[barmstrong]

One thing that wasn't clear from the article, what does he want to spend the money on?

If it's marketing, I don't see why they can't do that with existing revenue. It's not as expensive as say a retail location for a starbucks and they must be doing some revenue with ads and job board already.

If it's hiring more developers that might make sense, although I can't think of any huge features they don't have yet.

Overall, not sure I'm convinced this is a good play for VC. They are growing nicely without it.

[snowbird122]

Obviously, they would need to target a larger audience if they are going after VC. I can see them rolling out the site to 500 different niches. Image answer sites for home improvement, gardening, small engine repair, microsoft office, botany, project management, cooking...

[jasonkester]

Reading the article, it would seem that the VC money will go towards launching StackOverflow clones in as many different verticals as possible. Thus the comparison with Starbucks, which had proven success in several markets before going big.

StackOverflow has launched what, 5 QA sites in total now? All of which seem to be thriving pretty well. It seems they're expecting similar success with QA sites for Sailing, Pregnancy Advice, Cat Owners, Subaru Mechanics, etc.