Businessmodel of Quora

Customer Segments

Quora has a multi-sided business model, with two interdependent customer segments that are both needed in order to operate: people who have questions and experts who provide answers.

Value Proposition

Quora offers four primary value propositions: accessibility, convenience, risk reduction, brand/status.

The company creates accessibility by enabling anyone to ask questions and have them answered by recognized experts on the topic. Respondents include everyone from politicians to scientists. The site also increases access by providing a Spanish language version. Lastly, Quora allows users to share its content with others by republishing it on their platforms, as long as they give proper credit.

The company offers convenience by making its site easy to use. Its interface is similar to that of other social media platforms. Visitors can follow feeds featuring questions and answers on topics of particular interest, and their homepages aggregate the most recent activity in those feeds. The site also provides a customized list of additional questions based on previous ones asked.

The company reduces risk by maintaining high standards. Users are required to use their real, full name in order to open an account, as a means of preventing abuse by spammers and trolls. Visitors can help control the quality of answers by suggesting edits. Lastly, Quora has created its own algorithm for ranking the quality of answers, similar to the one Google has for search results.

The company has established a powerful brand due to its success. It has more than 100 million monthly unique visitors, with half of those located outside the U.S. It is considered by many to be the go-to website for quality answers from experts. Lastly, its respondents have included many prominent people, such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, and Vinod Khosla.

Channels

Quora’s main channel is its website. The company promotes its offering through its social media pages and participation in conferences.

Customer Relationships

Quora’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service, automated nature. Customers utilize the service through the main platform while having limited interaction with employees. The company’s website provides answers to frequently asked questions. That said, there is a personal assistance component in the form of e-mail support.

Key Activities

Quora’s business model entails maintaining a robust common platform between two parties:  people with questions and experts with answers.

Key Partners

Quora maintains partnerships with media publishers through which the publishers provide answers from Quora experts to readers’ questions on their platforms. Specific partners include TIME, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Slate, VentureBeat, Fortune, Business Insider, and Softpedia.

Quora also maintains a partnership initiative called “Knowledge Prizes”. Through this program, organizations can sponsor a financial prize that is given to respondents who provide the best new answer to a question. The winner of the prize can choose to keep it or donate it to a charity.

Key Resources

Quora’s main resource is its software platform, which includes a proprietary algorithm that ranks answers in terms of quality.

The firm depends on its technology employees to maintain the platform and its customer service staff to provide support.

Lastly, as a relatively new startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $141 million from 11 investors as of April 2014.

Cost Structure

Quora has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation. Its biggest cost driver is likely sales/marketing, a fixed cost. Other major drivers are in the areas of customer support/operations and research/development, both fixed expenses.

Revenue Streams

Quora did not monetize its website for several years, relying on investments raised in rounds of funding to support operations. However, in April 2016 it announced that it would be introducing third-party ads to the site, creating an advertising revenue stream.

The ads have not yet been implemented, although it conducted a pilot to see what kinds users would be most receptive to. Its first advertisers were Lever, Wealthfront, Uber, and Sunrun.