Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.46.00 PMTable of contents

  1. Founders & brief history
  2. Investors
    1. Initial investors
    2. Further investment rounds
  3. Current valuation
  4. Statements
  5. Industry trends
  6. Relevant links

1. Founders & brief history

Quora is an online platform which offers the possibility to ask and answer questions and share knowledge all around the world. Their vision is to create a knowledge sharing platform competing with Google and Wikipedia. The company was founded by former Facebook employees Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. Quora was founded in 2009, the platform itself is accessible since June 2010. Its headquarters is based in Mountain View, California. Carlie Cheever stepped back from the company in late 2012, maintaining an advisory role. D’Angelo stayed in charge and focused the business strategy on growth.

2. Investors

Quora has raised 141 USD Million in 3 rounds.

2.1 Initial investors

The first significant funding of 11 Million USD was given from Benchmark Capital in March 2010. By that time, the company was valued 86 Million USD. 2.2 Further investment roundsSeries B funds were raised in May 2012. A total of 50 Million USD was injected. Adam D’Angeloinvested 20 Million USD himself. Other investors during this time were Facebook board member PeterThiel, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. At this point, Quora was valued 400 Million USD.The latest investment round was in April 2014. Tiger Global Management led the Series C funding bringing in 80 Million USD

3. Current Valuation

During the last investment round in April 2014, Quora was valued at over 900 Million USD.

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4. Statements

Major newspapers predict a bright future for Quora. The New York Times put the company in line with other multi-billion dollar start-ups. The Daily Telegraph forecasts that Quora will become larger thanTwitter. The American IT author Robert Scoble describes Quora as a successful combination of Twitter, Facebook, Google and Wave. However, he later criticized the platform’s blogging service and claimedthat it is not substantially better than its competitors. Marc Bodnick, Quora’s head of business operations, stresses the fact that they are not planning to go public in the next several years: “We will stay a private company for the medium term, I don’t anticipate being public for a while.” The business magazine Forbes questions Quora’s ability to maintain an independent medium like Wikipedia which is backed- up by a non- profit organization. As Quora is funded by major venture investors, they will have to create revenue.

For 2015, Adam D’Angelo announced that advertisement will become available at Quora.

5. Industry trends

The internet- based knowledge industry creates most of its revenues from some sort of advertising set-up, sponsored posts or promoting certain experts or brands as preferred answers. As the internet becomes more available and internet purchases become more common, online marketing will become even more important for almost every company. Having Millions of visitors every year, pages like Quora will benefit from this trend. Social media convergence is a huge trend in the internet. Nowadays, social networks are used for business purposes such as recruiting or data pooling. Commercial knowledge sharing platforms can profit from this trend by putting the right strategies in place.

6. Relevant links

Series A funds

  • http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/quora-has-the-magic-benchmark-invests-at-86-million-valuation/
  • http://www.inc.com/30under30/2011/profile-adam-dangelo-charlie-cheever-founders-quora.html

Series B funds

  • https://gigaom.com/2012/05/14/quora-gets-50-million-q-why-a-because-it-can/
  • http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/14/quora-picks-up-50-million-at-a-400-million-valuation-round-led-by-peter-thiel/

Series C funds

  • http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/09/quora-forever/
  • http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/question-and-answer-site-quora-raises-80-million/?_r=