When you want an answer to a specific question, where do you go? If you’re like millions of people around the world, you go to Quora.

Quora has grown at a meteoric pace since its founding in 2009, boasting a sizeable audience of more than 300 million monthly active users. To capitalize on its growth, the question-and-answer site launched a self-serve ad platform in 2017 that lets users pay to get their brands in front of the right people by leveraging a variety of targeting options.

Despite unlocking a new way of generating revenue and Quora’s sales team now having an enticing way of attracting paying customers, there was a problem.

In today’s market, any new ad platform competes directly with the likes of Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Quora would inevitably have stiff competition for a company’s ad budget.

For Quora, they had to figure out how to identify quality leads that likely had disposable cash and were in a position to buy what they were selling at scale. Who generally has cash on hand to invest in growth? Newly funded companies.

Surfacing and Tracking Funding Rounds

Knowing that newly funded companies would likely be easier to convert into paying customers, Quora developed a targeting strategy that focused on companies that had recently raised a Series B round of funding or later.

The strategy makes sense. However, there are a couple of problems. First, not every company announces new funding rounds or acquisitions, which means there isn’t clear signals to indicate the likelihood of having disposable cash. And second, it’s not easy to keep track of funding – publically announced or not.

When Brett Klee, Quora’s Sales Development Team Lead, went looking for an effective way of driving quality leads based on their targeting strategy, Crunchbase’s Pro product came up during a team discussion.

Known for its comprehensive funding data and ability to track new rounds in the market, Klee quickly implemented Crunchbase Pro into his prospecting workflow. He instantly gained access to premium features and a treasure trove of data through an easy-to-use web interface.

Using Crunchbase Pro’s advanced search, Klee was able to use filters to drill down and pinpoint the exact companies that fit Quora’s strategy. And with the ability to add additional filters – like location, industry, and acquisitions made – he was able to get even more granular with queries.

With Klee now having a way to look back at a company’s activities and stay up-to-date on new developments, he was in a better position to execute their strategy. And as the lead for the sales development team, he was able to export the data from Crunchbase and use it to develop a more targeted approach to their prospecting.

But what about future funding rounds? How was Klee going to keep track of all the activity in the global market?

To ensure he and his team were always up-to-date, Klee used Crunchbase Pro’s custom alerts. Now, when a company raises a Series B (or later), he’s notified via email. Now, instead of spending an enormous amount of time manually tracking media publications and company websites for funding announcements, the news came right to Klee in real-time.

In the world of sales, speed matters. With the combination of advanced search and custom alerts, Quora had an efficient way of reaching the right companies at the right time at scale.