If you aren’t familiar with Quora you should be. In their words “Quora is a place to gain and share knowledge. It’s a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.” But the reason I highly recommend it to founders is that there are many founders, technologists, and even investors who answer questions. Often there are even multiple answers to a question, providing valuable perspective. I believe the reason Quora has so many users from the startup/tech community is that is the founders came from the Silicon Valley community and they started the venture with their own community – a good lesson for founders. Quora is sort of a Wikipedia for Q & A.
Quora was founded in 2009, so it’s in its 10th year of operations – quite an achievement in my book! You can answer as well as ask questions. Quora provides a feed based on the topics you have searched which is quite useful if you need find further information on your question.
The one weakness I find is that there is virtually no About or Help to be found on the site! It has gotten very complex over the years, adding features like followers, sharing links, upvoting answers, sharing answers, etc. However, if you click on the Ask Question of Link the pop up window provides some guidance: Start your questions with “What”, “How”, Why” etc. and gives you the option of adding a link.
If you click on an answer you will find related questions, which is a very useful feature.
But I realized I could use Quora to find out how to use Quora! Here’s the first of a very helpful 3-part answer:
1. Quora works by having the community ask and answer questions. When you want to know more about something, Quora delivers you answers and content from people who know the answer – like real doctors, economists, screenwriters, police officers, and military veterans.
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Ask questions when you have them. Here is more info on how to get your questions answered: What are some good ways to get people to answer my questions on Quora?
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Answer questions when you can!
You can learn more by following these links:
- What are some frequently asked questions for new Quora users?
- What does a good question on Quora look like?
- What does a good answer on Quora look like? What does it mean to “be helpful”?
There are dozens of questions and answers about how to best use Quora, which I admit I have not delved into.
Here’s a brief story about how Quora was useful to me. Working for MIT Sandbox I had a mentoring session where the issue of a founder’s agreement came up. Surprisingly Google and startup books were unhelpful. But searching Quora for founders agreement lead me to multiple highly useful answers, which I passed on to Sandbox.
If you aren’t using Quora you are missing out on a wellspring of great information on starting and running a new venture and many other topics as well.
Mentorphile 
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