Jared Friedman

Jared Friedman (born 1984) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the co-founder and CTO of Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users.[1][2]

Jared Friedman
Born1984
Alma materHarvard University
OccupationCo-founder and CTO of Scribd
Websitewww.scribd.com

Scribd

Friedman co-founded Scribd with fellow Harvard University student Trip Adler. The pair attended Y Combinator in the summer of 2006, and launched Scribd from a San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[3][4][5][6] In 2008, Scribd ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[7] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[8] and shortly thereafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[9] In 2012, the company became profitable.[10]

In October 2013, Scribd launched a subscription ebook service, and signed a deal with HarperCollins to make their backlist books available on Scribd.[6][11][12][13] Scribd currently has more than 300,000 titles from 1,000 publishers in its book subscription service.[14][15]

As CTO, Friedman led one of the earliest and largest site-wide transitions of Adobe Flash to HTML5.[16][17][18] Friedman was also notably opposed to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and was quoted in Bloomberg, The Washington Post, VentureBeat, ArsTechnica, TechCrunch, and Fox News.[19][20][21][22][23][24] In protest to the bill, Scribd pulled its entire database—over 1,000,000,000 documents—from the internet on January 18, 2012 for one day.[19] Three days later, SOPA was postponed, which press outlets reported as the “death” of the bill.[25][26]

Angel investor

Friedman is also an angel investor. His investments and advisory positions include: Parse (company), Swiftype, Creative Market, Vayable, MuckerLab, FundersClub, Goldbelly, Instacart, JamLegend, Rickshaw, Madison Reed, Marco Polo, Colourlovers, Copyin, and Appszoom.[27][28][29][30]

Friedman became the 16th full-time partner at Y Combinator in October 2015.[31]

Honors
  • Named to TIME’s list of tech pioneers of 2010[1]

References
  1. Dan Fletcher (2010). "Tech Pioneers 2010: Trip Adler and Jared Friedman". TIME.
  2. Lynn Neary (October 4, 2013). "New E-Book Lending Service Aims To Be Netflix For Books". NPR.
  3. Cromwell Schubarth (October 28, 2013). "Y Combinator's 10 most valuable startup alumni". Silicon Valley Business Journal.
  4. Bobbie Johnson (July 22, 2009). "How Scribd made pages pay". The Guardian.
  5. Spencer E. Ante (June 11, 2009). "Scribd: An E-Book Upstart with Unlikely Fans". Businessweek.
  6. Calvin Reid (October 1, 2013). "Scribd Launches E-book Subscription Service". Publisher’s Weekly.
  7. "Scribd Had A Blowout Year, And So Did the Web Document". TechCrunch. 2008-12-31. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  8. "Scribd Invites Writers to Upload Work and Name Their Price". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  9. "Simon and Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  10. Anthony Ha (August 13, 2012). "Social Publishing Startup Scribd Gets A Facelift: New Website, New Logo, New iPhone App". TechCrunch.
  11. Anthony Ha (October 1, 2013). "With HarperCollins Deal, Scribd Unveils Its Bid To Become The Netflix For Books". TechCrunch.
  12. Josh Ong (January 29, 2014). "Scribd takes aim at Amazon by bringing its subscription ebook app to the Kindle Fire". The Next Web.
  13. Julie Bosman (October 1, 2013). "HarperCollins Joins Scribd in E-Book Subscription Plan". The New York Times.
  14. Angela Chen (February 18, 2014). "What Your iPad Knows About You". The Wall Street Journal.
  15. About Us. Scribd.
  16. Cade Metz (6 May 2010). "50 million user Scribd scraps Flash for HTML5". The Register.
  17. Harry McCracken (May 7, 2010). "Scribd Ditches Flash in Favor of HTML5". PC World.
  18. Michael Calore (May 10, 2010). "Scribd ditches Flash for HTML5". Wired. Archived from the original on March 31, 2014.
  19. Erick Schonfeld (December 21, 2011). "Scribd Protests SOPA By Making A Billion Pages On The Web Disappear".
  20. "Wikipedia and Other Sites Shut Down in Protest of SOPA and PIPA". Fox News Insider. January 18, 2012. Archived from the original on December 25, 2012.
  21. J. O'Dell (December 21, 2011). "Scribd is disappearing word by word, page by page, thanks to SOPA". VentureBeat.
  22. "Friedman Says Scribd Opposes Anti-Online Piracy Bill". The Washington Post. December 23, 2011.
  23. Jon Brodkin (January 18, 2012). "Protesting SOPA: how to make your voice heard". ArsTechnica.
  24. Hayley Tsukayama (December 21, 2011). "Scribd protests SOPA with disappearing act". The Washington Post.
  25. Bill Killed: SOPA death celebrated as Congress recalls anti-piracy acts. Russian Times. January 19, 2012.
  26. David Thier (January 20, 2012). "SOPA Got Stopped: Stop Online Piracy Bill Actually Dead". Forbes.
  27. Jared Friedman. AngelList.
  28. Ryan Lawler (April 2, 2013). "YC-Backed Vayable Launches Destinations To Crowdsource Interesting Things To Do In Cities Around The World". TechCrunch.
  29. Jerry Yang (July 30, 2013). "Grid, An App That Helps You Organize Ideas And Projects, Announces A Seed Round From Jerry Yang, Phil Libin And Others". TechCrunch.
  30. Sarah Perez (March 26, 2012). "Design Community Colourlovers Acquires Forrst". TechCrunch.
  31. "Welcome Jared!". Y Combinator Posthaven. Retrieved 2015-10-08.
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