 | |
| Industry | Digital distribution, self-publishing, e-commerce. |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2011 |
| Founder | Sahil Lavingia, Sachin Khanna |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Ershad Kunnakkadan, CEO [1] |
| Website | gumroad.com |
Gumroad is an e-commerce platform that allows creators to sell products directly to their audience. The platform was founded by Sahil Lavingia in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California.
Gumroad was founded in 2011 by Sahil Lavingia, who was previously a designer at Pinterest and Turntable.fm. [2] [3] [4] The idea for the platform came to Lavingia when he wanted to sell an icon he had designed and saw that the amount of effort it took to sell an item directly to consumers was considerable. In February 2012, Gumroad announced a $1.1 million seed round. [3] Three months later Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) led a $7 million Series A round. [5]
On September 8, 2014, Twitter launched a Buy Now button in partnership with Gumroad, [6] the Buy Now and Gumroad partnership were discontinued on January 7, 2017. [7] On September 30, 2014, Gumroad released an iPhone app. [8] [9]
In March 2024, Gumroad banned the sale of sexually explicit content on its platform due to pressure from Stripe and PayPal. [10]
In 2025, Lavingia worked with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as part of its efforts to fire tens of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and introduce AI systems to the VA. [11] DOGE gave Lavingia, who has no government experience, sensitive access to VA systems. [11]
A variety of major and independent musicians, [12] [13] film distributors, [14] [15] and authors [16] [17] have distributed content or sold products on Gumroad.