Raising money for StackOverflow

I've got mixed opinions of StackOverflow.<p>On the one hand, it's definitely better than ExpertsExchange, and does an adequate job of providing answers to many developer questions.<p>On the other hand, it's far (far!) from living up to it's potential. The basic premise of the site is that the wisdom of the crowd will separate the gold from the dross; however, the incentives lead to a plethora of mediocre answers which do <i>not</i> converge (Wikipedia-style) towards some platonic ideal, despite Joel's stated wishes to that effect. What's more, there's a well-documented problem ("the fastest gun in the West") whereby the first semi-correct answer will quickly rise to the top, drowning out later (but more correct, more thorough) answers.<p>In short: they haven't (yet) solved the basic problem of "changing the way people get answers".<p>What's more, gaining the critical mass of early users was leveraged largely through Joel and Jeff's celebrity. Which is not transferrable to other domains. Which means that the site can't easily scale out.<p>Based on the preceding, I'd say that VC money is a good way to go-- it should give them the resources to a) solve the basic problem, and b) build subscriber bases in other domains.

One problem that seems to have come up a few times is their inability to make serious revenue. This is a perennial issue for sites aimed at developers that don't sell products - coders + advertising don't mix (well).<p>I get the impression Joel's looking at expanding the SO model into other non-developer/non-geek niches where advertising could work, but I'm not convinced he's proven the revenue model enough to make it a tempting investment just yet. Anyone know any different?<p><i>Note: On another post, someone reminded me of the Careers move, so that's one easier-to-monetize stream at least.</i>

I enjoy using StackOverflow.<p>Jeff Atwood seems to get a lot of flack, but in creating such a nice site and community, he's walked the walk as far as I'm concerned.

One thing that wasn't clear from the article, what does he want to spend the money on?<p>If it's marketing, I don't see why they can't do that with existing revenue. It's not as expensive as say a retail location for a starbucks and they must be doing some revenue with ads and job board already.<p>If it's hiring more developers that might make sense, although I can't think of any huge features they don't have yet.<p>Overall, not sure I'm convinced this is a good play for VC. They are growing nicely without it.

<i>Jeff and I started out with a goal for StackOverflow of changing the way programmers and system administrators get answers to their questions on the Internet, which was deeply broken. In 18 months we’ve accomplish that</i><p>Have they? Whenever I have a question the first place I turn is Google, and I usually find my answer on a site that's not stack overflow.

One of the things that comes to my mind is this:<p>Craigslist is widely described as leaving 90% of the money on the table. Most people don't think this is <i>why</i> they are this popular. They could have monetised more categories or cities and still kept their position. Maybe.<p>But maybe they did exactly what was necessary to become the number 1 classified site. What if the <i>right</i> amount of revenue for some top 200 site (or network of sites) is really a couple of million?<p>Can such a site survive VC or does the option of staying a certain size disappear??<p>Starbucks was a perfect example. They new exactly where the business was going if constraints got lifted. More stores. Potentially tens of thousands. If they were less capitalised they would have to go slower but they knew where they were going.

I wonder how this modifies their StackExchange offering. Does this mean that if you are doing anything beyond a internal knowledge base Stack Overflow is now a competitor?

Lately, Stack Overflow has been a mixed blessing.<p>How it goes: I post a question(questions are rather specific, but technology stack is very common on SO)<p>I usually get one-two answers very quickly and maybe one more slightly delayed answer, all helpful but also rather generic. You definitely get the impression people are just point whoring.<p>After a day or two I end up accepting the closest answer, even if it is not that close.<p>Seems real experts have moved on or perhaps I am missing some trick in asking questions.<p>If this problem persists on their scaled out sites, I am not sure how much VC money will help them.

Someone has been envious on the Vark acquisition :-)<p>Of course VC makes sense in their case. There is no barrier to entry in this field, the model is clear:<p>* users tend to type questions in search engines<p>* search engines tend to rank up exact matches (especially with some trivial SEO like put the question in the title and url)<p>* given the proper environment, users will help each other answering those questions for free, generating lots of content - exposing ever bigger surface to the search engines

Why do they feel the need to publicize their desire to raise money? Surely they can get their foot in the door of potential VC's based on Joel's reputation with Fog Creek alone, so what do they gain by announcing that they are looking for investment and giving a bunch of reasons why it's the right thing for StackOverflow? Why not just quietly raise the money and then, if/when they get funded, announce it along with the reasons?

As a user of some of the more recent Q/A sites (StackOverflow and Fluther) I find one of the most valuable pieces to be the community. I don't think that necessarily scales to a venture-worthy size or that venture capital leads to long term care takers of that community. However, clearly the founders seem to think otherwise. Joel's looking for money and Fluther took seed funding.

<i>"... There are a few indicators for the type of company that I believe can benefit from, and should take, VC. ..."</i><p>The question I'd be interested in knowing is, <i>"if SO was in accepted into a YC intake, what advice would SO be given to evolve given the app is built, idea is validated?"</i>.

someone needs to do this for shopping.

Joel's going to the Valley to pitch SO while Jeff's off in New Zealand at Webstock/on vacation. Do VCs care if only half of the founding team is there? What if one of them is 1/3 of the development team and the primary technical driving force?

OT but the bronze statue of the two "guys" with the coin... anyone know what that is? There is a similar style statute outside of the ICC in Indianapolis.

Jeff has to go in the new company. He is a liability for the VC.