Formspring CEO Ade Olonoh

Earlier this year, Formspring, a San Francisco-based social Q&A startup, got tongues wagging when it raised $2.5 million in its Series A funding mostly from top angel investors. The round, led by Freestyle Capital, turned out to be a coming-out party for angel investors who have become a big factor in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem.

Seven months later, Formspring is making news again. We’ve learned the company has raised $10 million in fresh funding in a round led by Redpoint Ventures. Geoff Yang, a well-known digital media investor, is leading the investment on behalf of Redpoint. The new round values Formspring somewhere around $45 million. The company declined to comment on the funding.

Formspring’s is relatively simple offering; you sign-up and create a page and then anyone can ask you anything, even anonymously. In many ways, it’s like blog comments, minus the blog post. Apparently, this is something folks like to do; the company says it has about 40 million unique visitors who show up every month. That growth is costing the company a pretty penny and has been a focus of its recent hirings.

The new investment is part of a growing trend. Fast-growing startups with momentum are able to raise big rounds of money, as Sand Hill Road investors try to cherry pick from a vast number of consumer web and mobile companies.  Formspring fits the bill; the company claims more than a billion questions have been answered on its platform.

Formspring.me is also part of a group of startups (and large companies) trying to capture a piece of what is a massive and ever-evolving web trend: personal expression. It started with blogs; it spread with micro blogging (Twitter and Facebook) and, more recently, self-expression through remixing (Tumblr.) Answering questions as an expert is only an extension of that trend, which is why you’re seeing services like Formspring get momentum, and hence the money.

From the Video Archives Chat with Formspring.me CEO Ade Olonoh:

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Formspring.me was spun out of FormSpring.com (which is now rebranding itself as FormStack to avoid confusion) last fall, after the Indianapolis-based company noticed 30,000 people had signed up for its free accounts in order to invite people to ask them questions. “We set out to give these users a product that would do what they were already doing, but make it simpler to do it,” said Wechsler, who along with the company’s four other employees is moving out to San Francisco to pursue the startup. (“The moving trucks are literally in town now.”)

The Formspring.me product is still quite simple, enabling users to create a page inviting people to ask them anything, even anonymously. Wechsler said the company’s first priority is keeping up with infrastructure demands; it currently has some 200 quad-core servers and is adding more all the time.

Wechsler described Formspring’s value proposition as such: “We’re bringing conversation to the social web. Instead of putting the onus on you to think of something to say, our platform really lends itself well to a conversation.”

Next up on the company’s product road map, as soon as it gets its infrastructure under control: an API, a mobile app, an Adobe AIR app and a web-based app, said Wechsler.