Jared Friedman

Last updated
Jared Friedman
Born1984
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation(s)Group Partner at Y Combinator and Co-founder of Scribd
Website www.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]

Contents

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

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References

  1. ↑ Friedman, Jared (2021-11-20). "Jared Friedman". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2021-11-20.
  2. 1 2 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. 1 2 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. 1 2 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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