Foursquare, Quora, Path: What Becomes Of The Underachievers? | Hacker News Reader

Foursquare, Quora, Path: What Becomes Of The Underachievers?

techcrunch.com

125 pointse15ctr0n68 comments

They have scaled from scrappy outsiders into significant players. They have millions of faithful users. While it’s true they have succeeded well within their founders’ wildest dreams, they are still among the best of the best, or they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are today.

"Scrappy outsiders?" I always felt Path and Quora were overhyped Valley darlings heavily funded right out of the gate.

As for the comment that they are "still among the best of the best", I think it's only possible to make that claim on narrow criteria -- for instance, Quora's Q&A quality in a few verticals, and FourSquare for its check-in data.

TechCrunch in particular hyped the shit out of Quora, as many of us struggled to figure out the point of it.

I think the point of Quora was just to get engagement up with whatever it took to keep people posting and upvoting. It was addicting, but forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users. Quora is the Zynga of the Q&A format, and created about as much value.

I asked just two questions and they were answered in a really great way by people much more involved in the topic than I expected. But I am speaking as someone who grows a slight addiction to Quora. I think the trick is that you have to engage with the community then you can promote your question with credits.

* http://www.quora.com/Linguistics/Is-there-a-theory-of-how-ca...

>forget getting answers to questions unless you were one of the sites better known users

That doesn't match my experience. I have only ever asked one question on Quora, and at the time I had only written a single answer on an unrelated subject.

My question was about the value of staying in the official hotel vs an Airbnb when attending a conference and I got a quality response from a cofounder of Lanyrd.

It is indeed hard to get (good) answers to your questions - but there are tons of great answers to questions that have already been asked. Especially for anything related to tech or Silicon Valley etc.

I loved Quora for a long time. Great community, great atmosphere, lots of learning to be had. Slightly different culture/atmosphere from HN, which is interesting. It's been through a few changes and has had to cope with a flood of new users, but it's still a decent place to look for good answers to interesting questions.

Scrappy outsiders... best of the best... that's called 'sucking up'.

I was a Quora skeptic too and then I read this answer

http://qr.ae/2fcM3

That was an amazing answer, condensing various sources and incorporating author's own knowledge.

However, for each answer of this level, you get 100 ridiculous questions and answers:

Sampling from quora spam in my inbox:

I am in my early 20s, earning between $110-180k/yr depending on my bonus. Would it be inappropriate for me to drive a $50k Mercedes Benz?

What is the bravest or riskiest high school graduation speech by a student? What made it so? (suppose this is important to HS student attempting to oneup it)

How did recruiting so many brilliant mathematicians help Goldman Sachs to earn so much money?

A 12-year-old with cancer wants you to take their virginity because they will not live long enough to experience it normally. You are the only person they trust. Is it ethical to agree?

I could go on..

There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins! It's such an amazing service; and not for what you may think. It's the best tool to find new, popular or places that I would like based of things I already like or do.

Not only is Foursquare's recommendation engine great; the lists are awesome. It's actually been sad to see them gradually make lists less visible. At least, they still have the TODO list which gives me an easy way to find a place I have been meaning to go. On the venue profile, they used to feature the lists that users made containing that venue. So what I would do is find a place I like and then I could easily find other places based on the list's it was a member of. It makes traveling so much more fun.

The whole social thing about Foursquare is it's weakest point. I don't know why they are emphasizing it so much. Firstly, only an extremely small subset of my friends are on Foursquare and secondly I have enough social networks.

Yes, because of Foursquare I ran into some friends in my neighborhood that I would not have otherwise. But really that's not nearly as cool as the random hotel costume party I found that was trending one night. Or the countless coffee shops, bars and restaurants I discovered while traveling.

So to me the strengths of Foursquare are: * Recommendation engine. * Lists ( TODO and Public Lists ) * International usage. * chance social encounters with friends.

> There is so much more to Foursquare than just checkins!

I argue with friends all the time about how Foursquare is a better tool for finding and rating establishments than Yelp. The simple like it/dislike it makes it a much easier way to rate, not to mention they don't allow for long winded rants much like you see on Yelp. I too also use the Lists feature a lot, especially when I know I'm going to be traveling to a new area.

Perhaps the bloggers constant referral to Foursquare as a check-in service is what has kept it from "growing", though they didn't help themselves either by trying to not highlight the other features more.

I've never used 4SQ b/c I couldn't care less about "checking in", even for discounts. But I use Yelp all the time, and you guys make a good case for giving 4SQ another look. A Yelp with pure data, no subjective anecdotes, opinions, or rants? Sounds interesting.

Lots of subjective anecdotes in the form of one-sentence "tips" you can leave at places, but IMO they tend to be a lot more positive than Yelp reviews, which tend to be disgruntled people kvetching.

Personally the tips are more useful than Yelp reviews. I don't have time or inclination to read long-form reviews, 4sq tips are much more relevant when I'm sitting down in a restaurant and figuring out what's especially good on the menu.

IMO they made a mistake. The Yelp-killer app should've been separated from the 4sq brand, not the other way around. Foursquare is forever known as "the checkin app", if they really wanted to pivot IMO they should've called it something else entirely.

Actually that brings up another thing I really like about Foursquare. You don't just see tips from random people, page's can also leave tips. I have learned all sorts of fun facts from tips left by the "History Channel" or "Food Network".

You still get a lot of subjective anecdotes, but it's easier to digest one sentence than it is someone thinking they write for the New York Times food section. It's my biggest issue with Yelp -- just get to the point, no one needs the waxing poetic about how you came to find this "gem in a city". That coupled with Yelp's shady business tactics[1].

1 - http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-...

> they don't allow for long winded rants much like you see on Yelp

Yelp practically encourages them by nudging reviewers to hit a character minimum in order to meet some definition of a high-quality review.

I've been trying out Foursquare in place of Yelp when I'm looking for a place nearby (a good place to get an iced tea for example). It has performed well though I have yet to use it extensively enough to determine how it truly stacks up.

One thing I care about that Foursquare doesn't make obvious which Yelp does: if a business has free Wifi.

Funnily enough, about half of the time that a place has password-protected WiFi someone seems to have left the password (sometimes an out -of-date one) as a tip.

I check in to things not because I care about my friends seeing it (surprisingly few of my FB friends are on Foursquare), but because I like to easily see how long it has been since I've gone to a certain place.

No it's not. For most people (on whose crowd-sourced data they live on) main motivation to checking in somewhere is pure narcissism and showing off. Nothing more.

Or the discounts most places offer for checking in. And you'll never know the extent to which each is the case.

I agree completely. I love Foursquare. The social aspect is weak, but only in the active sense (commenting and liking and whatnot). The passive social aspect (seeing where friends with similar tastes go or have gone) is definitely useful.

I was in Northern Europe a couple of weeks back. Yelp is empty, the only ones who rate things are American tourists. Then, I found out that everyone uses Foursquare. Too bad, it required a sign-up. Oh, well, maybe next time.

To me, all three are the modern Myspaces - albeit much smaller and insignificant in comparison to back then. The brands have been around and stand for something, which will make it hard to pivot and instill excitement in the user base. To me, all of the three have lost their raison d'etre.

Quora had a lot of potential, but only a subset of people actively used the service and formed it into something that won't appeal to the masses.

Foursquare was great for the unique check-in/gamification thing, but after Facebook made check-in just another feature, there really wasn't a reason to go to Foursquare anymore. With checkins gone and Yelp being as big and well established as it is, there is even less reason to go there now.

Path frankly I never thought had any reason to be there in the first place - no idea how to pivot that thing into anything useful. A "custom-designed, one-of-a-kind bespoke app" if you will...

They all make me wonder if money is too loose again. I look at all of them and ask: did they really need to get to such scale to learn that they had big issues?

I have the most sympathy for Foursquare, in that their previous incarnation got purchased and ignored by Google [1], so I can see why Foursquare's founders just decided to do the same thing over again. But it seems like they could have noticed these problems 2 or 3 years ago.

Quora and Path, though, have spent an awful lot of money in ways that make me wonder if they would have done better if they had a lot less cash in the bank, and thus more need to prove their hypotheses in the small.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service)

Quora is annoying as hell. You need to log in to see the answers or do anything. Talked to one of the dev why they do this and he sorta dodge the question, I got the hint so I left it as is. Quora is useless to me in general and Stackoverflow is much better.

Path, I've heard of path and I don't care for it. I've moved away from Facebook and hardly use it anymore. So yeah, the mass migration of Facebook and other social site is probably a trend.

Foursquare, I admire it a lot. I love the business model and the app is pretty decent, better than Yelp that's for sure.

It also does some shady things to increase engagement. I sent a Quora link to a friend, she created an account to be able to read it and the next day I got an email from Quora that she followed me (it also said that she is already following four other people). In reality, she did nothing. She just read the article, didn't follow anyone.

On June 4th I asked Quora to permanently delete my account. When I started reading answers there, I don't think you had to "sign up to read" as the front page now requests (without an account). It's gradually escalated what's required until I just found it too onerous to participate. I don't want to share my interests with them and I certainly don't want to share my contacts list with them.

I'm probably an outlier but I really only found a couple interesting questions a month, so I don't think I'll miss Quora.

You can read Quora articles without signing up by appending "&share=1" to the URL. The "Quora Share" Firefox add-on will fix up Quora URLs automatically: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share

For those of us outside California Quora seems little more than a silicon valley circle jerk.A better branded version of the old experts exchange,though its not hard to brand yourself better than the company with the second worst url in internet history(I wonder how mole station nursery is doing these days?). The very the people who have benefited from the internet revolution move to limit access to publicly provided information,information they themselves did not even create.Nice job kicking out the ladders from under you. If I ever get hit on the head and want to live life as some someone else's virtual pet ill be sure to check out foursquare as well(oh you went to the pub,who's a good boy?Have a virtual cookie). Stack Overflow does a lot wrong,half of my favourite answers are marked as closed for some arbitrary reason but at least it can provide open and accurate answers to questions in specific problem domains. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is truly king.

Funny, didn't hear about mole station before. I can only imagine the amount of confusion.

And of the three only Foursquare got anywhere close to mainstream conciousness, but failed to convert it. As others have observed, the location and local information space seems to be a real killer.

Ultimately though they are simply attempts to create get rich quick fads with no compelling hook for normal people. I think it only puzzles those inside the bubble that such things don't fly too readily.

I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving". In terms of becoming the next facebook or twitter? Well, no shit. That's a borderline impossible standard.

Compared to 95% of their peers (which are, at least statistically, true underachievers in that they never made it into the mainstream or at least the tech-mainstream, or didn't survive long enough that we would recognize them today), they're waaaay on the right side of the bell curve.

Indeed. What a bunch of slackers!

95% of their peers dont get the funding these startup got.That's the problem.

If Quora was where it is without VC funding the article would have been quite different.

It would be considered a success.But when one is valued at close to 1 Billion yes it is an underachievement.

Remember 99% of VC fundings are about getting the startup bought at one point or an IPO with a big price tag so early investors can cash in,therefore => GROWTH is a major indicator of achievement. Venture capital is not free money.

Quora is essentially a bunch of guys asked their rich mates for funding; they got it and produced some semblance of an interesting project. But it has zero business potential.

Most analysis has put the dedicated Quora community at around 700k with a further 1-2 million fleeting users of less than 1 log in a month.

It's a question that crops up on Quora constantly. Pick any popular question and you see 90% of the answer come From the same <5% of the community.

Essentially? That's really not what Quora is essentially. That's just how you've spun it.

Say what you will of the product, but the people originally behind Quora (and the people currently running Quora) did really great work at Facebook and had a reputation in SV for their brilliance. And they got their wealth because of the things they achieved at Facebook. So it's not surprising they were able to raise lots of money. VCs love investing in people who have track records of doing great things.

I have spun it truthfully.

I don't doubt the team are great engineers. That does not make Quora a great business, a viable business or even anything of value.

If you can pitch HN on why Quora matters then do it. Otherwise it is what I said - a bunch of people, well connected with SV who blagged a ton of cash with no way of making good on the promise.

You are speaking with hindsight. At the time, if you truly put yourself objectively in the shoes of VCs, investing in the people behind Quora was a no-brainer.

If we pick apart your (more recent) characterization:

Yes, they're a bunch of people. Sure, they were well-connected in SV and they got a lot of cash. But you seem to imply their connections were undeserved (implication is in the tone: "rich mates", "a bunch of people"). Their connections were based on the previous engineering projects they had led successfully, their previous track record.

You only know that they had "no way of making good on the promise" in hindsight. And hindsight is 20/20. VCs aren't in the business of betting on sure things. But VCs love betting on people with track records of accomplishment. Nobody has a sure fire way of making good on any potentially-high-growth business idea.

if you raise $160 million and only have 30 million in revenue with a tiny or even negative growth rate with no profit, you are not only underachieving, but likely to fall out of existence and lose a lot of money for your investors in the near future. Foursquare has the potential to lose more of its investors money than any startup in recent memory.

> I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving"

Explaining that was the entire point of the article. Given that startups by definition need fast growth ('definition' being pg's definition, as explained in the article) and given that the growth of these startups has slowed dramatically, these startups are underachieving.

Maybe 'underperforming' would be a better word to use, since we're all familiar with that term as it relates to companies large and small.

So, if they don't become the next Facebook or Twitter, what are they to become? I don't think any one mentioned company is currently profitable, they might not even have any revenue.

If they are not going to have that explosive growth, they are no different from your neighborhood car shop. But that one will still be around next year since it is actually running a profitable business.

I don't think it's supposed to be in terms of FB/Twitter. It's underachieving relative to their funding and valuations.

1. I consider companies to be achieving when they turn a profit. So do investors.

2. The companies here are not under-achievers; they are non- achievers.

3. It's a shame that FourSquare is still labelled as a gamified check in service. Especially contrasted with Yelp and their fake review scandals. 10 years later and Yelp are still in the red. Never turned a profit and no possibility of doing so.

" I consider companies to be achieving when they turn a profit. So do investors."

During bubble times (now), there's the alternative of be small enough to sell something new to a big corp. More or less a very complicated high risk for all involved outsourcing of big company R+D. So... what happens when you're medium sized aka too expensive to sell, and also old news rather than being something new?

If you're a million dollar company with the brand new idea of selling dog food over the internet, a perfectly valid exit strategy is during a bubble, sell for ten million to Amazon because thats they cheapest fastest way for them to get into the lucrative dog food delivery market. If you're a $120M company with the tired (internet) generations old idea of selling dog food on the internet, pivot (if you can) or shut down.

What? Seriously...what?

Completely agree. Underachieving according to what criteria? The criteria of modern capitalism of high velocity ever increasing profit for their investors and shareholders. Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money.

I think they are interpreting pivots as a sign that the founders and/or investors wanted to change direction, because the previous direction wasn't succeeding.

I'm all for small, sustainable sites which provide a service and don't try to monetise too desperately. But when you take $50 million in VC funding, surely the founders know they're boarding the ten-times-return-or-bust train?

"Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money."

By what criteria would you say that those companies are sustainable?

Quora is the only one of these that interests me primarily because most answers are posted by people using their actual names. Yeah it's not perfect and it has a lot of issues, but this is a big selling point for me. There are advantages to anonymity, but there are also advantages to sticking faces onto posts. Quora should be the place for the latter, and should play that up more.

just my opinion but the login wall totally kills Quora.just saying.Not going to log into that stuff just to read an answer.

And the UI/UX hasnt been updated for years.Doesnt feel modern.

Just my 2 cents about why i dont use Quora.

Could have been a great tool to build E-Reputation for engineers.

Yup, the login wall is a major PITA. Enforcing that for people who simply want to read the content is a mistake IMO. However, Quora made the decision that it would force enough signups for it to be worth it...not sure I agree, but they have more data available on the issue than I do.

Exactly why I have never even visited Quora.

Facebook login required? Forgitaboutit. I've never had a facebook account and never will (sure, I know you maybe can use another service...but just it isn't worth my time).

Quora was started by ex-Facebook CTO / VP Eng, who previously lead "Facebook Platform", i.e. the login requirement now seen at Quora. However, most of the world moved on.

http://pando.com/2013/07/23/move-fast-break-things-the-sad-s...

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adam-d-angelo

Logging in is required to read, but you do not have to use Facebook login. I just created an account with my email address.

Quora has some really interesting content, but there's also a ton of bullshit. A significant portion of the questions I see on my feed are of the form: "how do I get into <famous school>?", "what was <famous person> like in college?", "how do I get a job at <famous company>?, "what is <class> like at <famous school>?, what is <some very specific fact> about <famous company>'s <famous product>?

Yeah, much of Quora is not unlike celebrity gossip for techies. Of course the same applies to a lot of the upvoted content on HN.

All of which are topics that most people, even reasonably intelligent people, are interested in. They may be beneath your tastes, but that does not invalidate them.

What's Quora's business model? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see any way for them to make money. No advertising. No premium accounts. Anybody know their eventual plan for revenue?

They have no business model. That's the problem they're facing. They expected higher growth and higher user numbers. They expected to heavily displace sites like Answers.com and Yahoo Answers, and that did not happen - both of those are mainstream, have not lost traffic due to Quora, and Quora has never managed to go mainstream in terms of scale.

Quora has to abandon the Q&A space as they've known it (aka pivot). There's no possibility of ever, under any circumstances, justifying a $1 billion valuation, much less say a $3 billion valuation (which their most recent investors have to be hoping for at least), in the traditional Q&A space. Answers.com is three times the size of Quora in terms of traffic, and they're worth maybe 1/5th what Quora is.

There's Quora Credits http://www.quora.com/credits which you earn for providing answers that are upvoted by others, which are spendable on making your questions more prominent. I'm not perfectly clear on a use case, where someone would pay to buy up a bunch of points to make sure they get answers from qualified people, but I can see this model working within StackOverflow and some other verticals.

My analysis of Quora joining Y Combinator: http://newslines.org/blog/why-quora-joined-y-combinator/ Short version: the complete lack of business model forces Quora to seek out the next stage of investors.

I don't think you understand the type of investors that show up at demo day. Hint: they aren't writing the 8 and 9 figure checks you think Quora is hoping they'll write them.

they were fads. Variations/customizations in one way or another of a social networking. The social wave has passed and the crystallization in its wake has left only options significantly differentiated in parameter space from each other - FB, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp.

I don't know that the social wave has passed, but it does seem like single-serving social apps are on the way out unless they have a difficult-to-replicate twist to them (like Secret or whisper).

Is the actor who played Jango Fett supposed to be the poster boy for underachievers?

It's not really appropriate, given the movie's content - the main character, Jake "the Muss", destroyed his family through his alcohol abuse and horrific violence directed against them (see the film Once Were Warriors). In this film, he tries to deal with the consequences of what he has wrought.

It's a pretty bleak story, and it has little relevance to "a bunch of overhyped and heavily investor backed startups didn't pay off."

I love reading outsiders flail when trying to understand something like Quora by thinking in terms of naive, business-as-usual lenses.

I love it when insiders flail thinking they are rewriting the rules of business. I also love it when they completely misunderstand the term business-as-usual.

The opposite of business as usual is a project. A temporary , uncertain venture with a defined finish point.

By your statement Quora is simply a project, not a business.

Keep up the superior attitude; it's working well for you.

So in your narrative, who are in the insiders? And in what terms are they thinking as opposed to the 'outsiders'?

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