
Quora raises $50M at a $400M valuation with Peter Thiel leading - kahseng
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404510443769988.html?mod=wsj_nview_latest
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cletus
Firstly, is there any chance we can have a story without someone using the
word "bubble"? This is not evidence of a bubble. More to the point, it's a
_boring_ prediction because it doesn't add anything. Some years from now we
may well be in a bubble and the person who happens to be right that day will
say "See? I said we were in a bubble" and the previous 1000 days of being
wrong will be summarily ignored.

Basically it's pointless.

As for Quora, I stand by my original assessment: I don't see this going
mainstream. Q&A seems to be something that works well for particular verticals
(eg programming aka Stackoverflow) but doesn't seem to be a general purpose or
widespread tool. This is in part cultural (eg I believe Q&A is very big in
Korea).

I see this more as "bubble thinking" and in this context "bubble" has nothing
to do with valuation but more that the people who use and value Quora live
inside a bubble. That bubble is the Valley. VCs and Valleywags only know other
VCs and Valleywags and all of those people use Quora so they make the mistake
of thinking it's far larger than it actually is.

Quora does not have the mainstream breakout appeal that, say, Pinterest or
Instagram does and honestly I don't think it ever will (you can quote me on
that). Neither does (or will) Stackexchange.

That's not to say either won't exit for 9-10 digits but that's another story
entirely.

Quora has done a fantastic job of marketing itself to VCs/Valleywags but I see
Q&A much like I do Foursquare and the whole check-in thing. It's a (to borrow
a Mark Suster term) FNAC (feature not a company).

IMHO Quora will suffer the same fate every social/curation site does: eternal
September. If it ever does grow massively the influx of new people will change
the site and those early adopters people like to follow now will move on to
the next thing. It's Slashdot, Digg, etc all over again.

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noahc
I view quora as a highend QA website that connects me to experts. I have
access to people with deep understandsings of technology, business, science,
lingustics and culuture all while being "peer reviewed". I dont think the
lower class and noneducated will flock to it, but it would be invaluable to
anyone in the knowledge economy.

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psyklic
I see a lot of potential for the "lower class and noneducated" in the Q&A
space. Questions about relationships and social issues often cannot be
answered by merely browsing websites. Everyone views their own situation as
being unique. People love giving advice on these issues, even if the right
answers aren't black and white.

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noahc
I dont disagree, but I think ask.com, yahoo q&a, reddit and even to some
extent metafilter as a better fit for those types of questions.

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mikeryan
Can anyone explain why Quora would garner such a high valuation? I have a hard
time believing its revenue based so is it seen as an acquisition target?

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staunch
1\. Very well connected founders.

2\. Founder ponying up millions of his own cash.

3\. Frighteningly Ambitious(TM) problem.

4\. Reasonably good traction and product execution.

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potatolicious
I simply do not see #4 happening. Hell, at this rate I'm willing to bet that
StackExchange, itself a rather niche site (or network of sites) has higher
activity than Quora.

I don't know a single person outside the (somewhat incestuous) startup
industry that uses Quora. In fact, I do not know a single person outside the
tech industry who _knows about Quora_.

Claims that Quora has achieved good traction are, to be polite, overly
generous, but more frankly, bullshit.

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tptacek
They have a reasonable diversity of backgrounds (it feels about on par with
Reddit or MeFi in that regard) which leads me to think it's not _entirely_ a
tech industry phenom.

Also: they have an interesting strategy of courting mainstream media
distribution; there's a "Quora" section on Slate now, for instance. They could
keep doing that.

9 figure valuation? No clue. Valley numbers, agreed. Just saying.

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Drbble
Slate is more mainstream than HN, but not mainstream. Forbes is a better
example of mainstream reach, but also the risk: the Forbes audience is not a
quality content crowd, it's an infotainment filler crowd, and infotainment is
cheap these days.

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blackysky
Ok I know the word bubble is overuse but I think we are in a bubble. I know
the market choose « the right price » for any project. We have seen this movie
before:The housing market. Money was “easy” to get for almost anyone without
checking those fundamentals. The main idea was simple prices cannot go down.
Now back here, the idea is simple someone somewhere is going to pay $400M or
more in a near future.... what's the plan B put ads again? Paid questions?

I'm just trying to understand how people can come up with valuations like that
…. I just don't get it ...

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SuperChihuahua
I think it has to do with probabilities - many small loses and one big win
(Facebook) - and you have a profit

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Drbble
But many small losses and zero big wins...

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dguaraglia
Wow, can we spell "bubble" yet? This is _definitely_ a 100% bubble-based
valuation. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Quora is a completely worthless
company, but unless they have some incredibly magic sauce they haven't showed
us yet, I can't possibly see how they'll get that much revenue ever.

In fact, a simple check would do: let them show how much they made last year,
projected growth for this year, and we can start talking about anything beyond
a $10m valuation.

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pclark
Or Quora ignores dguaraglia's requests, continues their success (however you -
or they - wish to measure it) as a private company and watches Hacker News
whip itself into a frenzy about the financing climate?

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dguaraglia
Although that's the most likely answer, it's also the stupid thing to do. And
by 'stupid' I mean it in the "because of things like this, all of us will get
fucked in the long term, even the short-term winners" sense.

I just _hate_ this idea that you can create a company without any kind of
realistic approach to making money, value it at in millions without any kind
of basis and hope some rich (and dumb) buyer bites. It's opportunistic at best
and dishonest at worst.

It makes _everyone_ in the milieu look like he's trying to pull this stunt,
although there are plenty of honest (and profitable) companies out there not
getting millions in investment because they don't try to sell something shiny.

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pclark
Quora is just damn useful.

I actually struggle to think of many other b2c companies who are equally as
useful and yet also fun to use. It's like Google Search (useful) combined with
Tumblr (fun.)

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AznHisoka
People can talk about elite team, synergetic community, excellent quality
content, usability, etc but it all comes down 95% to one thing: SEO.

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jordhy
I been an advocate of conservative valuations but, in this case, I highly
agree with the number proposed.

Quora is much better than all its comparable companies (eHow, Mahalo, etc...)
in every possible sense: community, technology, founding team, etc. Traffic is
very strong, it displays strong social integration tools and has managed grow
very impressively.

On a side note, I expect Quora to move into the mainstream with much less
friction than Reddit or Askolo. Being more design and experience oriented,
Quora has the upper hand here. I hope Quora's team realizes and exceeds this
valuation.

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citricsquid
Aren't quora and "mainstream" at odds though? Quora is about _quality_
questions, the majority of mainstream people that would use a Q&A site are the
sort of people that use(d) Yahoo Answers, the sort of questions that you want
to exist for long enough to get a reply but once they have been replied they
hold absolutely no value to anyone.

How can Quora "go mainstream" and avoid this problem?

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noahc
The simple answer is that you redefine mainstream. Mainstream doesn't mean
that everyone uses it like Facebook, but instead that "everyone" uses it just
like "everyone" uses shopify or github.

Quora goes mainstream when a certain elite, much like the Salons of Paris,
gather there. Academics, Business, Cultural, Medical, Scientific and
Technology elite all show up.

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kjhughes
Techcrunch broke the evaluation story 3 weeks ago:

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/quora-is-raising-
at-a-400m-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/quora-is-raising-
at-a-400m-valuation-with-dangelo-putting-in-his-own-money/)

And Quora already has numerous Q/A's on the valuation. See, for example,

[http://www.quora.com/Valuations/Is-Quora-
worth-400-million-d...](http://www.quora.com/Valuations/Is-Quora-
worth-400-million-dollars-If-so-why)

along with the Related Questions listed on the right.

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sparknlaunch12
We really like Quora. It has an active community, made up of a wide range of
experts giving really great answers. The Quora valuation sounds high but the
wealth of knowledge, number of users and available intelligence must be of
value to some investors.

We have written an article (still to be published) on these expert Q&A sites.
Stack Exchange, Quora, Askolo, Sprouter, Reddit plus more are delving into
matching questions with answers.

There is growing trend towards matching experts to inquisitive minds. These
platforms are essentially allowing subject matter experts to sell their
knowledge to others. Why not?

Maybe the high valuation - Quora and others are commoditizing expert knowledge
with the intention of selling this on?

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cpeterso
How does Quora make money?

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yurisagalov
Ugh, paywalls/loginwalls.

~~~
flyt
yea, that really killed Facebook in the early days.

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fourstar
I'm not sure if that's the point he was making. It's that making it socially
acceptable to do, is annoying. At least that's what I think he meant.

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mkramlich
$400M... let me guess: no revenue at all? but it was started by a couple of
Mark's dorm pals from college! not a bubble, not a bubble, not a bubble, not a
bubble....

