Company Context
Quora is a large consumer knowledge platform with millions of monthly users across web, mobile app, email, and SEO entry points. Its core business depends on sustained reader and contributor engagement, with monetization tied to ad inventory, subscription products, and long-term user value.
Problem
The Growth team has one half-year roadmap slot to materially improve Quora’s user growth loop. Leadership is debating whether to focus on activation—helping new users reach their first meaningful value moment faster—or retention—increasing the likelihood that existing users come back weekly and continue reading, following topics, asking questions, or answering.
Current data shows the following:
- 42% of newly signed-up users read at least 3 answers in their first 7 days
- 18% of newly signed-up users follow 5+ topics or people in their first 7 days
- 11% of newly signed-up users ask a question or write an answer in their first 14 days
- 8-week retention for signed-up users is 24%
- Weekly retention for users who complete at least 2 core actions in week 1 is 2.1x higher than those who do not
- Returning logged-in users generate 65% of total ad revenue and a disproportionate share of high-quality content creation
You are the PM for growth and must recommend where Quora should invest next: improving activation or improving retention.
Deliverables
- Define what activation and retention should mean specifically for Quora, including the core user behaviors that matter.
- Segment Quora users and identify which segment should drive the prioritization decision.
- Recommend whether Quora should prioritize activation or retention for the next 6 months, with a clear rationale and trade-offs.
- Propose 2-3 product bets on Quora surfaces (for example: onboarding, Home feed, topic follow flow, notifications, email, answer composer, question ask flow).
- Define success metrics and how you would know the decision was correct.
Constraints
- One cross-functional squad for 6 months
- No major ranking-system rewrite during this period
- Must show measurable impact within 2 quarters
- Changes cannot materially reduce content quality or increase spam/ragebait behavior
