There’s been a lot of buzz over the past couple years regarding the question and answer site Quora. Even though it’s popular in some circles, I still encounter a lot of people who’ve never heard of it.

Quora was created by a couple former Facebook employees and is a site where users can post questions on just about any topic. ‘’Experts’ with knowledge of the subject post answers. As with many social content sites like Reddit and Digg, answers are voted on and the best float to the top.

Quora originated in Silicon Valley and has since almost become part of the culture of the Valley. Because of this, it contains lots of interesting questions about starting up a business, keeping it going, getting funding, and the like.

How Quora is different

A couple things set Quora apart from other sites I’ve come across:

• The topic and nuance of the questions: You’ll find many questions on Quora whose answers aren’t easily arrived at using standard Google searches, Many times the questions require real expertise to answer and are hard to express using a simple search engine query.
• Famous and well respected authority figures answer questions: Famous individuals are known to provide detailed answers to topics relating to startups, entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley culture in particular,. Such figures include AOL co-founder Steve Case and creator of the modern web browser, Marc Andreessen.

For these reasons Quora is a veritable goldmine for entrepreneurs.

A few interesting sample topics

The following are some of the more interesting topics I’ve come across:

• How do you convert your users into evangelists? – spectacular answer
• What qualities are shared by most successful startup home pages?
• What are some of the best quotes on entrepreneurship? The top answer includes a great quote by Steve Jobs

Make Quora one of your regular browser stops

When you have an interesting question regarding your business, check out Quora, they may just have it. If they don’t, post the question. You may be surprised how good an answer you get and from whom.