Sprouter was a social network and Q&A site for startup founders, with blog posts on launching and building startups.
HN links it for the shutdown announcement and its founder answers site, and the company also posted job ads there.
> I'm not entirely sure what you're competitive advantage is then?
It's a good question ... here's a quick take on competitive positioning:
Quora: Q&A focus, broad focus, good responsiveness, Valley-based and English-only, text-oriented UX with some graphical abilities, very weak discussion capabilities
HN: link sharing and discussion sometimes used for Q&A, topics focused on hackers (including those starting companies) but , large and active community, not easy for a newcomer to get feedback or target answers, text-only UX
StackOverflow: Q&A focus, topics initially for programmers, now branching out
Sprouter's focus is on entrepreneurs and they're Canada-based so could have a big geographical differentiator from Quora. Depending on what strategy they pursue there are some other obvious potential competitive advantages and ... I haven't used it enough to know yet.
> What's in it for the people giving advice?
A key question. Sprouter seems to feature their experts a lot more prominently than Quora -- have a look at http://sprouter.com/answers
Toronto, Canada
Rails developer
http://sprouter.com
We are working on a big launch this summer involving live video. Looking for a rails dev looking to take on a big role. We only have two developers right now and are looking to add a third. You will have a big say in product design and will play with the newest tech out there. Rails 3, HAML, jquery, websockets, redis - all the good stuff. Hit me up: vince@sprouter.com for more info.
I didn't say it did...
Just looking on the http://sprouter.com/answers homepage, here's a taste...
Dan Martell - Flowtown,
Aaron Patzer - Mint,
Micah Baldwin - Graphic.ly,
Mark Suster - GRP Partners
Here is a link to the blog post which seems to be down atm.
http://sprouter.com/blog/sprouter-is-shutting-down/
I guess theres a post explaining whats going on:
http://sprouter.com/blog/sprouter-is-shutting-down/