What actually made the startups switch away from convore? At the point pg said that, quite a number must have been using it. Then they just stopped?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
People think more highly of things that they have an ownership stake in.
But 200 people using it for free (and probably naturally fading out of using it once the summer is over anyway) is not going to keep them afloat.
I don't think anyone switched away from convore as much as they just stopped using it over time. The problem with convore was that it was too focused on information, and people don't care about information, they care about people. So what started as a better version of chat/forums eventually devolved into a less good version of quora.
The best thing that convore had going for it was that all of the content was extremely lightweight, but in the end I think this is what killed it also because the emotional connection just wasn't there.
1) he just said it to promote Convore
2) he really believed that (in an environment with hundreds of factors), companies' use of Convore had a noticeabe effect on their performance?
I know where I'd put my money on...