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I'll keep aside the logic of whether I like what they are doing or not and ask if they have any other option. The die has already been cast in Quora's case, fr

I'll keep aside the logic of whether I like what they are doing or not and ask if they have any other option. The die has already been cast in Quora's case, from what it looks like from the outside (I'm speculating wildly here), it looks like the company realized a while ago (around the time of the Charlie Cheever ousting saga) that they're growing at a pace much slower than what is expected out of them. A $11 million series A to $50 million series B usually fits the profile of a company in hyper growth stage. Is Quora a company that fits such a profile? All pointers (admittedly imperfect) say 'no'. Even going by their latest feature, blogs, it would appear that they're also running out of tricks. Such a feature is often a clear indicator of the flattening of user growth, leading companies to chase down usage growth aggressively to make up for the decline in the former. But a $50 million series B should fly in the face of such an assumption. Well, maybe not. Money can either help you unlock known avenues for growth or it can help you explore unknown avenues. Either option buys time, but with different ends in sight. DAngelo putting up some of his own money certainly points at the latter. It looks like an attempt to buy time to explore. While it is hard to wager what their burn rate should be, it is probably not enough to burn $11 million in two years. Even with the really nutty assumption that they have actually burnt $11 million in 2-years, with the current round they should be good for another 2-3 years. That's enough time to focus purely on how to massively grow the product without having to worry about how will you pay the bills in the coming week. With that perspective in mind, it is easy to see why they're less interested in being a warm-and-cosy small community with great answers that pushes all the right buttons with the power users. Their road ahead is a choice that's already been made. Where they will get to on that road, I don't think anyone knows yet. One thing is certain, though. They'll either win really big, or will flame out pretty badly. They've already boxed themselves into a place where there is little space in-between.

hollerith 14y ago
>I'll . . . ask if they have any other option. The other option would have been to choose not to take VC money -- or to have chosen a "business model" not heavily dependent on high-quality uncompensated contributions from users.
- codelust 14y ago
  Not that I like much what they're doing, but I don't think those options exist anymore. As purists, we probably love the concept of organic growth a bit too much. There's nothing wrong with being a small successful company, there are tens and thousands of that out there. But building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment. Uncompensated users are a different issue altogether. I'm sure people have various reasons to keep contributing content there even after knowing that fact.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    Let me stress that I am not talking about web sites in general but rather am talking specifically about sites that depend on quality unpaid contributions from a large numbers of people. >building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment. Wikipedia is a counterexample. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the sixth most visited web site in the world. But more to the point, no VC-funded or stock-market-funded company I know of is foolish enough to try to compete with Wikipedia. I think that fifteen years from now, we will see a similar situation among Q-and-A sites -- at least those where the answers are contributed by unpaid users. In other words, I predict that Quora -- as well as Stack Exchange, which has also taken VC funding -- will be eclipsed within 15 years by sites not funded by VC or other profit-motivated investment. Any competition for Google Search is likely to come from companies like Apple or Microsoft that already have plenty of money to pay engineers or from investor-funded for-profit companies. That is because the "non-profit sector" is unlikely to be able to summon up enough skilled labor or funding to compete with Google Search. In contrast, setting up a competitor to Quora or Stack Exchange is relatively easy (especially since these new entrants can learn from Experts Exchange, Stack Exchange and Quora), and going the non-profit route (or the for-profit "lifestyle business" route without external funding) does not alienate a large fraction of potential unpaid contributors.
    - ashleyblackmore 14y ago
      This is somewhat a non-sequitur, but I just want to highlight one significant distinction between SE and Quora, which is that "[All user-generated] content (questions and answers) posted on the Stack Exchange Network is licensed under a Creative Commons license, Attribution Share Alike." So in fifteen years when SE is no longer in fashion, those answers can live on in some form. Atwood had an idea that SE would be "like Wikipedia" for QA, and Stack Overflow has certainly had success in that regard. I think that contributors to the site get very much the same value proposition as that of Wikipedia, if not slightly more in the user profile/karma regard. Of course, none of this negates your point about the influence of funding!
jonathansizz 14y ago
Maybe they're not growing very fast because (quite apart from their other failings as indicated here) their entire business model is based on convincing large numbers of intelligent, knowledgeable people to produce content for them for free, which Quora can then make money off?

hollerith 14y ago

>I'll . . . ask if they have any other option. The other option would have been to choose not to take VC money -- or to have chosen a "business model" not heavily dependent on high-quality uncompensated contributions from users.

codelust 14y ago
Not that I like much what they're doing, but I don't think those options exist anymore. As purists, we probably love the concept of organic growth a bit too much. There's nothing wrong with being a small successful company, there are tens and thousands of that out there. But building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment. Uncompensated users are a different issue altogether. I'm sure people have various reasons to keep contributing content there even after knowing that fact.
- hollerith 14y ago
  Let me stress that I am not talking about web sites in general but rather am talking specifically about sites that depend on quality unpaid contributions from a large numbers of people. >building a big successful company at scale is rarely done without taking on external investment. Wikipedia is a counterexample. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the sixth most visited web site in the world. But more to the point, no VC-funded or stock-market-funded company I know of is foolish enough to try to compete with Wikipedia. I think that fifteen years from now, we will see a similar situation among Q-and-A sites -- at least those where the answers are contributed by unpaid users. In other words, I predict that Quora -- as well as Stack Exchange, which has also taken VC funding -- will be eclipsed within 15 years by sites not funded by VC or other profit-motivated investment. Any competition for Google Search is likely to come from companies like Apple or Microsoft that already have plenty of money to pay engineers or from investor-funded for-profit companies. That is because the "non-profit sector" is unlikely to be able to summon up enough skilled labor or funding to compete with Google Search. In contrast, setting up a competitor to Quora or Stack Exchange is relatively easy (especially since these new entrants can learn from Experts Exchange, Stack Exchange and Quora), and going the non-profit route (or the for-profit "lifestyle business" route without external funding) does not alienate a large fraction of potential unpaid contributors.
  - ashleyblackmore 14y ago
    This is somewhat a non-sequitur, but I just want to highlight one significant distinction between SE and Quora, which is that "[All user-generated] content (questions and answers) posted on the Stack Exchange Network is licensed under a Creative Commons license, Attribution Share Alike." So in fifteen years when SE is no longer in fashion, those answers can live on in some form. Atwood had an idea that SE would be "like Wikipedia" for QA, and Stack Overflow has certainly had success in that regard. I think that contributors to the site get very much the same value proposition as that of Wikipedia, if not slightly more in the user profile/karma regard. Of course, none of this negates your point about the influence of funding!

jonathansizz 14y ago

Maybe they're not growing very fast because (quite apart from their other failings as indicated here) their entire business model is based on convincing large numbers of intelligent, knowledgeable people to produce content for them for free, which Quora can then make money off?