Scribd

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Scribd

Type

Private

Founded

San Francisco, California, USA

(March 2007)

Headquarters

San Francisco, California, USA

Key people

Trip Adler (CEO, co-founder),

Jared Friedman (CTO, co-founder),
Tikhon Bernstam (COO, co-founder)

Services

Social reading and publishing platform

Website

Scribd.com

Alexa rank

352 (December 2014)[1]

Type of site

Social Software

Available in

English, Spanish, Portuguese

Current status

Active

Scribd /skrbd/ is a digital library, featuring an ebook and audiobook subscription service that
includes New York Times Best-Sellersand classics.
Launched in 2007 by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, and headquartered in San Francisco, CA,
Scribd also features written works contributed by users around the world. Backed by Y
Combinator, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures, Scribd serves more than 80 million
active readers coming to the site every month.[2]
Scribd's subscription service is available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone smartphones and
tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire,Nook, and personal computers for a fee which lets readers
have unlimited access to more than 500,000 books from over 900 publishers, including Harper
Collins, Simon and Schuster, RosettaBooks, and Workman.[3] In November 2014, audiobooks
were added without an additional fee to the subscription. [4]

Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Timeline

3 Financials

4 Technology

5 Reception
o

5.1 Accusations of copyright infringement

5.2 Controversies

6 Supported file formats

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

History[edit]
The idea for Scribd was originally inspired when Trip Adler was at Harvard and had a
conversation with his father, John R. Adler, about the difficulties of publishing academic papers.
He teamed up with co-founders Jared Friedman and Tikhon Bernstamm and they attended Y
Combinator in Cambridge in the summer of 2006.[5] Scribd was launched from a San Francisco
apartment in March 2007 and quickly grew in traffic. In 2008, it ranked as one of the top 20 social
media sites according to Comscore.[6] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store[7] and shortly
thereafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[8] Over 900 publishers,
including HarperCollins, Harvard University Press, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, Wiley, Pearson, Random House, RosettaBooks, Stanford University Press,
and Workman, are now[when?] associated with Scribd.[citation needed] ProQuest began publishing
dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009.[citation needed]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies with The New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.
[9]
Over 100 media companies now use Scribds branded reader to embed source material into
their stories. In August 2010, news stories began to break and documents and books began to
go viral on Scribd including the overturned Prop 8 and HPs lawsuit against Mark Hurds move
to Oracle Corporation.[citation needed]
In October 2013, Scribd officially launched the first unlimited access subscription service for
digital books, often called the "Netflix for ebooks",[10] giving readers unlimited access to Scribd
library.[11] The company also announced a partnership with major publishing company
HarperCollins.[2] The official statement revealed that the "majority" of the HarperCollins US and
HarperCollins Christian catalogs will be available in Scribd's subscription service. Chantal
Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, explained to the media that the deal
represents the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its catalog. [12]

As of December 2013, Adler is the CEO of Scribd, where he is responsible for the product and
strategic direction of the company. Adler was named in BusinessWeek's "Best Young Tech
Entrepreneurs 2010" list.[13]
In January 2015, the company raised $22 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures with
partner Keith Rabois joining the Scribd board of directors.[14]