The Allure of a Question — Why I joined Quora

Earlier this year, I received a recruiting email from Quora. I rarely pay much attention to messages like these but Quora was a company I had long admired. I gave it a quick skim and then ignored it for a few days. I was very happy with my role at my current company, Amplitude, the many opportunities to grow, and the incredible company culture and leadership. There was no reason to go elsewhere.

A few days later, Quora came back to mind. I did a little googling about the company and stumbled on an interview with its founder, Adam D’Angelo. It was a very typical back and forth with a founder that included questions around vision and company culture. Among all the answers you’d expect, there was one that caught my attention.

When asked about why Q&A was where Quora started its focus, Adam painted a very simple yet powerful picture. Adam explained Quora’s mission was to share and grow’s the world’s knowledge and that a question acts as the means between those who want knowledge and those who have knowledge.

“A question acts as an interface between those who want knowledge with the person who has the knowledge. A question provides the person of knowledge focus and gives them motivation for sharing that knowledge.”

Having worked in start-ups for the past 9 years, it was clear to me what he was saying: a question proves product-market fit for the knowledge it’s seeking.

Imagine all the billions of people who have knowledge, skills, or experience with some aspect of life. A question motivates them to share what they know and gives them focus on exactly what aspect of it to describe.

Adam continued to explain that knowledge isn’t only facts or information one knows but can also be things they have experienced and lived and so many are qualified to answer.

It was an interesting way to frame question-asking and its relationship to knowledge and made me begin thinking about knowledge deeply.

I continued with my life unaware this simple analogy would have such an impact on my weeks to come. Every few days, the thought would come back to mind and I would continue to see how questions formed the basis of many interactions and things I enjoyed.

I’m an avid watcher of documentaries and I started to begin to notice how a documentary was really a string of answers to questions that its creator posed and then edited to form a narrative.

I started to notice that some of my favorite forms of content online centered around questions like the subreddits “Explain Like I’m Five” and “Am I the Asshole” and Ask-Me-Anything sessions with people I’m interested in.

I remembered a book I had read the past year, “Ask More” by Frank Sesno, that details the power of asking well-formed questions used by world leaders, journalists, and CEOs, and how the questions one asks can have a major impact on their ability to succeed at what they’re doing.

I even started to notice how many religious texts have questions as critical or defining moments between God, people, angels, and others.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about how powerful questions were.

As a recovering entrepreneur, I had always valued ideas. Ideas were challenges to living life differently and, most of the time, better. Some ideas have merit and some do not and it’s very often impossible to distinguish the two. Very similar to my own nature, ideas are innately optimistic but often naive. Once I started learning more and thinking deeply about questions, I realized that the best ideas are actually those formed as questions instead of instruction. Rather than say “Let’s fix A with B”, it turns out that it’s far more productive to ask “How might A be fixed with B?” A question itself has an embedded curiosity, its asker showing humility not knowing its answer, and is an acknowledgment that there is more to be known. When ideas are formed as questions, as I’ve learned many times in my career, they are correctly framed with the unknown of how it will play out.

I was convinced that questions were far more profound than I had originally thought but I wasn’t ready to change my career because of it. Then, 2020 started quickly unraveling.

From a virus spreading around the world and infecting more each day, wildfires destroying the Australian outback, an escalating conflict between Iran and the U.S. that could lead to war, plane crashes, earthquakes, locust swarms, and the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, it felt like the world needed more information, more knowledge, more wisdom, and more of the comfort and closure each of those can provide now more than ever.

Where could Quora fit into all of this?

Could Quora stop forest fires? Of course not but it does have answers which inform people around best practices to prevent further ones and answers that do an excellent job explaining the magnitude of the disaster in Australia so people realize its severity.

Could Quora help a fan cope with the sudden passing of Kobe Bryant? No but it does have answers that provide a great explanation of why people grieve celebrity deaths and answers that provide moving real-life human examples of how people have overcome their own grief.

Can Quora provide every detail needed to understand the complex COVID-19 pandemic? Unlikely but they do curate a space dedicated to Coronavirus that’s only updated by trusted experts sharing news, information, and their perspectives on the pandemic.

Quora won’t solve all of the world’s problems. It won’t ever have a monopoly on question answering. It won’t ever be the sole source of information. It certainly won’t ever be completely immune to bad actors or misinformation. Quora won’t ever be perfect but I came to the conclusion that it has the opportunity to be on the right side of history because it found its initial roots in question-asking. I realized that Quora’s DNA is built around the belief that there is a lot to learn from one another and that is something I believe to my core.

I responded back to the team at Quora, went through their interview process, and accepted their offer to join.

I’m already impressed with how talented, thoughtful, and rigorous the team is and I’ve only begun to understand the challenges and opportunities Quora is trying to tackle.

I’m not sure the impact I’ll be able to make or how the world will shift and change with how it spreads knowledge and information, but, what I do know is that the world is better when it’s curious and better when it’s asking questions.