Quora raises $50M at a $400M valuation with Peter Thiel leading

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 <i>boring</i> 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.<p>Basically it's pointless.<p>As for Quora, I stand by my original assessment: I don't see this going mainstream. Q&#38;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&#38;A is very big in Korea).<p>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.<p>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.<p>That's not to say either won't exit for 9-10 digits but that's another story entirely.<p>Quora has done a fantastic job of marketing itself to VCs/Valleywags but I see Q&#38;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).<p>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.

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?

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

Wow, can we spell "bubble" yet? This is <i>definitely</i> 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.<p>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.

Quora is just damn useful.<p>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.)

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

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

Techcrunch broke the evaluation story 3 weeks ago:<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/quora-is-raising-at-a-400m-valuation-with-dangelo-putting-in-his-own-money/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/quora-is-raising-at-a-400m-...</a><p>And Quora already has numerous Q/A's on the valuation. See, for example,<p><a href="http://www.quora.com/Valuations/Is-Quora-worth-400-million-dollars-If-so-why" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Valuations/Is-Quora-worth-400-million-d...</a><p>along with the Related Questions listed on the right.

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.<p>We have written an article (still to be published) on these expert Q&#38;A sites. Stack Exchange, Quora, Askolo, Sprouter, Reddit plus more are delving into matching questions with answers.<p>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?<p>Maybe the high valuation - Quora and others are commoditizing expert knowledge with the intention of selling this on?

How does Quora make money?

Ugh, paywalls/loginwalls.

$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....