$4Bn IPO in 2022? – Story of Quora’s Founders, their stints with Zuckerberg, and Amazon.

How the CTO of Facebook, a dear friend of Mark Zuckerberg quit Facebook for the second time and started Quora

Adam D’Angelo, one of the founders happens to be Zuckerberg’s high school friend. Both the founders, Adam and Charlie Cheever had been with Facebook (FB) (now Meta) since its inception before they launched Quora. Charlie Cheever, a computer science Harvard graduate had thought of joining FB when FB invited him for an interview in 2005 while he was working with Amazon.

Initially, he did not respond as he wasn’t willing to work with people younger than himself.

However, deep down he knew the capability of FB’s future earnings and expansion. This was further confirmed upon meeting two of his former friends, who quit their jobs at Microsoft to join FB. Charlie hence decided to take the interview, quit his main ego and Amazon, and accepted FB’s job offer.  

At FB he met his present co-founder at Quora, Adam D’Angelo. Adam, at the time, was the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at FB.

Adam also had earlier helped Mark build FB as a friend when he had just started out.

Quora as an idea was born out of curiosity to find solutions faster. In their lunch breaks, Adam and Charlie used to discuss more on building the idea. Although Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Reddit, and Aardvark already existed, Adam and Charlie didn’t find them good enough. And that’s how the first Quora version was launched in June 2009.

However, it was in closed beta version until its official launch in June 2010. By January 2011, Quora’s site already had over 500,000 registered users!!

Just after 2-3 years, in Sep 2012, Charlie resigned & continued as an adviser.

Benchmark Capital and Peter Thiel were Quora’s early #investors. And in just 4 years of inception, Quora was valued at $900 mn & was also one of the few selected startups for Y Combinator.

•2019: Valuation stood at ~$2 bn after it bagged #funding from Valor Equity Partners ($60 mn), which is best known for its investments in Elon Musk-owned companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company.

Quora is now eyeing an #IPO in early 2022 & hopes to be valued at $4 bn!! Reddit, one of its competitors is also preparing to go public in 2022.

Have you been a fond user of Quora? If not, which other similar platforms do you use?