Quora for Startups: Sprouter Pivots to Focus on Q&A for Entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

Quora for Startups: Sprouter Pivots to Focus on Q&A for Entrepreneurs

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17 pointsjdp2323 comments

I'm using the market leader for Startup Q&A to type this comment.

HN is one of the ''current'' market leaders. Recently though we're starting to see a trickle of Quora links here; over time I suspect it'll be more and more common to ask elsewhere and post here.

At least for me, HN's not that great for startup Q&A. No question I've asked here makes it to the front page, so people almost never respond. Meanwhile Quora's topics and the ability to direct a question to somebody give a lot of major advantages. Over the last two weeks I've had conversations on Quora with a journalist I didn't know and with a CEO of a company in the news. Both of the links came up on HN as well but I don't believe either of them posted here.

Agreed with this. Ask HN threads can contain excellent information, but is no longer a match for a good Quora thread.

However, is there really a need for a "Quora for startups"? Wouldn't that be...Quora?

Quora certainly hopes so. But Sprouter could give them a run for their money.

On the one hand it's not like Quora has to dominate every market space to succeed -- StackOverflow will be better than them for programming questions, and there's a law site whose name I forget that rocks for legal stuff. But since this is so close to their core (Silicon Valley web startup scene) it's potentially a real challenge...

I agree that Quora can and maybe should leech some of this away. However, I personally dislike seeing SO and Quora questions posted here. The fragmented discussion is a sign that something is amiss.

If HN is a bad place to ask questions because they don't make it to the front page but it's a good place to discuss questions, my guess is that the community's perspective has some value.

Maybe it's time for HackerQuestions.com with users/karma integrated between HN and HQ. It's good that you can chat with journos on Quora. It's also good to have amore focused conversation within HN, that's why people discuss Quora or SO questions with such energy.

HN's threading and voting for comments make it a much better place for discussion than Quora. Conversely Quora's answer summaries, categories, and social media integration make it better for pure Q&A.

Agreed that it'd be great for something that's integrated with both. I believe Quora has API access and if so there are some interesting weekend projects.

I'm not entirely sure what you're competitive advantage is then?

From I've read, it sounds like you've made the following conclusions:

HN - Great community, but not always reliable.

Quora - Great quality and responsiveness, but lack of focus.

And you want to sit somewhere in between? What's in it for the people giving advice?

> I'm not entirely sure what you're competitive advantage is then?

It's a good question ... here's a quick take on competitive positioning:

Quora: Q&A focus, broad focus, good responsiveness, Valley-based and English-only, text-oriented UX with some graphical abilities, very weak discussion capabilities

HN: link sharing and discussion sometimes used for Q&A, topics focused on hackers (including those starting companies) but , large and active community, not easy for a newcomer to get feedback or target answers, text-only UX

StackOverflow: Q&A focus, topics initially for programmers, now branching out

Sprouter's focus is on entrepreneurs and they're Canada-based so could have a big geographical differentiator from Quora. Depending on what strategy they pursue there are some other obvious potential competitive advantages and ... I haven't used it enough to know yet.

> What's in it for the people giving advice?

A key question. Sprouter seems to feature their experts a lot more prominently than Quora -- have a look at http://sprouter.com/answers

Here's an experiment: I asked the same question on Quora, Sprouter, HN ... where will I get better responses?

Here's the Quora version: http://www.quora.com/What-impact-will-Sprouters-pivot-have-o...

The experiment does not mean anything. You will have very little response or no response at all.

Why? A lot of Q/A startups come and go and personally nobody cares if yet another new one shows up.

Maybe. Then again, people on Quora loooooooove talking about Quora, and so do some of the folks here. And on Quora, I sent it to Charlie Cheever of Quora, Sarah Prevette of Sprouter, and Nicholas Carlson (who's been writing about this place), tweeted it to Audrey Watters and others, and sent it to a bunch of folks on Facebook. So we shall see.

The way I look at it ...

- a negative result across all sites implies that nobody cares.

- a positive result on one or more sites reveals something interesting

So from an experimental point, it's good data no matter what happens.

Sprouter is an odd beast. It was started a few years ago as a twitter for entrepreneurs. Its based in canada so that was part of its marketing and was founded by a woman which was also part of its marketing. It had a terrible interface for a while which they sort of improved over time. I tried to use it for a few months and found it was loaded with spam. It also has a very small userbase in general so theres really nobody to follow and no real discussions taking place.

Why they are now becoming a quora clone is frankly bizarre. I think they are becoming another digg or myspace or hunch where they just are becoming desparate and are probably either losing users or just not having an increase in traffic. SO they are just throwing different plans out there to see which ones stick.

Is this Sprouter's 2nd pivot? I seemed to remember they had some sweeping changes back in early 2010 but can't find any evidence online or in my email (been a member for some time)...

I am not a fan of Quora -- but you can't outdo Quora for entrepreneurs as so many of the VCs seem to be on Quora. Entrepreneurs will always go to where the VCs are.

But suppose a lot of angels and VC's decide that Sprouter's a better place? For example anybody wanting to do business with international companies can't be happy with Quora's English-only attitude ...

I freaking hate how everyone is now using the word "Pivot"

What you do you propose?

Reboot?

Ha, that is what I call it myself ;-)

Isn't Quora supposed to be Q&A for entrepreneurs?

hmm, I thought Quora already was "Quora for startups". Am I missing something?

I thought Quora was the "Quora for Startups."

Quora certainly hopes so. But Sprouter could give them a run for their money.

[Apologies for the duplicate comment]

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