Scribd operates a subscription service providing access to a library of e-books, audiobooks, newspapers and magazines for $8.99 per month, with most users enjoying unlimited access though the company may cap its heaviest readers. The product began as a document-sharing site in 2007 and launched its e-book subscription in 2013. Scribd reports more than 1 million paying subscribers, over 100 million monthly visitors (many from its free document-sharing), and $100 million in annual recurring revenue; it has been profitable since 2017. The company has launched an original-content initiative focused on works longer than magazine articles but shorter than traditional books, and is creating localized experiences for international markets like Mexico. Recent executive hires include its first CFO, first VP of product, and first VP of people. Management says the new funding will be used to accelerate growth, product innovations, content acquisition and continued investment in employees. Launched in 2007 and incubated at Y Combinator, Scribd began as a document-sharing site and has shifted its focus to a subscription e-book service. The company offers unlimited access to roughly half a million e-books for $8.99/month and has expanded into audiobooks, where users have logged 180,000 listening hours. Scribd reaches more than 80 million unique visitors each month, and the subscription product has grown an average of 31% month-over-month since it was unveiled in October 2013. The service is working with two of the big five publishers (HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster) to provide backlist titles and expects to have most significant industry players on board by the end of 2015. Management says it will use new capital to improve product features—particularly algorithmic recommendations and the reading experience—and to continue expanding content. Scribd operates a document-hosting service that lets users upload PDFs and Office documents for online viewing and embedding. The site attracts sizable traffic — Compete reports about 4 million monthly U.S. visitors and Scribd says roughly 50,000 documents are uploaded daily. The article notes competing services such as Docstoc and Issuu. Scribd is a Y Combinator company and has previously raised a $3.7 million Series A in mid-2007 plus some angel investments. Around the time of the financing the company hired George Consagra, former COO of Bebo, as president. Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures will join Scribd's board. Scribd, dubbed the "YouTube for Documents," emerged from Y Combinator as a social document site that saw rapid early traction. Traffic scaled quickly to roughly 75,000–100,000 uniques per day and the site logged 1.73 million unique visitors in the most recent month. Users add about 1,000 new documents each day, and the company recently launched a Facebook application that has been added by nearly 11,000 users. Scribd credits an early $40,000 convertible note from Kinsey Hills Group for getting them off the ground. The company plans to use new financing to expand its programming team. Overall the metrics indicate strong engagement and rapid audience growth for a young content-sharing service. Scribd provides a platform for users to upload, tag, share, comment on, and embed documents (.doc, .pdf, .txt, .ppt, .xls, .ps, .lit) in HTML or Flash Paper. Documents are downloadable in flexible formats including PDF, DOC, TXT, and even MP3 via a Nuance text-to-speech integration. The site surfaced analytics for each document such as votes, views, geographic location, and HTTP referrer, aimed at letting users “geek out” on engagement. Scribd was coming out of private beta at the time of the article. The team emphasized design principles borrowed from video-focused social sites while adapting features for written content. The piece noted uncertainty around business model viability for medium-specific social networks, suggesting monetization remained an open question.

Total raised

$93M

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Nov 2019