
Opzi (YC S10): A Quora For The Enterprise - rblion
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/opzi-a-quora-for-the-enterprise/
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sriramk
I played with this a bit (the Microsoft network has some fledgling activity).
I think its a good start and the founder behind it seems impressive. However,
I'm a tad disappointed by how similar to Quora it is not just in terms of
functionality but also in concepts and look & feel. Maybe these will change or
maybe I'm off base to expect a lot of innovation here :).

Definitely worth trying out.

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rgrieselhuber
We've used Opzi this summer at YC and, as a user, I found myself wanting a UI
that was as close to Quora as possible. I was surprised by that because it
might mean that Quora is really onto something. And if this user experience
really works, it makes sense for an enterprise-focused company to use what
works in the consumer world.

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misterbwong
Maybe someone could shed some light on this for me, but what's the value of
this over, say, a wiki? Other than email support, which could or could not be
worth it, the value to the organization seems to be the same: it's an easily
searchable and editable knowledgebase.

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gojomo
Wikis can be daunting to average folks.

If Opzi works like Facebook and Quora -- gently prodding people to answer with
feeds and Bacn and Toast [1], and giving logical/browsable forms to activity
-- it could get a lot more participation.

The wiki 'titled article' wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a
universe of possible user-built-corpora organizational strategies. And the
wiki 'recent changes' feed wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a
universe of ways to report activity to, and stir activity by, interested
parties.

[1] See [http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-
goog...](http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-google-
cannot-build-s) for definitions of 'Bacn' and 'Toast' in context.

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mlinsey
Agreed with everything you say here, except I'd add one thing: It's not just
for "average folks" either. From what I understand, there used to be a YC Wiki
that was used actively among founders in each batch to share information with
each other. This previous batch, nobody touched the Wiki after the first week.
Everyone just used the YC Opzi. This was not out of loyalty: I've grit my
teeth and used some raw, unpolished products of other YC companies, and this
wasn't that. The Opzi was just much, much more convenient. No time was wasted
formatting the page or organizing sub-topic pages. It was much easier to
discover interesting content and get notified when interesting questions were
answered, which was more often because the Q&A format does a better job of
encouraging people to answer unanswered questions than a Wiki.

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mikeyur
I like the idea of the product (haven't played with it yet though) and the
pitch. Paraphrasing here, since I only watched the first half of presentation
earlier: "companies spend a lot of money on people and their knowledge, but
people leave and take it with them"/"a lot of answers are shared in a company
but they're kept all over the place in email/IMs/etc" - again, really
paraphrasing, but I think that pitch of keeping the knowledge you pay for
inside of the company, in a central location, will push a lot of businesses to
try it.

There are many products like this (basically any wiki software), but it's
quite cumbersome for someone to go in and manually create/edit wiki pages.
Every company I've worked with that uses a wiki usually has 1 person that has
to go in to format and edit pages, because no one else will (or knows how to).
Someone gets paid just to make and clean up the documentation. I think Opzi
makes it simple for anyone to do that by just asking a question. I can't count
how many times I've had to ask someone for info which they had in an email
somewhere, and they'd have to dig around for it and forward it to me. Now they
could just paste it into the answer section of the question I wrote, and when
the next guy needs the same info it's all in one place. This software actually
solves a real problem in both big and small businesses.

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marcamillion
After reading the post by PG about 'what goes on at YC', this article
definitely has elements that feel like it was written by PG.

E.g. "Similar to Yammer, users sign in with their corporate email address and
can then search for information by keyword. You can also ask questions, and
answer directly from the platform. There are a variety of uses cases for the
platform. For example, an engineering firm could use the platform as a way to
sort through commands. And because most companies are tied to email as a main
communication platforms, questions and answers can be distributed and answered
by email as well."

That definitely sounds like PG's voice.

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johnglasgow
They have a daunting customer acquisition mountain to climb. It took OpenTable
10 years and an IPO to have the capital to scale the SMB restaurant industry.
Different but the same.

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mlinsey
OpenTable had a global chicken-and-egg problem where they needed restaurants
on board to entice customers to use the site, but needed customers on the site
to convince lots of restaurants that it was worthwhile.

Opzi's chicken-and-egg problem is broken down in to many smaller sub-problems.
An individual Opzi is used by a single company or maybe even a single team
within a company. Having a bunch of other companies and teams who are already
using Opzi may help your sales pitch but is not inherently necessary for your
team's Opzi to function. So I'd say the customer acquisition problem is easier
than OpenTable's - with the caveat that enterprise sales is never a cakewalk.

