Founding (20072013)[edit]

Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[11] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to
start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers. [13] His
father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his medical research
published.[13] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content online. [14] He
co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the
summer of 2006.[15] There, Scribd received its initial $12,000 in seed funding and then launched in a
San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[6]
Scribd was called "the Youtube for documents," allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its
document reader.[13] The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web
documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds. [16] In its first year, Scribd grew 218
percent with 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008. [17] It also ranked as one of the top 20 social
media sites according to Comscore.[18]
In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital
copies of their work online.[19] That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[20] The deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd,
including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark.[21]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.
[22]
ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009. [23] In August
2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including the
California Proposition 8 ruling, which received 6,000 views per second, and HPs lawsuit
against Mark Hurds move to Oracle.[24] [25]

Subscription service (2013present)[edit]

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books.[26] This gave
users unlimited access to Scribds library of digital books for a flat monthly fee. [27] The company also
announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins catalog
available on the subscription service.[28] According to Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer
at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its
catalog.[29] In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publishers
entire library on its subscription service.[30]