- Startups - Trip Adler of Scribd - TWiST #273
1:00 Jason introduces Trip Adler, co-founder of Scribd. Trip, welcome to the program.
1:30 How many people were in the 2006 Ycombinator class in Boston?
2:15 Thank you to SquareSpace for supporting the show! If you need to build high quality sites, use the promo code TWiST7 to sign up for Squarespace.
5:00 What idea did you get into Ycombinator with?
6:30 What were first couple of ideas that led to Ycombinator and Scribd?
10:00 When everyone thought that incubators were for weak entrepreneurs, how did Paul get winners into Ycombinator?
11:15 Paul doesn't like the idea so you come up with another idea, which is?
13:00 When did you pull the plug on that idea?
14:00 Are you a competitive guy?
17:45 So then what led you to Scribd?
20:30 How many documents and users did you get in that first year and what was it like to scale it?
21:30 Had many issues with the DMCA for a long time, when get back from commercial want to hear how you guys got over it.
21:15 Thank you GoToMeeting, a service that I use for all my meetings. Everyone thank @GoToMeeting!
23:30 How'd you guys clear yourselves of copyright/piracy issues of uploaded documents legally and operationally?
29:00 Scribd has about 90 million people outside the US using their service, was that by design that you'd have such a high international user base?
30:15 Are you building organizations in those countries, do you have international operations?
32:30 How is the new model of selling direct going?
33:15 With this sort of platform agnostic publishing, who do you see as your main competitor?
34:30 Is it decision making time for you guys to sell it or can it keep growing?
35:45 Are DocStoc your closest competitor at this time?
37:15 How has the publishing world changed and where is the publishing industry at the moment?
38:00 Do you see yourself of a Posterous of the publishing world? Helping manage to multiple platforms.
39:30 What's the secret of recovering from the Panda Google update? Also, what was the company thinking, were you guys in a panic?
41:30 Is Google a content company these days?
42:45 Are you worried about Google coming out with their own version of Scribd and push you guys down the page results?
45:00 Why have you turned down multiple offers to sell and are still running independently?
46:15 What is the most challenging thing today? What's hard now?
47:30 What are your tips to get your team to excellent and not just good?
51:15 What's next?
52:00 How's David Sacks been as an investor?
52:15 Did you think that Yammer when you first saw in 4 years would have a billion dollar exit?
53:00 Is he a very direct guy?
54:30 What do you look for in the VCs? What do you want from them as individuals?
55:15 When you took on investors, were you very discerning and concerned with how supportive they would be down the road?
56:15 What do you think of Ycombinator and the higher quality and growing number of companies involved?
57:30 Thanks Trip! Everyone check out @Scribd and if you want to work with them, just email trip@scribd.com.
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FOLLOW ON TWITTER
Jason: @jason
Trip: @tripadler
GoToMeeting: @gotomeeting
Squarespace: @squarespace
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