{"id":326475,"date":"2010-02-16T11:12:46","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=99427"},"modified":"2010-02-16T11:12:46","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:12:46","slug":"spolsky-switches-teams-raising-vc-for-stackoverflow-in-light-of-qa-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/326475","title":{"rendered":"Spolsky Switches Teams: Raising VC for StackOverflow in Light of Q&A Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>Joel Spolsky, the influential longtime software blogger<\/a>, said<\/a> this weekend that he plans to raise funding for StackOverflow<\/a>, the programming Q&A site, and to that end will be on a roadshow next week in Silicon Valley. The Q&A space (aka “social search,” if you’re on a VC roadshow) is hopping right now, with Google buying<\/a> Aardvark for a reported $50 million, and others such as Hunch<\/a> and Quora<\/a> attracting plenty of buzz (Aardvark raised $6 million from August Capital and Baseline Ventures, Hunch has raised<\/a> at least $2 million, and Quora is self-funded last we checked<\/a> but the service is swarming with VCs).<\/p>\n

Spolsky’s fundraising disclosure came as a bit of a surprise, and provoked public disapproval<\/a> from folks like 37signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson, given Spolsky has written<\/a> before about the value of slow growth and how venture capitalists’ goals are not aligned with company founders. It was as if he had switched teams.<\/p>\n

Spolsky said that StackOverflow has grown to 6 million monthly uniques in a year and a half, and is operating with 50 percent profit margins (based on minimal advertising). He said, “Now we\u2019re biting off the bigger goal of changing the way everyone<\/em> gets answers to their questions on the Internet, and that\u2019s something we can\u2019t do alone.” He said VCs could help him grow to a “big exit” or an IPO, add publicity and connections, and negotiate the “land grab” in the online Q&A space.<\/p>\n

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Joel Spolsky, the influential longtime software blogger, said this weekend that he plans to raise funding for StackOverflow, the programming Q&A site, and to that end will be on a roadshow next week in Silicon Valley. The Q&A space (aka “social search,” if you’re on a VC roadshow) is hopping right now, with Google buying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}