Richard Price (entrepreneur)

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Richard Price
NationalityBritish
Alma mater St Catherine's College, Oxford
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, business executive
Known forFounder and CEO, Academia.edu
Website oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

Richard Price is a British entrepreneur and the founder of Academia.edu, a for-profit academic social network and open-access publishing website. [1] [2]

Contents

Career

Price was born and raised in England and attended the University of Oxford, studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St. Catherine's College, continuing with a BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy. [1] [3] Price was awarded a prize fellowship of All Souls College in 2004. [4] During his time at Oxford, Price started "Richard's Banana Bakery", a banana cake delivery service for cafes before starting "Dashing Lunches", which sold sandwiches to consumers directly. He also founded LiveOut, a database of student rental properties in Oxford. [3] In 2006, he created a Facebook application that allowed people to rate their friends' photos, which was Facebook's top app for nine months. [5]

After graduating from Oxford, Price became frustrated with the time it took to get his work peer-reviewed and published and decided to create a platform in which academics could publish, peer review, and distribute their work. In 2007, Price raised $600,000 from London-based [6] venture capitalists and moved to San Francisco, California, where he officially launched Academia.edu in September 2008. [7] [8] [9] In 2014, the Academia.edu website had over 10 million registered users who uploaded more than 2.9 million papers. By 2016, the company had raised $17.7 million in funding. [10] [11]

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References

  1. 1 2 Leuty, Ron (4 June 2014). "'Open Science' Finds Disruptive Home in Academia.edu". San Francisco Business Times.
  2. Knapp, Alex (19 August 2012). "Who's Reading and Using Scientific Papers? Academia Will Find Out". Forbes.
  3. 1 2 Price, Richard. "The Story of Academia.edu" (PDF). Oxford Philosophy. 11.
  4. Wainright, Tom (8 January 2005). "The Most Glittering Prize". The Telegraph.
  5. Rao, Srikumar (18 October 2013). "The Story Behind a Radical new Idea: A Social Network for Academia". Inc.
  6. Shema, Hada (31 October 2012). "Interview With Richard Price, Academia.edu CEO". Scientific American.
  7. "Academia.edu Founder, Richard Price Convinces 4.1 Million Academics to Accelerate the World's Research". YFS Magazine. 4 September 2013.
  8. Shah, Semil (24 January 2013). "In the Studio With Richard Price". TechCrunch.
  9. Shankland, Stephen (26 September 2013). "Academia.edu Raises Funds to Build a Facebook For Scientists". CNet.
  10. Parr, Chris (12 June 2014). "Sharing is a Way of Life for Millions on Academia.edu". Times Higher Education .
  11. Tweney, Dylan (6 June 2014). "Watch This Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Evaporate Overnight". Venture Beat.