Can You Make A $6.3 Billion Business Just By Asking Questions? Meet The Legend Who Did This

Back in 2008, during the recession when everyone was afraid of losing their jobs, this legend, left his job as the CTO of Facebook to build his own company.

He was the mastermind behind Facebook's addictive algorithm.

Source : X/@Vinayp10

Can you imagine a scenario in which you build a business worth $6.3 billion just by asking questions? Don't worry I'm not gonna ask you to get three clients onboard and then ask each of them to get another three onboard. I'm talking about a legitimate business in which all you've to do is to ask questions to users.

What if I say that you know about such a business quite closely and it is highly possible that you even spend hours on that company on a daily basis?

Who Is Adam D'Angelo?

Back in 2008, during the recession when everyone was afraid of losing their jobs, Adam D'Angelo, left the job of a CTO at Facebook to build his own company. He was the mastermind behind Facebook's addictive algorithm. During his tenure at Facebook, he discovered something fascinating i.e., people are addicted to answering questions. This is one of the biggest reasons behind Facebook's "What's on your mind?" prompt being a massive hit. 

In 2008, the REAL genius behind Facebook's addictive algorithm left the company.

Everyone thought he was done.

Instead, he used the same psychological formula to build his own $6 BILLION empire.

Meet the man who has the world hooked:🧵 pic.twitter.com/Gvve70ifvf

— Vinay (@vinayp10) November 15, 2024

But D'Angelo saw a bigger opportunity in this. He identified that the "question loop" is the most powerful psychological trigger in human history. When we see an unanswered question then our brain needs to know the answer. This psychological phenomenon is termed the Zeigarnik Effect and it is due to this only that we binge shows, scroll social media endlessly and even run to get closures in our relationships. 

He used this phenomenon to his advantage and made Quora irresistible. As a result, around 300 million monthly users spend an average of 4.5 hours monthly on the platform. When everyone was fixated on social media, he quietly came and systematised human curiosity to build a $6.3B company.

Apart from Quora, D'Angelo at the age of 15, built a music player so addictive, that Microsoft offered to buy it.