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Quora in the next YC batch
- tim_sw 12y agocould this be a way for quora to evaluate acqui-hires?
- zmitri 12y agoIf YC becomes Stanford 2.0, Quora seems like an interesting software collaboration system for all of it's "students." I see the potential especially since Facebook started out just with "students" too.
- antonber 12y agoMy guess that's what's in it for Quora is the ability to poach talent from YC startups.
- gkoberger 12y agoI'd love to hear more about why. It makes sense for YC (and is probably being treated as a normal investment rather than "Adam filled out a YC application and did a 10 minute interview"), however I feel like it makes Quora seem weak.
- sama 12y agoClearly makes a lot of sense for us :) I think the other companies in the batch will get a ton out of this. I'm hopeful Quora will too--as the YC community grows larger, we can help companies in lots of ways, including with things like hiring that are particularly important for later stage companies.
- kkhire 12y agoWhat do you think were the qualities that helped Quora rise above the many other similar Q&A websites? The layout and UI doesn't really seem too immersive.
- putlake 12y agoSomething that Facebook and Quora have in common is that the initial set of users were cool enough to prime the pump of viral growth. With Quora, you had awesome people giving answers only they had. Like a startup co-founder talking about the early days of their now successful venture. So starting with awesome people creating awesome content helped. Over time, Quora has done a few things really well: (1) growing the community while keeping it fairly high brow, (2) their topic taxonomy, and (3) their email digests. My problem with Quora is that it's more entertainment than useful. SE/SO is more functional. Who really cares what are the things about San Diego that most people don't know?
- waterlesscloud 12y agoI'm reading this as implying that a potential benefit to Quora is using YC as a hiring filter, presumably from failed startups. Seems like there could be some potentially misaligned incentives for YC founders there...
- dmoney 12y agoI'm guessing 5k + 5k per founder for ~6% of the company wouldn't work for a later stage company. Would this be more like a Series A investment?
- jfoster 12y agoUsually deals are all about the capital/equity/valuation balance, right? Perhaps YC was able to make this a better deal for themselves and Quora by getting them to take part in a YC batch. The hypothesis may be that the other YC startups are so much more likely to succeed after being heavily exposed to an already quite successful startup.
- frabcus 12y agoRight! Quora is before product market fit - it has no revenue, and its core product seems to have stalled (given the valuation its investors need). YC seems ideal for this. Just because they've spent millions, doesn't mean they aren't stuck, and need that magic juju sauce help to do the perfect pivot, which YC can perhaps help with.
- sad_chap 12y agoIt's probably not their primary consideration, but I'd imagine that this is really fun and stimulating for the other companies in the batch. Personally I think startup advice feels most valuable when it's in the form of stories ("Here's our N of 1, you synthesize this with others into a worldview.") And having a late stage company or two around can only add to that.
- ChrisNorstrom 12y agoThis is pretty exciting. It's good to see YC diversifying itself through small experiments. I'm curious how much money is YC going to invest in Quora? Same amount as its other startups?
- ryanSrich 12y agoInteresting. I wonder if this will aid in finding a business model[1]. Would love to hear more from someone at YC about what is driving this experiment. [1] http://www.quora.com/Quoras-Business-Model-and-Monetization/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business-plan-be http://www.quora.com/Quoras-Business-Model-and-Monetization/...
- harryh 12y agoIt would be interesting the learn the terms of the deal. Presumably it's nothing like the standard $120k for 7%. I'm struggling to figure out how this makes sense as a part of the y combinator investment portfolio. EDIT: The only plausible thing I can see Quora wanting that Y Combinator has is access to talent. Is this a recruiting move?
- mrgn 12y agoQuora would have to be having an extremely difficult time hiring for it to be a recruiting move. A Venn diagram of engineers or designers for whom Quora is more interesting when affiliated with Y Combinator, whom Quora would also want to hire, but who could not already join most other Y Combinator startups does not overlap.
- state 12y agoI wonder if Quora actually applied, or if the idea was generated outside of the application process. I'm also pretty curious what the terms of the deal are (although I don't expect to actually get those details) with the new standard funding package.
- sama 12y agoadam and i talked about it outside of the normal application process
- ivankirigin 12y agoWow, what a great experiment. How can Quora employees get involved? What percentage of the company does YC get? Did you even make an investment? Given their huge fundraising and valuation, getting even 1% and giving them around $100K both seem odd.
- sama 12y agowe did invest. as a general rule, i think investors shouldn't disclose terms, but if the company wants to, fine w/me.
- mkempe 12y agoHasn'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.
- ivankirigin 12y agoExceptions 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.
- rdl 12y agoQuora at Summer 2014 Demo Day could be really interesting.
- Patrick_Devine 12y agoMy first thought was would there be additional pressure to be awesome? Having already raised $141 million they're worth more than all the other companies there put together times ten.
- rdl 12y agoI'd be willing to make the bet that the valuation of Quora today ($900mm?) is lower than the peak valuation of at least one YC company founded S12 to S15 by 2020, adjusted for inflation.
- dude_abides 12y agoHard 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.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoIs there a webapp that lets us take/make bets on things like this? Not for money of course, but purely to gauge sentiment.
- klochner 12y agoThere's http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
- toomuchtodo 12y agoThank you! I need to do some sort of HackerNews/Long Bets mashup for 1-click betting.
- snihalani 12y agoI'd be down to help you in making that.
- rdl 12y agoThere's a good argument (I think by balajis of a16z) recently for using blockchain type stuff for these long bets. And the recent "truthcoin".
- morenoh149 12y agoif you're serious about this I'd like to help :)
- 12y ago
- grinich 12y agogreat move
- jw2013 12y agoNo way they are taking the traditional 7% ~ $120k deal. From Crunchbase they already got $141M fund, and let us be very conservative and say their valuation is just $400M. 7% percent of that is 400,000k*0.07 = 28,000k. I guess Quora will be treated the same as other batch's participants (except I wonder how many of Quora's employee will be physically in SV), but Quora got different deal.
- ConnorBoyd 12y agoAccording to their wiki page, Quora's valued at over 900 million after their most recent round of funding.
- johnrob 12y agoKeep a link to this for the initial office hours ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503910
- elwell 12y agoAh yes, especially: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4507209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4507209
- jedberg 12y agoPG 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.
- GrinningFool 12y agoHere, in the very temple of PG, you speak such blasphemy? ;)
- 3pt14159 12y agoHe is right about this though. Just one of Quora's many problems.
- hnnewguy 12y agoFunny 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.
- Fede_V 12y agoAFAIK, there is a trick involving pasting a specific url after the Quora link that you are interested in to get past their sign up wall, but usually it's a waste of time. I am curious to see what their pivot is, in the current form, I find the site to be incredibly annoying.
- jack-r-abbit 12y agoI've never liked Quora. I guess to each their own but they always seemed like the 9gag of Q&A to me. Maybe I just don't "get it".
- alain94040 12y agoI guess this will be interesting in light of yesterday's Founder Ethics post (http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/ http://ycombinator.com/founderethics/)
- grmarcil 12y agoAre you suggesting that putting content behind a registration wall is somehow unethical?
- rfrey 12y agoI think some people find the apparent gaming of Google unethical. They seem to expose the content to Google but hide it from people who click through. That might not be what's happening. It does give that impression though.
- justincormack 12y agoPutting my content behind a registration wall was pretty unethical, so I deleted my account and all my posts.
- sitkack 12y agoWTF with ycombinator taking a string of higher valued startups. Smells like paying for access. Not an incubator. More like paying to sleep with the head of a horse.
- prayag 12y agoWill we see YC doing (specifically leading) later stage or growth stage rounds now? I think it's great though I do worry about signaling problem for companies who don't do later stage rounds with YC?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- kkhire 12y agoIt'll definitely be a great and encouraging experience for all other companies in the batch -- working alongside a company with that caliber of funds? That's awesome.
- 3pt14159 12y agoQuora needs to change. I get the weekly emails that they make me double click to get though (the UI here is awful, but it doubles page views) and that is basically it. They need to change, which is why I think YC is such a good fit for them. The deal was probably $1 for 0.1% or something like that. Mostly symbiotic relationship. Quora needs the reboot cred and YC likes shiny people.
- paul 12y agoThis is very exciting. More great companies in YC = more value for the whole YC community!
- dangelo 12y agoThanks for including us!
- razfar 12y agoIt would be awesome if you could give more info to the community regarding your decision to join YC!
- johncoogan 12y agoI'm itching to know more too, but I'm sure we will all learn plenty in due time. From the post: "they’re participating in the batch like any other company". To me, that means Quora will be participating in demo day, and I'm sure their will be reporter coverage of their pitch. Really excited to see what's in store!
- calcsam 12y agoNote that the above comment is his first comment in 4 years :)
- namenotrequired 12y agoHe gave some in an answer (to HN user bhaumik) on Quora: http://qr.ae/y2vdI http://qr.ae/y2vdI
- calbear81 12y agoI believe it was made clear that their last raise will be the final round they will take so whatever they do will need to make the business sustainable in the long run. My guess is by participating in YC, they can: - Find up-and-coming businesses that are tangentially related to Quora's mission that they can groom and perhaps invest in. - Incubate within the YC ecosystem some spin-off businesses that may not fit well under the Quora brand and what they're doing.
- joshdance 12y agoI got an email from a Quora product manager a little while ago asking how I used Quora and what I liked about it. Seems like changes are coming.
- soneca 12y agoWhat a humbly ambitious move by Quora. They sure aren't happy enough with where they are or heading to; still they know they need help to change ways.
- _zen 12y agoI think this is just Quora wanting the YC branding to make them more hip. I'm thinking an underhand deal went through to get them in. Quora has the wealth and influence to make that happen. The OP is just preemptive damage control. Bring on the downvotes.
- owens99 12y agoSounds like a partnership not an investment.
- dollaaron 12y agoUntil Quora stops requiring you to log in to see anything, I'm never touching the site again (workarounds don't count).
- bifrost 12y agoVery cool! I welcome Quora!
- michaelochurch 12y agoI think I know what this is about. It's a neat idea. (My lack of specificity isn't a sign of cynicism; in fact, I like the idea.) I'll give a hint: semi-supervised learning.
- AznHisoka 12y agoLe Sigh. Now PG and his team of suits will use their persuasion to convince a bigger fool to buy Quora, and let all the investors off the hook. And so it goes.. in Silicon Valley.
- fuddle 12y agoYC has always been experimental, it worked out well for non-profits. The more experiments you do the better you can make it work.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- xacaxulu 12y agoHope JesusChristSiliconValley has something to say about this. http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/48962035819/quoraquoraquora http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/48962035819/...
- noio 12y agoHaven't heard a thing from him since http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/50931471868/jesus-christ-silicon-valley http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/50931471868/... .. But yes; that post is all I can think of when I hear Quora.
- krstck 12y agoI want to like Quora, but I hate how pushy they are about forcing you to sign up to read their content. I thought I'd remembered pg making a similar comment a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217449 Maaaaaybe this will encourage them to change?
- grumpypants666 12y agoI hope its a serious down-round. Spam and link bait junk content. What a worthless Quompany.
- gedrap 12y agoI am more interested in whether Quora will avoid the problems SO is facing. A year ago or so, the links in the email digest were genuinely interesting. /r/iama, kind of. Now, many of them is stuff like 'the best thing you have been told' or 'how does it feel to be in love'. No thanks. If I wanted that, I would be browsing those instagram-ish images with pathetic captions. Is it their ML getting something wrong, or a general trend? I tried to just visit quora.com but found it fairly boring and hard to browse, so I visit only through the email.
- OmarIsmail 12y agoThis actually makes quite a bit of sense. At the scale that YC is at now, there are already a few companies worth 10x Quora (Dropbox, Twitch, AirBnB). I'm sure even at Dropbox et al's scale both Dropbox and YC get a lot out of the ongoing relationship. Therefore, in these types of mutually beneficial scenarios why would YC or companies for that matter artificially limit themselves to only getting into such a relationship during some arbitrary timeline? When you think about it, putting such an arbitrary limit doesn't make sense, and voila you've broken a mental barrier and can now change the rules of the game. As a founder of a YC company I would absolutely love it if YC becomes this broad "old boys/girls" network of awesome tech companies. Who actually cares about what stage the company was at when they joined YC. The more great companies part of the club, the better!
- melvinmt 12y agoI wonder if Quora was part of "The New Deal" http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-new-deal
- cmpns8 12y agoA well established company with a nice product but no revenue generating business model partners with a bunch of hotshot entrepreneurs looking for a startup idea (or pivot) - I wonder if Quora is going to provide a kind of Q&A based platform which creative startups can leverage, almost like a Quora branded YC mini-batch. The startups would have immediate access to Quora's user base and a space to focus on (Q&A value added services). Quora gets an infusion of fresh ideas without have to take the risk themselves. Quora could develop some fee based structure for its platform and look at acquiring the most promising startups.
- drp4929 12y agoHow much time Quora founders are going to spend at YC headquarter during the program ?
- shaohua 12y ago7% of Quora for $120k, sounds like a steal. just kidding. there is no way they get the same term
- mrfusion 12y agoIt's funny I never thought twice about registering for stack overflow but I can never bring myself to register for quora. And I always feel bummed I can't see all the answers.
- benwilber0 12y agoI can't imagine there's anything in this for Quora. They just raised $80M last month! I suspect they're either launching a new product or pivoting completely.
- tonydiv 12y agoQuora being valued at $900M? Heh, I'd believe it when there's some revenue, or at least some sign of revenue. I'd have more faith in Quora long term if they were asking for donations like Wikipedia.
- jonathanjaeger 12y agoI still think all the Quora bashing about their signup interstitials is overstated. They've determined the optimal experience is for people to sign up to see an answer. I know that seems antithetical to an open and "easy-to-use" Internet, but this isn't Wikipedia. Quora is about answers but also about opinions. Their email newsletters, although tweaked recently in a not-so-favorable way, are still amazing. You get a ton of value becoming a user, but unless you sign up (or are semi-forced to sign up) you'd never know that. While I keep saying I'm not sure if it'll be a good business, I love Quora. They've done something truly unique in the Q&A space and I'm happy they have so much funding that they'll be around for years to come regardless of whether it's a "business".
- yeukhon 12y agoQuora is awesome but lack of enough users who can actually deliver "answers". As a student I visit Quora for three things: find out some "secrets" about a company written by former and current employees, find out secrets about cities and history and find out just about anything interesting. StackExchange has a strong, super strong moderation. You can't just start a random question and not expect someone close it in ten minutes. SE's divisions makes asking question and finding related questions very difficult. Sometimes you don't even know where to ask the right question... If Quora has the active user base that SE has I will sure people will flood there. Quora to me is the modern Yahoo Answer but with the hope of quality control.
- manojit 12y agoQuora has a certain negativity in it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 12y agoWhy would YC taint itself with all that pg's quite accurately criticized Quora for. Scammy SERP practices and forced user count inflation. Hardly something to encourage.
- Wump 12y agoSeems like a good move for Quora. They'll get early access to acquihiring super talented folks at struggling/failing startups. At the least, they can generate goodwill and word of mouth as a good place to work. Talented people know talented people, etc. Not sure about the impact on YC though. It may create an environment of mixed incentives. Quora's incentive is almost perverse, in that they get the most value out of YC from failing startups.
- guelo 12y agoDefinitely seems like something pg would have never done.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ilamparithi 12y agoFor me Quora is useful in finding alternative sites/software. For example, If I am looking for a web chat software, I can find most of the available solutions there. Of course, the information is biased because it is posted by the respective founders/CTOs. Still I can use that as a starting point for my research. I do hate that I have to login to read content but share=1 comes to the rescue.
- ZenPro 12y agoI was a frequent Quora user with a relatively well-regarded reputation. During an Ask to Answer session a user took offence to being proved wrong about some fact or other and threatened a retribution. Over next few days emails began arriving in my personal inbox which the User had incorrectly identified as the email of my business clients. The emails were pure vitriol accusing me of fraud etc telling the "clients" to jettison me. I immediately contacted Quora as the information he had access to could only have come from an Administrator (which I had previously clashed with on the thread). Quora denied all knowledge but the Administrator refused to engage with me personally. At that point I realised it just was not worth the exposure.
- evolve2k 12y agoStackExchange 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?
- michalu 12y agoThread on Quora http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-did-Quora-join-the-2014-Y-Combinator-batch http://www.quora.com/Quora-company/Why-did-Quora-join-the-20...