Courtesy of JamesJYU
Scribd.com is social community site where users can upload documents of all shapes and varieties to share with the general public. Scribd has quickly grown in popularity since it’s launch about 3 years ago. It has since become a great success for one entrepreneur. For that reason and many more, this week in the spotlight we take a look at entrepreneur Trip Adler. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn.
Summary:
Name: Trip Adler
Age: 25
Location: California
Claim to fame: Scribd.com (Document sharing website where users upload various documents to share with the world.)
Initial cost: <$1000
How He Did It:
Trip Adler was born and raised in California until he left for college where he attended Harvard University. Adler majored in biophysics and graduated in June 2006. He came up with the idea for his start-up while attending school due mainly to his frustration of publishing academic papers online. The result was a start-up launch called Scribd, which provided a social community where members could upload and share documents of all topics. Traffic quickly grew throughout 2008 and Adler later launched a Scribd store in 2009. It wasn’t until later in June of 2009 that Scribd signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell eBooks on the site. Adler currently remains CEO of Scribd running it out of California with a small staff. The company has raised over $12 million in investments to date.
Lessons Learned:
- Leverage every opportunity to make your business succeed (Adler entered his start-up idea into a entrepreneur competition called Ycombinator to get initial funding and support).
- Everyday problems are great resources for building a business around.
- You don’t know what’s going to happen until you try (Adler ran with his idea and took action. Taking action is vital!)
- Collaborating with a trusted circle is an excellent resource for developing ideas further as an entrepreneur.
Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Matt Rutledge of Woot.com.
Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur. Also, please let me know if you have an entrepreneur you would like to see featured here in the weeks to come.
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