Jared Friedman
Born1984
Alma materHarvard University
Occupation(s)Group Partner at Y Combinator and Co-founder of Scribd
Websitewww.scribd.com

Jared Friedman (born 1984) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is a partner at Y Combinator in San Francisco, where he invests in and helps startups.[1] Previously, Jared was the co-founder and CTO at Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users.[2][3]

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.[4][5][6][7] In 2008, Scribd ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[8] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[9] and shortly thereafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[10] In 2012, the company became profitable.[11]

In October 2013, Scribd launched a subscription ebook service, and signed a deal with HarperCollins to make their backlist books available on Scribd.[7][12][13][14] Scribd currently has more than 300,000 titles from 1,000 publishers in its book subscription service.[15][16]

As CTO,[17] Friedman led one of the earliest and largest site-wide transitions of Adobe Flash to HTML5.[18][19][20] 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.[21][22][23][24][25][26] 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.[21] Three days later, SOPA was postponed, which press outlets reported as the "death" of the bill.[27]

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.[28][29][30][31]

Friedman became the 16th full-time partner at Y Combinator in October 2015.[32]

Honors

References

  1. ^ Friedman, Jared (2021-11-20). "Jared Friedman". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2021-11-20.
  2. ^ a b Dan Fletcher (2010). "Tech Pioneers 2010: Trip Adler and Jared Friedman". TIME.
  3. ^ Lynn Neary (October 4, 2013). "New E-Book Lending Service Aims To Be Netflix For Books". NPR.
  4. ^ Cromwell Schubarth (October 28, 2013). "Y Combinator's 10 most valuable startup alumni". Silicon Valley Business Journal.
  5. ^ Bobbie Johnson (July 22, 2009). "How Scribd made pages pay". The Guardian.
  6. ^ Spencer E. Ante (June 11, 2009). "Scribd: An E-Book Upstart with Unlikely Fans". Businessweek. Archived from the original on June 15, 2009.
  7. ^ a b Calvin Reid (October 1, 2013). "Scribd Launches E-book Subscription Service". Publishers Weekly.
  8. ^ "Scribd Had A Blowout Year, And So Did the Web Document". TechCrunch. 2008-12-31. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  9. ^ "Scribd Invites Writers to Upload Work and Name Their Price". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  10. ^ "Simon and Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  11. ^ Anthony Ha (August 13, 2012). "Social Publishing Startup Scribd Gets A Facelift: New Website, New Logo, New iPhone App". TechCrunch.
  12. ^ Anthony Ha (October 1, 2013). "With HarperCollins Deal, Scribd Unveils Its Bid To Become The Netflix For Books". TechCrunch.
  13. ^ Josh Ong (January 29, 2014). "Scribd takes aim at Amazon by bringing its subscription ebook app to the Kindle Fire". The Next Web.
  14. ^ Julie Bosman (October 1, 2013). "HarperCollins Joins Scribd in E-Book Subscription Plan". The New York Times.
  15. ^ Angela Chen (February 18, 2014). "What Your iPad Knows About You". The Wall Street Journal.
  16. ^ About Us. Scribd.
  17. ^ Streitfeld, David (6 Jan 2014). "Author, author: Here's what readers think of your work". The New York Times. pp. D003. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  18. ^ Cade Metz (6 May 2010). "50 million user Scribd scraps Flash for HTML5". The Register.
  19. ^ Harry McCracken (May 7, 2010). "Scribd Ditches Flash in Favor of HTML5". PC World.
  20. ^ Michael Calore (May 10, 2010). "Scribd ditches Flash for HTML5". Wired. Archived from the original on March 31, 2014.
  21. ^ a b Erick Schonfeld (December 21, 2011). "Scribd Protests SOPA By Making A Billion Pages On The Web Disappear".
  22. ^ "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.
  23. ^ J. O'Dell (December 21, 2011). "Scribd is disappearing word by word, page by page, thanks to SOPA". VentureBeat.
  24. ^ "Friedman Says Scribd Opposes Anti-Online Piracy Bill". The Washington Post. December 23, 2011. Archived from the original on May 21, 2014.
  25. ^ Jon Brodkin (January 18, 2012). "Protesting SOPA: how to make your voice heard". ArsTechnica.
  26. ^ Hayley Tsukayama (December 21, 2011). "Scribd protests SOPA with disappearing act". The Washington Post.
  27. ^ David Thier (January 20, 2012). "SOPA Got Stopped: Stop Online Piracy Bill Actually Dead". Forbes.
  28. ^ Jared Friedman. AngelList.
  29. ^ Ryan Lawler (April 2, 2013). "YC-Backed Vayable Launches Destinations To Crowdsource Interesting Things To Do In Cities Around The World". TechCrunch.
  30. ^ 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.
  31. ^ Sarah Perez (March 26, 2012). "Design Community Colourlovers Acquires Forrst". TechCrunch.
  32. ^ "Welcome Jared!". Y Combinator. Retrieved 2024-03-25.

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