Founding (2007–2013)[edit]

Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[12] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was
inspired to start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish
academic papers.[14] His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to
have his medical research published.[14] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish
and share written content online.[15] He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and
attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the summer of 2006.[16] There, Scribd
received its initial $120,000 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.[14] The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents,
and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website that allows
embeds.[17] In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November
2008.[18] 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 e-books 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.[17] ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in
December 2009.[22] In August 2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to
go viral, including the California Proposition 8 ruling, which received over 100,000 views in
about 24 minutes, and HP's lawsuit against Mark Hurd's move to Oracle.[23][24]