Quara, a startup founded by ex-Facebook employees, has closed a first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. A source tells TechCrunch that they've raised $11 million at a valuation of $86
million. Founded in June 2008, Quora launched a private invite-only beta earlier this year. Quora is a network of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by its community.
"To
get in you have to convince a current user to use one of their ten invitations on you," writes TechCrunch. "It's one of the hottest private beta tickets in town ... And for a question and answer site
that's saying something." Co-founders Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever tell the blog not to expect a big, official launch, but rather a gradual roll out. In the vaguest of terms, they estimate the
about "90% of the information that people have is still in their heads, not on the internet," and it will be Quara's job to get that information out of them.