Adam D’Angelo started Quora with Charlie Cheever in 2009.  Both left prestigious jobs at Facebook to start the user-driven question and answer site.  Their goal was to create the penultimate question and answer site, solving the many problems of Quora’s predecessors.

D’Angelo was already a remarkable figure in the tech world before founding Quora with Charlie Cheever.  He achieved recognition as Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer-a job he left at the age of 24.  He is widely known as one of the smartest people in the tech industry, having started working at Facebook before his 21st birthday.

Aside from his impressive intellect, and self-consciousness inducing resume, three major traits stick out in Adam D’Angelo’s story: his trust in his idea, his willingness to do something that’s been done before, and his love of innovation.

Trusting Himself

D’Angelo left an executive position at one of the most exciting, well-known companies in the world to pursue his business idea.  Rather than remaining in the safety of working for someone else, he took a risk, and dove head-first into his new project.  Soon enough, he had gathered $11 million from venture capitalists who believed in him and his idea

Not the First, Just the Best

Instead of looking for an idea that no one else had, he looked for a hole to fill.  Question and answer sites are nothing new (see Yahoo! Answers and Google Aardvark), but there has always been an issue of reliability.  Instead, D’Angelo made a question and answer site that users and visitors could trust, by getting high profile industry individuals to answer questions within their expertise.  With these thorough, trustworthy answers, a question need only be asked once, with SEO leading other visitors to the site for years to come.  Users include Mark Zuckerberg, Butch Vig (Music producer who worked with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, among others), Daryl Morey (GM of the Houston Rockets), and many other famous figures, often answering questions even about themselves.

Spirit of Innovation

D’Angelo also epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit of so many monumental men before him.  He not only desires success, but also innovation.  Were his goal the “American Dream” of landing a good job that pays the bills and works towards financial freedom, he would have stopped when he was the 22 year old CTO of Facebook.  Instead, he wanted to change the landscape of something, to solve a new problem.

I felt I could make a bigger impact on the world by starting something new rather than just continuing to optimize Facebook.

-Adam D’Angelo

Takeaways

Adam’s story gives 3 main takeaways

1. Don’t be comfortable.  Comfort breeds inaction, and inaction is not only opposed entrepreneurship, but also to production.  To reach your potential, you can never grow complacent.
2. Go for it.  Side-projects are not maintainable.  Rather than getting your feet wet in entrepreneurship, go headlong off the high dive.  Maybe even do a backflip.
3. Fill a need (don’t create one).  While so many businesses are hinging on telling consumers they need their product, Quora is presenting itself as the solution to a problem consumers are well-aware of.  They’ve flourished without the extra burden of convincing customers that there even is a problem.