<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54504083eab8ea5504340b74-1200-924/chris-sacca-8.jpg?maxX=600" border="0" alt="chris sacca" width="600"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/loiclemeur/8517980953/in/photolist-jYcyoD-dYGSYz-7Cg57L-5CQGwM-5CQGut-jYgXko-jYhUQG-jYfmcR-jYeKnZ-6xhqhv-5JTwd-9LD9Gz-9LFWQy-9LD9Pv-9LFWT3-9LFWFG-9LD9VB-9LFWXy-9LFWyj-9LD9wt-9LD9Rn-9LD9UB">Flickr/Loic Le Meur</a></span></p><p class="caption">Lowercase Capital founding partner Chris Sacca.</p></img></div><p></p></div>According to Chris Sacca, the <a href="http://lowercasecapital.com/">Lowercase Capital</a> partner who made more than $1 billion through his investments in companies like Twitter and Uber, Silicon Valley doesn't need more business advice. It needs a lesson in empathy.</p><p>The current generation of entrepreneurs, investors, and programmers have a tendency to live in a bubble removed from the rest of the world, he tells "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307465357&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=MOUTZWPP2DAHQMWJ" target="_blank">The 4-Hour Workweek</a>" author Tim Ferriss in <a href="http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/05/30/chris-sacca/">the latest episode of Ferriss' podcast</a>.</p><p>They may be more highly educated than those who came before them, but they're lacking the valuable experience that doesn't come with a degree, like working construction or waiting tables in the summer, traveling, and volunteering in poorer parts of the world.</p><p><span>T</span>hat's resulted in a concentration of tech workers and investors with "narrow-band perspectives on the world," <span>Sacca says</span>. "They were missing empathy. So they weren't able to put themselves in the shoes of the folks they might be building a product for, what the problems of the world might be."</p><p>He tells Ferriss that he's always looking for ways to offset this problem for the founders he works with, as well as himself, and frequently recommends the following books.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557077d5ecad04ff4dc67ccf-401-601/a3-2.jpg" border="0" alt="not fade away" width="480"><p class="source"><span>Amazon</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></p><h2>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006073731X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=006073731X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=KEK2N4VJJAMK3YOD" target="_blank">Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived</a>" by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton</h2><p>Peter Barton made a fortune in tech as the founder and CEO of Liberty Media, which acquired clients like the Discovery Channel and QVC. He left the company in 1997 and became the head of a foundation, a professor, and a Yahoo board member - he was busy, but he had enough freedom to enjoy spending time with his family. Then, in December 1998, he was diagnosed with incurable stomach cancer.</p><p>In 2002, Barton was approaching death and reached out to the writer Laurence Shames to help him tell his story. Barton died before "Not Fade Away" was published.</p><p>The book is Barton's exploration of dealing with his mortality and taking stock of what truly mattered in his 51 years.</p><p>"You will cry reading this book," Sacca says.</p><p>"It's an exercise in what's on the mind of the person who's dying, and how is he thinking about the impact of his death on his family, on his friends, on his business partners, on his legacy, on the continuing responsibilities as a dad even though he's passed on to the next life."</p><p>"The book will not only leave you feeling incredibly lucky for what we've got here and where we are," he says, "but at the same time will sharpen that sense of how do I put myself in somebody else's shoes."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5570780369beddb22f8e9229-400-600/b2-10.jpg" border="0" alt="how to get filthy rich in rising asia" width="480"><p class="source"><span>Amazon</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></p><h2>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594632332/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1594632332&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=DIW2GVP7FSNVCVKN" target="_blank">How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia</a>" by Mohsin Hamid</h2><p>This book is written in the second-person. It addresses the reader as "you," making you the hero of the story.</p><p>It's about growing up in a Southeast Asian slum and escaping to develop a business that brings you to an unnamed city in "rising Asia," where you become a wealthy entrepreneur.</p><p>Hamid, whose family is from Pakistan, has lived there as well as in the US and UK. "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia," published in 2013, is his profound twist on a self-help book, a meditation on ambition across vastly different social classes.</p><p>"You close that book and you feel like you've walked through 15 or 20 different lives in another world," Sacca says.</p><p>"And I just think more of that would be better for all of us. I think it would be better for our industry, for the depth and the impact of the products we build. I just think it would be better for getting along with each other."</p><p>After all, he says, it's hard to lose sleep over a competitor's new product when you have an appreciation for the magnitude of the privileges in your life.</p><p>You can listen to Sacca and Ferriss' full, in-depth conversation on <a href="http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/05/30/chris-sacca/">Ferriss' site</a> or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2">iTunes</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-oleary-comments-work-life-balance-shark-tank-2015-5">A 'Shark Tank' investor reveals how to really achieve work-life balance</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="oyYnMwdTqzB16AtqTnt7c5orKKdXrA6g" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'oyYnMwdTqzB16AtqTnt7c5orKKdXrA6g',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Billionaire tech investor Chris Sacca thinks everyone in Silicon Valley should read these 2 books

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57757eca4321f102278b5351-1457/marten%20mickos_hackerone%20ceo.jpg" alt="HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos" data-mce-source="HackerOne" data-mce-caption="HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos"><p class="source"><span>HackerOne</span></p><p class="caption">HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>HackerOne, a computer security startup&#xa0;that runs what's known as&#xa0;"bug bounty" programs, has a grand new plan to help every company hire legions hackers to attack their systems, all in the name of better computer security.<p>And along the way, its famous new CEO,&#xa0;<span>M</span><span>arten Mickos, has become a sort of a fatherly pied-piper figure to a generation of socially awkward teen hackers, many of them living in developing countries. He's guiding them to the light of hacking for good, and earning some money,&#xa0;instead of causing mischief.</span></p><p>Bug bounty programs are when companies invite hackers to break into their software,&#xa0;then pay prizes&#xa0;for the bugs they find. The scarier the bug, the bigger the prize. It's a way of finding out how bad-guy hackers would break your software using real-world conditions in a controlled setting.&#xa0;</p><p>On Friday, HackerOne launched a&#xa0;bunch of new products that makes bug bounty programs more accessible for everyday companies.&#xa0;This includes a new subscription business model for software that helps customers with a bunch of related tasks, such as&#xa0;running small bug-bounty pilot programs&#xa0;and&#xa0;tracking the bugs through the process of fixing them.</p><p>Since it launched in 2012, the&#xa0;company has landed 550 customers, all without a sales force. With the new software, the 50-employee company just changed that, too. It hired its first sales person,&#xa0;<span>Marjorie Janiewicz, previously&#xa0;from MongDB, and she's in the process of hiring more.</span></p><h2><span>Humans&#xa0;are the problem and&#xa0;the solution</span></h2><p>HackerOne is a hot Valley startup that's raised $34 million from VC backers like Benchmark and NEA and <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hackerone#/entity">individual "angel" investors like</a> Marc Benioff, David Sacks, Drew Houston, and Jeremy Stoppelman.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57757f044321f1e2008b557d-1333/hackerone%20jobert%20abma2.jpg" alt="HackerOne Jobert Abma" data-mce-source="Trep Life" data-mce-caption="HackerOne cofounder Jobert Abma"><p class="source"><span>Trep Life</span></p><p class="caption">HackerOne cofounder Jobert Abma</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>About seven months ago, it hired <span>Mickos as CEO. He's&#xa0;</span><span>known for joining young companies in promising fields and selling them for big bucks. He was the CEO of mySQL back when open source software was new, and sold it to Sun Microsystems in 2008 for $1 billion. Then he&#xa0;joined cloud company&#xa0;Eucalyptus and sold it to HP (the terms were not disclosed, but most reports put the amount at less than $100 million).</span><p><span><span>Mickos&#xa0;</span></span><span><span>wasn't at first interested in HackerOne, he told us.</span></span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He barely agreed to meet with the founders,&#xa0;<span>Jobert Abma and&#xa0;</span><span>Michiel Prins,&#xa0;</span>two twenty-something best friends, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hacker-earns-80000-as-bug-bounty-hunter-2016-4">who have been hacking into computers since their high school days.</a></span></p><p><span><span>"I was asked to take a look at this company, and I was thinking to myself, 'Oh no, a security company. Who the heck could get excited about security?' I sort of dragged my feet to the meeting," Mikos told us.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Obviously, he changed his mind.</span></span></p><p><span><span>"I realized that this company is turning security&#xa0;inside out. You used to do all the security on the inside, now we realized the rescue is on the outside. You used to buy more and more [security] tech. Now we realize that tech is not the solution, tech is the problem. Humans are the solution," he says.</span></span>&#xa0;</p><p>Today&#xa0;HackerOne has a network of "tens of thousands" of hackers in its system,<span>&#xa0;he says,&#xa0;many of&#xa0;them are teens that he's befriended over Facebook and Twitter.</span></p><h2><span>A better outlet for 'misfit' teens&#xa0;</span></h2><p><span><span>Mickos&#xa0;</span>said he feels a bit "emotional" about this company's mission.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span>"There are all these young, capable people who are a bit lost and may feel like they are misfits in society and if you give them a good task and ask them to do a good deed, they will," he says.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/577581a34321f172088b5526-969/hack%20the%20pentagon%20hackers.png" alt="Hack the Pentagon Hackers" data-mce-source="HackerOne" data-mce-caption="Some of the profiles of the top HackerOne hackers that hacked the Pentagon"><p class="source"><span>HackerOne</span></p><p class="caption">Some of the profiles of the top HackerOne hackers that hacked the Pentagon</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>"I was just in Facebook chatting with my new friend in Pakistan. He's 15 or 16. He learned to hack on his own. He earned a bounty from Coinbase. He's a great guy and sends me small messages. He will be a CSO [chief security officer] one day of some amazing company. He's growing up far away and all he has is a smartphone and a laptop."</span></p><p>Mickos says that he's gotten to know similar teens in the Philippines, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Russia, and Scandinavia.</p><p>"You find them all over the place. And they are so full of energy and hope. It's exactly like Brexit. The old guys are disenfranchised and ready to leave. But the young kids, they are ready to build a great digital society for us."</p><p><span>In fact, the</span><span> founders&#xa0;were the same sort of teen hackers in the Netherlands. They launched a company when their parents insisted they put their talents to good use instead of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hacker-earns-80000-as-bug-bounty-hunter-2016-4">mischief and sentences of community service</a>.</span></p><p>All told, HackerOne has paid out $8.5 million in bug bounties since it was founded in 2012, Mickos says.</p><p>Not all the hackers are teens. Many of them are software and security pros earning extra&#xa0;money moonlighting as bug hunters. Some of them will earn an $100,000+ a year, including founder&#xa0;<span>Abma himself, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hacker-earns-80000-as-bug-bounty-hunter-2016-4">he recently told us</a>.</span></p><h2><span>Even the Pentagon is asking these folks to hack it</span></h2><p>HackerOne isn't the only company out there running bug bounty programs.&#xa0;Bugcrowd, CrowdSecurity, and&#xa0;Synack are some others.</p><p>But it does have an impressive gaggle of customers including Uber, Dropbox, Airbnb, GitHub, GM, and Twitter.&#xa0;</p><p>Probably its most impressive feat was a program put on by the Department of the Defense called Hack the Pentagon, which concluded in May.&#xa0;Over&#xa0;1,400 hackers participated. They found 138 bugs and the DOD paid out $71,200 in bounties.&#xa0;The Pentagon was so happy with the program, it sent every participant a specially made commemorative coin.</p><p>That's a far cry from the Pentagon's&#xa0;previous relationship with hackers, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1158173/Pentagon-hacker-faces-70-years-US-jail--CPS-wont-try-Britain.html">which might have involved jail.</a></p><p>If the Pentagon can do a bug bounty, than any company can.</p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Got my <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hackthepentagon?src=hash">#hackthepentagon</a> coin today. So cool! Thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/Hacker0x01">@Hacker0x01</a> <a href="https://t.co/aGgx6A4BNN">pic.twitter.com/aGgx6A4BNN</a></p>- Travis Lee  (@eelsivart) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/746811620261662720">June 25, 2016</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>&#xa0;</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sharpest-view-of-pluto-in-history-2016-6">NASA released the sharpest photos of Pluto in history - and they're spectacular </a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="U2MWg0NDE6ykRnxrXlkJYct3YEPlQyBk" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'U2MWg0NDE6ykRnxrXlkJYct3YEPlQyBk',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

How HackerOne's famous new CEO is helping teen hackers become agents of good, not evil

<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a738da8a4565c6579e2be4-1175-881/working-on-laptops.jpg" border="0" alt="working on laptops"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/81039245">Mark Wilson/Getty</a></span></p><p class="caption">The benefits come as a surprise to most.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>In 2011, Faisal Khan had recently turned 40 and quit a stressful job as a manager at an information technology company. He'd just spent a year studying banking and payments in the hopes of pursuing a new career in the field.</p><p dir="ltr">Searching online for professional conferences to attend one day, he stumbled on a helpful post someone had written on question-and-answer website Quora.</p><p dir="ltr">Browsing other threads, Kahn quickly realized that people were asking banking and payments-related questions he could address pretty easily. He started answering them.</p><p dir="ltr">"It was almost addictive," he told Business Insider.</p><p dir="ltr">Eventually, Khan said, people started sending him direct messages asking him for advice on the topics he posted about. He added his contact information to his profile so that people could get in touch more easily.</p><p dir="ltr">Today, Khan is a banking and payments consultant in Karachi, Pakistan. He credits Quora with giving him enough clients to start his consultancy; today, he says at least three-quarters of the initial calls he receives come from Quora.</p><p dir="ltr">Khan has been named one of Quora's top writers five years in a row, meaning he's been honored by Quora for both the quality and quantity of his posts; he has upwards of 5,000 answers.</p><p dir="ltr">"Quora was the savior," he said, though he could never have predicted it.</p><p dir="ltr">Today he employs a social media manager, whose duties include reviewing his answers for grammar and spelling before he publishes them on Quora.</p><p dir="ltr">It took five years, he said, to figure out how to make Quora work for him. But "I've hacked it down to a science."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a4c5bf918a0fb4226c0c52-1200-924/faisal-khan.png" border="0" alt="faisal khan"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Faisal Khan</span></p><p class="caption">The benefits come as a surprise to most. Faisal Khan, pictured, credits Quora with giving him enough clients to start his consultancy.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2 dir="ltr">The most efficient way to give</h2><p dir="ltr">Khan is one of a growing number of people who have benefited professionally from their contributions to community-based websites like <a href="https://www.quora.com/">Quora</a>, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/">Reddit</a>, and <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">It isn't from unabashedly promoting their product or their personal brand, either - many people who have experienced these benefits say they joined the sites for entertainment purposes, or simply because they enjoy sharing their knowledge with others. Some have even remained anonymous.</p><p dir="ltr">For the most part, the opportunities that have arisen from their participation in these communities - as varied as partnering with the UN, gaining business clients, and learning about an exciting doctoral program - have been wholly unexpected.</p><p dir="ltr">This phenomenon might sound like a series of happy accidents. But it could be evidence of the benefits of being a "giver."</p><p dir="ltr">That's a term popularized by Adam Grant, a psychologist and a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2013, Grant published the book "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFPTSI0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Give and Take</a>," in which he made the compelling argument that the most successful people are also the most generous.</p><p dir="ltr">That is, of course, unless they burn out. According to Grant, one key to getting ahead - at work and in life more generally - is knowing<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/adam-grant-on-how-givers-succeed-at-work-2015-11"> how to give efficiently and effectively</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">Communities like Quora, Reddit, and Wikipedia seem to have presented their members with opportunities for uber-efficient giving: sharing their knowledge with hundreds of thousands of readers at once.</p><p dir="ltr">Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grant is one of Quora's 2017 top writers.</p><p dir="ltr">"As an author, [using Quora] helps me figure out what other people are curious about," he said in an email.</p><p dir="ltr">"When I see a question that's in my wheelhouse, my first impulse is to jump in.  It's the same kind of rush as getting an interesting, thoughtful question by email, only this is much more efficient because there's an audience bigger than one."</p><p dir="ltr">Grant said it made sense that people would be pleasantly surprised when their contributions to sites like Quora ended up shaping their professional <keyword id="6354910" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Careers">careers</keyword>:</p><p dir="ltr">"Many Quora contributors weigh in simply because they enjoy sharing their knowledge, and haven't thought about how it might come back to them - which leaves them surprised when it helps them establish a reputation as a thought leader or connections with peers in positions of influence."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a70c9a8fe4dea36310f1bf-1200-858/traffic_to_knowledge_sites.png" border="0" alt="Traffic to Quora etc"><p class="source"><span>Diana Yukari/Business Insider</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2 dir="ltr">The evolution of online communities</h2><p dir="ltr">Quora, Reddit, and Wikipedia are all free to join. While their missions differ, each one allows users to share and acquire sometimes obscure knowledge almost instantly.</p><p>On Quora, users post questions and answers under their full names, or anonymously, if they so choose.</p><p dir="ltr">Reddit, once called the "front page of the Internet," is a collection of forums, or subreddits, on everything from science to cooking to relationships. Users submit content in the form of original text or links to other websites, and the rest of the community votes on it.</p><p dir="ltr">Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows anyone to create and edit articles.</p><p dir="ltr">Of the three sites, Wikipedia is the most popular, with nearly 73 million unique visitors in December 2016, according to Comscore data. But Quora is growing fastest: While Wikipedia and Reddit have seen dips in traffic since December 2015, Quora has seen a 35% increase.</p><p dir="ltr">Quora in particular may become something of a replacement for Yahoo! Answers, another question and answer site. Although Yahoo! Answers currently gets nearly twice as much unique visitor traffic as Quora, it also saw a 23% decrease in unique visitor traffic between December 2015 and December 2016.</p><p dir="ltr">One key difference between Quora and Yahoo! Answers is that many Quora users publish under their real names; on Yahoo! Answers, many post under a username.</p><p dir="ltr">Under a Quora thread titled "<a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-Quora-Reddit-and-Yahoo-Answers">What are the differences between Quora, Reddit, and Yahoo answers?</a>" multiple users said they found more well-thought-out questions and answers on Quora.</p><h2 dir="ltr">Why people share their knowledge online</h2><p dir="ltr">To date, there's been limited empirical research on people's motivations for contributing to Quora and Reddit. There are, however, a number of papers on the various motivations of Wikipedia users.</p><p dir="ltr">One<a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1297798"> 2007 study</a>, for example, led by Oded Nov at the Polytechnic Institute at New York University, found that very few people said they contributed to Wikipedia in order to make new contacts to help their career. Instead, the most frequently cited motivations were having fun and contributing because information should be free.</p><p dir="ltr">More recently, this finding has been replicated in the context of other online volunteerism projects, such as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pra2.2015.1450520100106/full">contributing content to an online archive</a> that documented a 2014 shooting.<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pra2.2015.1450520100106/full"><br /></a></p><p dir="ltr">Among the 20 or so contributors to Quora, Reddit, and Wikipedia I spoke with, nearly all mentioned that they'd joined these sites because they enjoy sharing their knowledge. Several said they'd continued contributing because they appreciate the sense of community the sites foster.</p><p dir="ltr">Quora regularly conducts surveys measuring its top contributors' motivations. Jonathan Brill, Quora's director of writer relations, said the number one thing he hears is some variation on, "I really like the idea of helping other people."</p><h2 dir="ltr">Building a professional brand</h2><p dir="ltr">Brill was recruited to Quora in 2014, but he'd joined as a contributor in 2010, the same year the site launched publicly. At the time, Brill was working in technology sales and occasionally updated a personal blog with insights on the industry.</p><p dir="ltr">Answering Quora questions on this topic, he told me, was "good for my personal gratification of helping people."</p><p dir="ltr">But Brill wasn't ashamed to add that joining Quora was also a way to build his "professional brand" - to establish himself as someone who knew a lot about his industry and, just as importantly, could explain it to other people.</p><p dir="ltr">"On Quora," he said, "I found that I could create just as much value and content in about 10 to 30% of the time" it took to maintain a blog.</p><p dir="ltr">Brill said he was offered a job by a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, who had seen his posts on Quora and was impressed. Around the same time, Brill was also in talks with the leadership team at Quora about joining them; ultimately he decided to go with the offer from Quora.</p><p dir="ltr">Brill's story isn't unique - on a Quora thread titled, "<a href="https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-gotten-a-job-through-Quora-Or-somehow-made-lots-of-money-through-Quora">Has anyone gotten a job through Quora? Or somehow made lots of money through Quora?</a>" nearly 50 people have responded with their experiences getting recruited for contract and full-time work because of their presence on Quora.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a4c6868a4565ca3d809b1a-1200-924/may-hachem.jpg" border="0" alt="may hachem"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of May Hachem</span></p><p class="caption">May Hachem is a co-founder of the HerStory campaign, a partnership between the United Nations and the Wikimedia Foundation.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2 dir="ltr">Online communities as 'another life'</h2><p dir="ltr">For May Hachem, contributing to Wikipedia has become something of a second career.</p><p dir="ltr">At 23, Hachem is a cofounder of the HerStory Campaign. It's a partnership between the United Nations and the Wikimedia Foundation that involves creating Wikipedia biographies for women who have made meaningful contributions to history as well as increasing the number of women editors.</p><p dir="ltr">Like most of the people I spoke with, Hachem didn't intend to become so heavily involved with the Wikimedia community. Four years ago, she was asked by her professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo to help translate Wikipedia articles to Arabic.</p><p dir="ltr">From there, she became a campus ambassador to the Wikipedia Education Program, and went on to launch the first WikiWomen Project organization in the Middle East.</p><p dir="ltr">Today, Hachem is also a talent acquisition specialist at Centro Global Solutions - but contributing to Wikipedia, she says, which includes both editing articles and teaching other students how to do so, "gives me another life."</p><p dir="ltr">When she goes for job interviews and tells them about how she spends her free time - mostly volunteering for Wikipedia projects - "they feel like I'm someone special."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a4c7e78a4565ba3e809b1c-1074-805/ben-zhao.jpg" border="0" alt="Ben Zhao"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Ben Zhao</span></p><p class="caption">Computer science professor Ben Zhao says Ph.D. candidates often tell him, "I know lots about how things work already from reading your Quora posts."</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Becoming a minor Internet celebrity</h2><p dir="ltr">Even academics say their contributions to community-based sites have turned them into minor celebrities within their field.</p><p dir="ltr">Ben Zhao is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara and one of Quora's 2017 top writers, with over 900 answers. He joined Quora in 2013 and spent the first few months reading other people's answers.</p><p dir="ltr">When he noticed that someone had asked a question about writing a statement of purpose - and that no one had answered it properly - he chimed in.</p><p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a4c72d9037f7701a1aa776-1200-600/ben-zhao-screenshot-1.png" border="0" alt="Ben Zhao screenshot"><p class="source"><span>Quora</span></p><p class="caption">One of Ben Zhao's early - and popular - Quora posts.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>From there, he said, "it sort of ballooned." Today, Zhao has over 30,000 followers - people who mark Zhao's answers as ones they want to see when they sign into the site.</p><p dir="ltr">A surprising number of applicants to UCSB's doctoral program in computer science tell Zhao, "I know lots about how things work already from reading your Quora posts"; when Zhao gives talks at different universities, people frequently come up to him and say, "I know all about you from Quora."</p><p dir="ltr">On his<a href="http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/"> faculty page</a> on the UCSB website, Zhao now includes links to some of his Quora answers that are relevant to aspiring Ph.D. candidates.</p><h2 dir="ltr">Forging a career path - through Reddit</h2><p dir="ltr">Reddit in particular is home to a thriving community of scientists and those interested in science - and it can sometimes be a launching point for careers in the field.</p><p dir="ltr">Cooper Hodges, 23, is a doctoral student in the psychology program at Brigham Young University. He's also a moderator of r/science - a Reddit forum dedicated specifically to science.</p><p dir="ltr">Hodges was a freshman at Andrews University when he found out about Reddit. Clicking around the site, he stumbled upon a bunch of subreddits - forums dedicated to specific topics - on science and psychology, where some users had posted research papers they found interesting or discussion-worthy.</p><p>He decided to take an introductory psychology course to learn more about the topics he'd read about on Reddit.</p><p dir="ltr">Hodges credits Reddit with sparking his interest in psychology - and continuing to spark his interest in new research projects.</p><p dir="ltr">"It's really surprising to me," he said. "I wasn't expecting a whole lot."</p><p dir="ltr">In fact, Hodges says Reddit helped him find out about about the psychology program at Brigham Young.</p><p dir="ltr"><span>His mentor at Andrews, Karl Bailey, had encouraged him to look into self-determination theory for a psychology paper he was working on. Hodges also bounced around ideas for the paper in the r/science forum, and</span> someone suggested he subscribe to an email listserv on self-determination theory, a topic in psychological research. </p><p dir="ltr">One of the emails sent to the listserv mentioned the program - Hodges applied and was accepted in 2016.</p><p dir="ltr">"I had no idea Reddit could be such a useful tool," he said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58a4c8c58d3eae1d3fa299fa-1200-924/mike-emeigh.jpg" border="0" alt="mike emeigh"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Mike Emeigh</span></p><p class="caption">Mike Emeigh joined Quora to find prospective business clients, but he stuck around for the sense of community.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2 dir="ltr">'Closing the circle'</h2><p dir="ltr">Sometimes, the link between using these websites and improving your career works the other way around.</p><p dir="ltr">Mike Emeigh is one of Quora's 2017 top writers, with nearly 2,500 answers; when he joined in 2011, he was considering buying a tax business. He started answering questions in the hopes of converting some users to prospective clients.</p><p dir="ltr">Emeigh, now in his early 60s and living in Phoenix, AZ, didn't end up buying the tax business. But he kept answering questions on Quora, largely because he felt it was a way to give back to his community.</p><p dir="ltr">"It makes me feel like I've learned a lot and now I have a chance to let other people share in what I've learned," he said. "It's just a feeling that I've closed the circle."</p><p dir="ltr">He went on: "Anybody who is driven enough to want to know what they have to do, to want to know how to be successful, deserves whatever help I can give them."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jenny-blake-pivot-career-change-plant-scan-pilot-launch-2016-9">A 4 step plan for making a successful career change</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="1wcDAyNjE61jlmHWgdJ8Vf8O0pJ_9VlF" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '1wcDAyNjE61jlmHWgdJ8Vf8O0pJ_9VlF',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

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