k _per month_ for the 5 months before that. I would not call that "promising".
- timpeterson 14y ago
  is your point that given the expectations, growing at the level of 100,000s users isn't good for Quora? cause most sites would be happy with that performance
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - thedufer 14y ago
    Yeah, most sites would be happy with that. But most sites didn't have the momentum to grow 8 times as quickly less than a year ago. Slowing of growth is important, not the absolute numbers.
tatsuke95 14y ago
>"If Adam D'Angelo has many Billions of dollars, I can't see them ever having a financial issue." If they're not making money, they have a "financial issue" from day one.
- saraid216 14y ago
  This. I'm not sure GP understands the difference between company finances and personal fortune?

kinkora 14y ago

"The final straw was Matt Cohler joining the Board at the end of August. Matt's with Benchmark, and his involvement is there for the sole sake of getting the website turned around, on an upward trajectory, and in shape to be sold so he could get a return on his investment." I think the italicized bit is the most interesting part of the comment. It seems that that Adam wants to sell the site at some point? but to who? Also, interesting that he is building Quora to flipped it instead of making it into a valid business.

jusben1369 14y ago

"We decided it was best for Charlie to step away from his day-to-day role at the company." Whatever happened it feels like Adam wants to make the point that Charlie was essentially fired. "We" is a lovely ambiguous term. They royal "We"? I suppose it's meant to imply that Charlie also agreed. But "Best for Charlie to step away" is pretty telling. There's a whole slew of options you could use to make it sound like it was Charlie's idea (although he's probably too young to 'focus on his family' I always thought Quora should monetize around an RFP type concept. It feels to me like 80% of users are there for technology recommendations from the horses' mouth.

bduerst 14y ago
I think Stack Exchange has Quora beat in the technical question market. An RFP concept would be rife with scams and low quality work.
- nancyhua 14y ago
  Quora has more mass appeal and is more of a time waster site than Stack Exchange. It's like a smarter, more gamified, Facebook-y version of Yahoo answers. The friends I introduced to it said they can spend all day reading about "what it's like to be a hitman" and asking Mark Cuban questions about his youth and stuff like that. Some of the questions re: what server to use, etc are answered by founders promoting their companies but nevertheless I think Quora has 2 valuable virtues: 1) You can get firsthand info from the horse's mouth, like read about what it's like to be a 25 year old self made millionaire, or what it's like to work with ashton kushter, or what it's like to get an investment on shark tank. You can ask what it's like to get a life sentence in prison and a real prisoner will respond. You can ask Larry Summers his opinion on something and he'll respond. 2) Quora organizes the information on the internet. Some of the stuff you could find by googling, but who just googles random questions? The flow of the site is pretty nice because you go from one interesting answer to suggested related questions. (I am just a Quora user although I know a bunch of people who work there.)
  - jacques_chester 14y ago

breck 14y ago

Eh, it happens. Reminds me of the PG quote: "Practically all start-ups internally are disasters... and they just hide this from the outside world."

raverbashing 14y ago
It's never pretty to know how sausages are made

sethbannon 14y ago

Looks like Business Insider is sneaking it's way onto the HN frontpage.

antonpug 14y ago

What the hell is Quora?

kdizza 14y ago
It's looks like stack exchange but they hide the answers behind a facebook login.
droithomme 14y ago
It's a site that if you go to it you see only a login page allowing either Facebook or Twitter sign in, with no explanation of what it is or why you would want to give your Facebook or Twitter passwords to them or what they might do with them. (Yes, I understand how it really works but I am presenting how it looks to normal people.) http://www.quora.com/ http://www.quora.com/ If you manage to find pages they expose to google to capture searches for information, you find it is like Yahoo Answers, except the answers are all blurred unless you agree to sign in and be tracked. Not surprisingly, this user-hostile abomination of usability has commercially failed. For some bizarre reason the designer who created this nonsense is described as a usability design genius in the referenced article when it is clear from even a moment's glance at the site's usability that its designers are not fit to design a hole in the ground for tossing refuse.
- kdizza 14y ago
  I was able to get in through the employee page: http://www.quora.com/about/team http://www.quora.com/about/team
  - desbest 14y ago
    And that's their home page? What do these people do all day? Blow bubbles for shits and giggles?
- hristov 14y ago
  You just do not get it do you. I suppose you do not realize the enormous potential of asking people for a twitter/facebook logon when they throw refuse in a hole in the ground. You can then track each person's refuse relate it to the refuse of their friends and you will have billions worth of data to be mined.

volandovengo 14y ago

I LOVE QUORA. They have produced a system which is creating some of the best authored information online. Each time I get their weekly email, I lose about half of my day because each item in it is so amazing that I have to read it. Watch Charlie Cheever's interview with TechCrunch recently. I think it's pretty telling that he was done with the company, it might have been the best call for him to leave. http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/quora-we-have-an-explicit-non-goal-of-not-selling-the-company/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/quora-we-have-an-explicit-n...

rdl 14y ago

The best speculation I've seen is that someone (Yahoo?) is buying Quora, with onerous earn-out provisions (1/2/3/4?), and letting Charlie leave now would accelerate his vesting compared to remaining until acquisition and then leaving, if he didn't want to work for the acquirer. I've met both Adam and Charlie (and Marc and much of the rest of the Quora team), and I can't see Adam/Charlie having a falling out over any personal or professional issues as a likely cause. The weirdest thing IMO is that Charlie has totally disappeared from online (FB, Quora, etc.). Either it's to avoid being asked questions, or some kind of personal issue. Either way, I wish him the best.

samstave 14y ago
While I am all Quora'd out -- I really do hope that Yahoo would buy them. I've said many times on HN that Yahoo needs to start getting REALLY aggressive in the valley to stay alive; they need to be investing in every startup that comes along and acquiring many more. All the brain trust is being gobbled up by google and (even moreso, recently) facebook. I personally think that Acquihires are a bad thing (TM) for the state of our industry... but if Yahoo has any hope in hell, they need to inject some innovative blood into themselves in a damn hurry. (with that said, I am not sure that Quora is really all that innovative - their UX model was only good when they were tiny - but now they have far too large a signal to noise ratio that is exacerbated by their UX implementation (hijacking typed text, @s etc etc etc)
- rdl 14y ago
  IMO yahoo needs to exit more bad people than bring in new good people. I wouldn't sell to them (well, I would, but only for FY money for both me and everyone on the team, with a 2y earn-out) until it is clear they've liquidated all the dead wood. (although I'd love to get to be the liquidator-of-dead-wood... the Romney quote would be appropriate.)
  - samstave 14y ago
    >yahoo needs to exit more bad people than bring in new good people. Totally agree that they really need to shake things up, and whilst they sit on their laurels, the valley keeps moving and every day we see salesforce, google and facebook churning through the acquisitions that either bring in good tech or good people removing them from the pool completely.

endlessvoid94 14y ago

I hate sensationalist headlines. This is not "baffling".

caycep 14y ago

Why is this baffling? Founders quit or change all the time.

ericpete 14y ago

One suspects there's a lot less going on than what everyone would like to think. (Thanks, ChuckMcM, for the nice post about money and stock.) Mr Cheever is "something of a product design genius, and lots of people give him credit for Facebook's best features;" even the now-removed-from-Quora post says "to him the user came first and growth features would sacrifice that." That puts him in complete opposition to the guy (Mr D'Angelo, who to his credit is putting his money where his mouth is) who is paying the bills. The problem is that almost every Q&A type site has the same issue as Quora: only a small percentage of its membership is actively engaged. The number cited by the article is eight per cent, and in my experience, that's about par for the course. Since revenues (and therefore stock performance) are directly tied to use, there are two ways to increase revenues, with implications regarding the user experience for both: 1. Increase traffic, AKA "make the pie bigger". This means doing the kinds of things Mr D'Angelo probably championed -- the SEO Solution, playing nice with Google, low barriers to entry (i.e. Free). This is the tactic taken by most startups, since they're generally looking at Mountain View and saying "Gee, if we could just get our hands wet in THAT revenue stream, we'd be rich." 2. Keep your existing userbase more engaged, AKA "get your customers to eat more pie". This means doing the kinds of things Mr Cheever championed -- making the experience better, providing more services to them, concentrating on getting lifelong customers rather than more customers for less time. Most startups aren't in it for the long haul; they're in it for the big payday. The NYTimes obit of Arthur Sulzberger pointed out the difference. His family has always wanted to be in the business of disseminating the news; their competitors are in the business of selling advertising. Mr Cheever wanted to take care of users; Mr D'Angelo wants to see a return on his investment. If there was ever a startup in the position to do the former, it's Quora; I know my colleagues would dearly love to have enough money to where they wouldn't have to worry for a while how to keep the lights on. But as William F. Buckley noted a long time ago, "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive," and that's when someone like Mr Cheever moves on to his next venture.

Rhino55 14y ago

Um. The website and app are now blocking access unless you log in. I feel like this is a case of geniuses doing stupid shit that any normal person would never do. They probably have some subtle economics/psychology argument to justify this decision. I understand wanting to associate contributors with real world identities, but it is SAD to see this sort of dysfunctional behavior from such a promising and valuable service.

douglee650 14y ago

uhh, baffled? "founder loses control, leaves, or is pushed"

douglee650 14y ago

uhh, baffled? "founder loses control, leaves, or is pushed"

kgosser 14y ago

It's just four comments, but they are worth reading on the SF Gate article: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/The-Sudden-Mysterious-Exit-Of-A-Quora-Cofounder-3912160.php http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/The... Pretty good example the bubble we live in here on HN.