Trip Adler founded Scribd in 2007 straight out of Harvard, his only job ever. Growing up in Palo Alto and taking Mark Zuckerberg's class pushed him toward startups. Scribd now has over 100 million users and 750,000 paying subscribers, making it the longest-lasting independent Y Combinator company.
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All right, guys.
Thank you for making it out. We've had a very long day, but we have the pleasure of having Tripp here today.
Good to be here.
Work-life balance, I see he mentioned, Nicholas mentioned work-life balance. It's funny because all our staff actually lives here. So this is our work-life balance.
In the building.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
Exactly. But thank you for being out here. Like I mentioned in our call the other day, we have about 70 to 80 entrepreneurs from all over the world and they're starting their first ventures. Many of them are starting their first ventures. So I kind of wanted to go through your journey in starting a company. I know that you graduated from Harvard and you've had only one job.
This is my first and only job, yeah.
First and only job.
I had internships. I don't know if those count.
Well, we'll say this is the first official job.
Yes, yes.
So how did you actually, when you came out of college, what sparked that entrepreneurial bug?
Well, I think back then I just didn't really I didn't really know what else to do, right? I had considered being a doctor. I considered going into investment banking. I just didn't feel too excited about anything. And the only thing that did seem exciting was starting a company. And at the time, it just seemed like if I was ever going to do it, it was a good time to do it right after college. There's not a lot— you don't have a lot to lose in life right after you finish college. So I just decided to go for it. And then I've been doing it ever since.
So you started the company in 2007? That sounds very easy. By the way, this company has over 100 million users on their platform and almost a million subscribers.
I guess the official— 750,000 paying is the last official number we released, but we're growing that quickly.
Good. So was anyone in your family entrepreneurial? They started a business, or is this like a first-generation thing? I know you grew up in the Bay, so that probably influenced a lot of it.
There's actually been a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, I think going back a few generations, but I think the one I was closest to was my dad. He was a doctor at Stanford. He started a medtech company here in Silicon Valley, so I had quite a bit of exposure to entrepreneurship through him. Meanwhile, I grew up here in Palo Alto, really close by. A lot of my friends' parents started tech companies. I was in Mark Zuckerberg's class at Harvard, so I got to see that whole story get started. I had a lot of exposure to entrepreneurship, which I think gave me more comfort.
Right.
Nowadays, I think there's a lot more entrepreneurs out there in Silicon Valley. It's much more common. Back then, it wasn't quite as common, but I was lucky to have a lot of those touchpoints.
Do you attribute a lot of that to Silicon Valley itself, or more of a family, the way your family brought you up, or is it Silicon Valley was a huge part of starting this company?
I mean, I think Silicon Valley is a big part. I mean, having grown up here, it didn't seem that crazy to just start a company and take it public and all that kind of stuff because I grew up here in the '90s, so I got to see the whole dot-com boom play out. But I think it was also like, I mean, when I was at Harvard, I saw Zuckerberg doing this. We applied to Y Combinator. We were in the The second Y Combinator class was actually based in Boston back then. So Y Combinator was just down the road from our dorm. So that was also kind of natural, to just kind of go right from Harvard to Y Combinator. So I think, yeah, I mean, it was Silicon Valley, Y Combinator, a lot of things that gave me confidence to do this.
What are some of the Y Combinator companies that were in your batch, if you recall any?
Yes, the only one in our— let's see, the ones in our batch that you might have heard of, there was So Draw Something, do you remember that app?
Draw Something?
Read? It got bought by Zynga for quite a bit of money. So that company was in our batch doing something totally different. And then years later, it suddenly became Draw Something, and they sold to Zynga. There's a company called Zobni in our batch. They sold to Yahoo. Other ones kind of from back from the early days that are well known, there's like Reddit is big. You guys know Reddit. Dropbox, Weebly, Twitch. So Twitch started as Justin.tv. They were getting started around the time we started. So like when we were starting our company, Justin Kan was running around with a camera on his head. It was an interesting period of time.
Is he an advisor in your company?
Yeah, he's an advisor. Yeah, yeah. So I see Justin a lot these days.
Now you mentioned a lot of these Y Combinator companies getting acquired, but I read somewhere that you're one of the only companies that is actually the longest lasting thus far, which probably attributes to actually building a successful business model and not just your typical quick acquisition.
Yeah, I think we're the longest lasting continually operated— continually independent YC company, right? Because the only one that's older than us is Reddit, but they were acquired by Condé Nast and spun out, so they kind of lose that title. And then I guess right after us would be probably Dropbox. So we're the oldest just by about 6 months, which is a cool title to have.
That is.
Yeah.
We won't lose that as long as we stay in business. Right. And you will, with over 100 million users.
