Answers.OnStartups: Community Q&A For Startup Entrepreneurs

Written By: Dharmesh Shah October 9, 2009

I’m a big fan of a site called Stack Overflow.  It’s a surprisingly useful Q&A site for posting programming questions, and getting answers from the community.  The site has been immensely successful and is now often the first place I go to find answers to those vexing questions.  One of the things I like most about it is that both the questions and answers get voted on by the community.  As a result, the best stuff surfaces to the top.  You have to really use it to appreciate it.

In any case, I’m a big fan of the site.  So, I was thrilled when Joel Spolsky (who, along with Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror) decided to make the software that powers Stack Overflow available to others.  I immediately reached out to Joel to see if I could get early access to the software.  (I’m speaking at Joel’s Business of Software conference coming up in San Francisco, so we had communicated recently anyways). 

I got access to the software a little while ago and am pleased to announce that a new collaborative Q&A site for entrepreneurs is now launched and ready for your use. 

Here's the link: Answers.OnStartups.com

I have a long list of exceptional entrepreneurs I know well enough to arm-twist into participating in the community. Here's a sample (in no specific order):

1) Adam Smith, Xobni

2) Drew Houston, DropBox

3) Jay Meattle, Shareaholic

4) Mike McDerment, FreshBooks

5) Neil Davidson, RedGate Software, Business of Software

6) Jeff Bennett, NameMedia

7) Brian Shin, Visible Measures

8) Sachin Agarwal, Posterous

9) Peldi Guilizonni, Balsamiq

10) David Cancel, Compete.com, Performable

11) Brian Halligan, HubSpot

12) Alexis Ohanian, Reddit

13) Andy Payne, angel investor

14) Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

15) Don Dodge, Microsoft

16) Nivi, VentureHacks

I've got many more, but you get the idea.  I know, I'm name-dropping a bit here, but I promise I will do my best into guilting these people to share their experience and insights. 

Here’s the link again:  http://answers.onstartups.com

Hope you’ll find it a useful resource.  If you have ideas on how we might make it better, please let me know.

Meanwhile, please help me spread the word.  The early days of a community like this are always the hardest (in a “chicken and egg” sort of way). 

Thanks for your support.

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