Layoffs hit Q&A startup Quora

NelsonG · January 23, 2020

Quora, a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup based in Mountain View, is laying off staff in its Bay Area and New York offices, the company’s CEO announced on the site today.

Like other startup leaders being pushed by investors to focus more heavily on cash flow, CEO Adam D’Angelo wrote that the layoffs and “organizational changes” were being pursued in order to focus on “scaling the organization in a financially responsible way.”

D’Angelo did not disclose the scale of the layoffs. Recode reported last year that Quora was locking down $60 million at a $2 billion valuation, noting at the time that the startup had around 200 employees. The company has publicly disclosed $225 million to date according to Crunchbase, from investors including Benchmark, Peter Thiel and Y Combinator.

We’ve reached out to the company for additional comment.

“[W]e need to reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level from which we can focus on pursuing the mission and growing the business over the long term. We do not want to be dependent on outside capital, so self-reliance and careful management of our resources are crucial to our future,” D’Angelo wrote.

Over the past several weeks, layoffs have been hitting startups, including several in SoftBank’s portfolio as well as Mozilla and, just today, genetic testing startup 23andMe.