Skip to main content

Scribd raises $58M for subscription e-books and audiobooks

Scribd has raised $58 million in new funding led by growth firm Spectrum Equity.

The company first launched as a document-sharing service in 2007 before creating an e-book subscriptio in 2013. It now offers access to a library of e-books, audiobooks, newspapers and magazines for $8.99 per month. (Access is unlimited for most subscribers, but Scribd can cap the reading and listening of its most active users.)

At the beginning of this year, the company announced that it had more than 1 million paying subscribers. It also said it was seeing more than 100 million visitors each month (many of them brought in by the free document-sharing), it’s been profitable since 2017 and it’s bringing in $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

Since then, the company has launched an original content initiative focused on works that are longer than a magazine article but shorter than a traditional book. It’s also started to create localized experiences for international markets like Mexico.

In the announcement, co-founder and CEO Trip Adler said the new funding “will enable us to continue to operate sustainably and efficiently while accelerating our growth, product innovations, content acquisition and continued investment in our employees.”

Scribd previously raised a total of $47.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase, most recently in a Series D that was announced nearly five years ago.

Spectrum Equity, meanwhile, has backed companies like Ancestry, Grubhub, Headspace and SurveyMonkey.

“As a differentiated content library, including robust user-generated content and ebooks and audiobooks from top tier publishers, Scribd is poised to be the leading online subscription reading service for consumers across the globe,” said Spectrum Equity Managing Director Pete Jensen in a statement. “Spectrum has been fortunate to be a part of successfully scaling several digital content businesses, and we look forward to partnering with Trip and the entire management team to help make Scribd a part of readers’ everyday lives.”

In addition to announcing the funding, Scribd said it has hired Tony Grimmick as its first chief financial officer, Meghan Cochran as its first vice president of product and Patsy Mangan as its first vice president of people.

Scribd has more than 1M paying subscribers



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2pNaBFs
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft’s board to focus on philanthropy

In an announcement on Friday, Microsoft revealed that company co-founder Bill Gates has decided to step down from his role on its Board of Directors in order to focus on his philanthropic efforts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is Gate’s biggest change to his role at Microsoft since stepping down as company chairman in February 2014. According … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2We90Gu
Post a Comment
Read more

World Economic Forum launches Global AI Council to address governance gaps

The World Economic Forum is creating a series of councils that create policy recommendations for use of things like AI, blockchain, and precision medicine. Read More from VentureBeat http://bit.ly/2EKBjD4
Post a Comment
Read more

A Mini USB Keyboard That Isn’t A Keyboard

A useful add-on for any computer is a plug-in macro keyboard, a little peripheral that adds those extra useful buttons to automate tasks. [ Sayantan Pal] has made one, a handy board with nine programmable keys and a USB connector, but the surprise is that at its heart lies only the ubiquitous ATmega328 that you might find in an Arduino Uno. This isn’t a USB HID keyboard, instead it uses a USB-to-serial chip and appears to the host computer as a serial device. The keys themselves are simple momentary action switches, perhaps a deluxe version could use key switches from the likes of Cherry or similar. The clever part of this build comes on the host computer, which runs some Python code using the PyAutoGui library. This allows control of the keyboard and mouse, and provides an “in” for the script to link serial and input devices. Full configurability is assured through the Python code, and while that might preclude a non-technical user from gaining its full benefit it’s fair to say that ...
Post a Comment
Read more