Quora raises $50 million at $400 million valuation

Co-founder Adam D'Angelo invested $20M of his own money

Once someone works for Facebook, they become a member for life. Or at least it seems that way when you see who invested in the latest fundraising round for Quora.

Online question and answer website Quora raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

The round was led by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, while co-founder and CEO Adam D'Angelo, former Facebook CTO, put in $20 million of his own money. Northbridge Venture Partners, where Jonathan Heiliger, former Facebook VP of technical operations, is a partner, and Matrix Partners also participated in the round.

Josh Hannah, creater of wikiHow and Venture Capitalist with Matrix Partners, told Business Insider that the deal with Quora took only days to complete. The terms of the deal were agreed upon the day after Hannah presented his investment plan to co-founder Charlie Cheever.

“Quora just announced its Series B fundraising, and I’m pleased to be a part of it, as Matrix is one of the large investors in the round.,” Hannah wrote on his website today.

“I’m a huge fan and avid user of the site, and I think it has the potential to be one of the cornerstone web properties, and help make the world a better place.”

History of Quora

Palo Alto, California-based Quora was co-founded by D’Angelo and Cheever, also both former employees of Facebook, in 2009, going live in June 2010. At the time, D’Angelo was chief technology officer and Cheever was an engineer and manager at Facebook

Quora, a competitor to other online forum sites like YahooAnswers, Answers.com, Ask Reddit, and Facebook Questions, initially raised $11 million at an $86 million valuation in 2010. That round was led by Benchmark, and general partner Matt Cohler, another former Facebook employees, who also joined the Quora’s board.

This current round of funding takes their total above $60 million.

Quora had half a million users in January 2011, after being around only six months. Quora’s official iPhone app was released in September 2011.

It is unknown what Quora plans to do with the new money at this time. 

(Image source: cubancouncil.com)