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Raising money for StackOverflow
- ams6110 17y agoJeff and I started out with a goal for StackOverflow of changing the way programmers and system administrators get answers to their questions on the Internet, which was deeply broken. In 18 months we’ve accomplish that Have they? Whenever I have a question the first place I turn is Google, and I usually find my answer on a site that's not stack overflow.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- llimllib 17y ago"changed the way programmers... get their answers" != "changed the way I get my answers" Clearly, based on their traffic, they have changed the way many, many programmers get their answers.
- michaelbuckbee 17y agoIt's getting better, but StackOverflow is still pretty dominated by C# and .Net questions. If you're using something else there is a significantly smaller chance that they'll turn up in your search results.
- spolsky 17y agoCheck out the "Tags" page to see the popularity of various technologies on StackOverflow. Although C# and .NET are pretty popular on StackOverflow, I don't think they are disproportionate to their overall popularity in the developer community. Look at how StackOverflow has displaced Experts Exchange, though, and it tells a clearer story: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com+experts-exchange.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com+experts-exch... I don't think there is ANY other general-audience programming site with more traffic.
- davidw 17y agoI've been watching that over time, as a potential data source for http://LangPop.com http://LangPop.com , and StackOverflow has definitely "improved", but it has historically had a .net/c# bias compared to what turns up elsewhere, just like github has had a Ruby bias, which is slowly fading as github gains in popularity with the developer population at large.
- melling 17y agoJoel and Jeff don't create the content for the site, the communities do. The fact that other communities haven't moved into their sections en masse is not their fault. It's YOUR (ie. everyone else) FAULT. For example, I tried to get the Grails community to use StackOverFlow when the site first started and their attitude was that they would rather just use the mailing list and sift through Nabble. http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/msg/8B7D5E3A-6DA7-4A32-86BD-08C150997125@gmail.com http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m... The problem isn't with StackOverFlow, it's with the other communities refusing to adopt something new. "After all, IRC is where all the best people hang out...who needs this .Net thing..." I'm currently learning Lisp. You wouldn't be able to get this kind of an answer on a mailing list or on IRC. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz-in-common-lisp http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz... This .Net/C# site just made it easier to learn Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, Scala... a little irony not to be overlooked.
- plinkplonk 17y ago"The fact that other communities haven't moved into their sections en masse is not their fault. It's YOUR (ie. everyone else) FAULT." The first sentence is fine. The second not so much. "Fault" assumes that moving to SO/contributing etc is unambigously a good thing. I would not be suprised if at least some developers thought their existing communication channels are just fine. "For example, I tried to get the Grails community to use StackOverFlow when the site first started and their attitude was that they would rather just use the mailing list and sift through Nabble. http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m.. http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m.... " This sounds like a valid choice to me. "The problem isn't with StackOverFlow, it's with the other communities refusing to adopt something new." They may have good reasons to do so. Just because you are enthusiastic about SO doesn't mean everyone has to be. (Due Disclosure : I don't use SO at all. I once saw an algorithm question on SO I could answer and when I tried, I found out I had to use OpenID to log in. Couldn't be bothered.)
- melling 17y agoThe glass is half empty? I think you're completely missing the point. It's really up to each community (Haskell, Lisp, Scala, Clojure, etc.) to develop their appropriate sections of StackOverFlow. I've been on an Lisp bent lately, mainly Emacs Lisp. Think of a good question and ask it. You'll be throwing down breadcrumbs for the next guy who wants to learn an esoteric language. I've got 86 questions, and the last dozen have been mainly about Lisp, of some flavor. http://stackoverflow.com/users/5020/melling http://stackoverflow.com/users/5020/melling I'm going to turn Emacs Lisp into a mainstream developer tool. :-)
- bartl 17y agoStackOverflow is a help when you don't find the answer with Google. It's not really new: it's more a successor to Usenet which is getting quite dated -- especially since most of the old folks have abandoned it.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoThat's a bit silly, it's structurally unlike usenet. It's advantage is that due to its structure it has the S/N that usenet once did, which is much to its credit since usenet collapsed under the explosive growth of the internet yet stackoverflow appears to just get stronger with growth.
- abyssknight 17y agoA lot of those Google results are now coming from StackOverflow. Arguably, they've done a good job of centralizing programming Q&A and making it manageable. Certainly light years ahead of Experts Exchange.
- petercooper 17y agoIt seems to vary a lot by area. In my usual day-to-day Ruby mode, I rarely come across Stack Overflow. For a couple of weeks, though, I've been building an iPhone game and SO seems to come up all the time for Objective C and iPhone framework stuff.
- BigZaphod 17y agoI use Google to start the process of finding answers (often with results pointing to SO). But when it comes time to ask a question, I go to SO immediately and almost always get a reasonable answer within a few hours. The more this keeps happening, the more the Googling step will become irrelevant.
- ghosttrails 17y agoThis is the thing about SO that really works. You almost always get a good answer within hours of asking any programming question (that's been my experience anyway).
- fnid2 17y agoI wish they would change it back to the way it was when usenet was popular. Years ago, when I was looking for an answer, the first place I would go is dejanews and google destroyed that pretty much... so sad.
- jimbokun 17y agoI often check Google first, not find anything helpful in the first few pages, then remember to try StackOverflow, and have a much higher success rate. Actually, the best technique I've found is Google with "site:stackoverflow.com", as Google does a much better job searching StackOverflow than the built in search engine.
- petercooper 17y agoOne problem that seems to have come up a few times is their inability to make serious revenue. This is a perennial issue for sites aimed at developers that don't sell products - coders + advertising don't mix (well). I get the impression Joel's looking at expanding the SO model into other non-developer/non-geek niches where advertising could work, but I'm not convinced he's proven the revenue model enough to make it a tempting investment just yet. Anyone know any different? Note: On another post, someone reminded me of the Careers move, so that's one easier-to-monetize stream at least.
- Murkin 17y agoIf they allowed me to embed their system into my site to provide "smarter" message boards, I would gladly pay them a set-fee/month. They don't need to care how I monetize my sites. [Sadly now they do not allow this in any way]
- johns 17y agoYou can't embed, that's true. You can pay a set fee and run your own however: http://stackexchange.com/ http://stackexchange.com/
- Murkin 17y agoNot as part of another site. ie site that has more than just stack-exchange. (And they don't allow iframes)
- euroclydon 17y agoNow we know what you've been up to.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago"their inability to make serious revenue" To somebody like me who doesn't really understand advertising, it seems like the value of an impression ought to be really high for StackOverflow. Based on the tags associated with my userId and the questions I've read, they pretty much know which technologies I use everyday. How much would it be worth for EnterpriseDB (the PostgreSQL folks)to advertise to someone who is wondering how to covert his Oracle database to MySQL? Perhaps, even with 6M users, there are so few people in any coveted niche that the friction overshadows the value?
- og1 17y agoI wonder how this modifies their StackExchange offering. Does this mean that if you are doing anything beyond a internal knowledge base Stack Overflow is now a competitor?
- johns 17y agoThe twist here is that StackOverflow is its own company (of which Joel is a founder) and StackExchange is a product of Fog Creek, currently available to everyone. If their pitch to VCs is "we can add sites for XYZ topics" what's preventing a competitor in that vertical starting up a StackExchange site on the same topic?
- spolsky 17y agoNothing. It's not so hard to code, either, if you have time. That's why it's a land rush.
- johns 17y agoIn this land rush you offer would-be competitors a turnkey solution to compete with you. So hypothetically let's say you were going to get into Automotive or Cooking Q&A and Car & Driver (or Cook's Illustrated) sees you get a little bit of traction and they sign up for StackExchange and heavily promote it faster and probably more effectively than you can since they have a dedicated core audience. This doesn't worry you? Or are you going to avoid verticals you can't quickly get a critical mass in?
- netcan 17y agoIf this is intentional, that's an interesting idea. Once the concept is out there, it is a lot easier for someone to role their own competition. If there is going to be competition anyway, have some control and/or a stake in success. If a site gets to the point where it is a substantial business, they may well want to partner with Stackoverflow more closely anyway to get features, advice, access to whatever revenue generating plan they come up with.
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- apower 17y agoJeff has to go in the new company. He is a liability for the VC.
- dkasper 17y agoCare to explain this a little more?
- blasdel 17y agoJeff talks publicly all the time about how much of a fuckup he is, how proud he is that he sort-of figured out something you thought was obvious, how he just can't do anything right. It's his public persona, and the subject matter for his formulaic blog, where posts usually end with an explicit confirmation that it was a waste of your time: http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say/ http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say/ He doesn't talk so much about what a successful badass he is (see Joel), despite obviously having accomplished some pretty major shit.
- kmt 17y agoAnd all of the above presumably helped him to co-found a successful (in a make-something-people-want sense) startup. Not too bad after all, eh?
- petercooper 17y agoI disagree with the grandparent poster because it doesn't matter if you come off as a bumbler or a chancer in this environment - actually, Atwood's gungho informality is probably a plus. But I suspect he's getting at Atwood being routinely wrong or misinformed about all manner of developer related topics - just listen to the Stack Overflow podcast for a few weeks to get a feel for it. Joel's routinely correcting him on stuff that's not even in Joel's area of expertise. (But that, versus someone who's scared of ever looking wrong? I think I'd invest in Atwood.)
- michael_dorfman 17y agoI've got mixed opinions of StackOverflow. On the one hand, it's definitely better than ExpertsExchange, and does an adequate job of providing answers to many developer questions. On the other hand, it's far (far!) from living up to it's potential. The basic premise of the site is that the wisdom of the crowd will separate the gold from the dross; however, the incentives lead to a plethora of mediocre answers which do not converge (Wikipedia-style) towards some platonic ideal, despite Joel's stated wishes to that effect. What's more, there's a well-documented problem ("the fastest gun in the West") whereby the first semi-correct answer will quickly rise to the top, drowning out later (but more correct, more thorough) answers. In short: they haven't (yet) solved the basic problem of "changing the way people get answers". What's more, gaining the critical mass of early users was leveraged largely through Joel and Jeff's celebrity. Which is not transferrable to other domains. Which means that the site can't easily scale out. Based on the preceding, I'd say that VC money is a good way to go-- it should give them the resources to a) solve the basic problem, and b) build subscriber bases in other domains.
- ntoshev 17y agoYes, there is plenty of room for improvement. At least make it possible to browse the site by more than one tag and fix the search engine.
- runT1ME 17y agoI think your analysis is correct, but all of of your criticisms are most likely fixable. They may need lots of tweaking, but overall the concept is solid!
- michael_dorfman 17y agoI agree the problems are fixable. The more germane question is, are the problems best fixed via an infusion of VC cash? In this case, I think the answer is "yes".
- samdk 17y agoIt is far from perfect, yes, but it's also much better than anything that's come along before. More and more when I search for solutions to problems I'm having I've been coming up with SO links. And when I do and the SO question is related to my issue I usually get the solution, too.
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- ntoshev 17y agoSomeone has been envious on the Vark acquisition :-) Of course VC makes sense in their case. There is no barrier to entry in this field, the model is clear: * users tend to type questions in search engines * search engines tend to rank up exact matches (especially with some trivial SEO like put the question in the title and url) * given the proper environment, users will help each other answering those questions for free, generating lots of content - exposing ever bigger surface to the search engines
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agosomeone needs to do this for shopping.
- barmstrong 17y agocheckout http://BuyersVote.com http://BuyersVote.com
- johns 17y agoJoel's going to the Valley to pitch SO while Jeff's off in New Zealand at Webstock/on vacation. Do VCs care if only half of the founding team is there? What if one of them is 1/3 of the development team and the primary technical driving force?
- spolsky 17y agoNo VC would invest based on one meeting. Nor would they expect the guy who is building the site to schlep along on every pitch meeting -- Jeff has better things to do!. Presumably if we found some interested parties, they would want to meet the key team members, in a second or third meeting.
- tlrobinson 17y agoNo, in fact I think it's expected that only one of founders be present for initial meetings. If I were a VC I'd wonder why they were all wasting their time when it could be handled by one person.
- jgerman 17y agoOT but the bronze statue of the two "guys" with the coin... anyone know what that is? There is a similar style statute outside of the ICC in Indianapolis.
- tonystubblebine 17y agoAs a user of some of the more recent Q/A sites (StackOverflow and Fluther) I find one of the most valuable pieces to be the community. I don't think that necessarily scales to a venture-worthy size or that venture capital leads to long term care takers of that community. However, clearly the founders seem to think otherwise. Joel's looking for money and Fluther took seed funding.
- barmstrong 17y agoOne thing that wasn't clear from the article, what does he want to spend the money on? If it's marketing, I don't see why they can't do that with existing revenue. It's not as expensive as say a retail location for a starbucks and they must be doing some revenue with ads and job board already. If it's hiring more developers that might make sense, although I can't think of any huge features they don't have yet. Overall, not sure I'm convinced this is a good play for VC. They are growing nicely without it.
- snowbird122 17y agoObviously, they would need to target a larger audience if they are going after VC. I can see them rolling out the site to 500 different niches. Image answer sites for home improvement, gardening, small engine repair, microsoft office, botany, project management, cooking...
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- jasonkester 17y agoReading the article, it would seem that the VC money will go towards launching StackOverflow clones in as many different verticals as possible. Thus the comparison with Starbucks, which had proven success in several markets before going big. StackOverflow has launched what, 5 QA sites in total now? All of which seem to be thriving pretty well. It seems they're expecting similar success with QA sites for Sailing, Pregnancy Advice, Cat Owners, Subaru Mechanics, etc.
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- frou_dh 17y agoI enjoy using StackOverflow. Jeff Atwood seems to get a lot of flack, but in creating such a nice site and community, he's walked the walk as far as I'm concerned.
- bootload 17y ago"... There are a few indicators for the type of company that I believe can benefit from, and should take, VC. ..." The question I'd be interested in knowing is, "if SO was in accepted into a YC intake, what advice would SO be given to evolve given the app is built, idea is validated?".
- netcan 17y agoOne of the things that comes to my mind is this: Craigslist is widely described as leaving 90% of the money on the table. Most people don't think this is why they are this popular. They could have monetised more categories or cities and still kept their position. Maybe. But maybe they did exactly what was necessary to become the number 1 classified site. What if the right amount of revenue for some top 200 site (or network of sites) is really a couple of million? Can such a site survive VC or does the option of staying a certain size disappear?? Starbucks was a perfect example. They new exactly where the business was going if constraints got lifted. More stores. Potentially tens of thousands. If they were less capitalised they would have to go slower but they knew where they were going.
- gcheong 17y agoWhy do they feel the need to publicize their desire to raise money? Surely they can get their foot in the door of potential VC's based on Joel's reputation with Fog Creek alone, so what do they gain by announcing that they are looking for investment and giving a bunch of reasons why it's the right thing for StackOverflow? Why not just quietly raise the money and then, if/when they get funded, announce it along with the reasons?
- sireat 17y agoLately, Stack Overflow has been a mixed blessing. How it goes: I post a question(questions are rather specific, but technology stack is very common on SO) I usually get one-two answers very quickly and maybe one more slightly delayed answer, all helpful but also rather generic. You definitely get the impression people are just point whoring. After a day or two I end up accepting the closest answer, even if it is not that close. Seems real experts have moved on or perhaps I am missing some trick in asking questions. If this problem persists on their scaled out sites, I am not sure how much VC money will help them.