Trip Adler
John R. "Trip" Adler III (born June 24, 1984) is an American entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users.
Background and early career
Adler grew up in Palo Alto, California. He graduated from Harvard University with a biophysics degree in June 2006. His father, John R. Adler, is a neurosurgeon at Stanford University and also an entrepreneur.
Among his schoolmates at Harvard, Trip was known by a colorful array of nicknames including Tiny, Golden Boy, Tiny Tony, Stone Pony, Nerd, Nerdman, and Entreprenerd.
After graduating from Harvard, Adler contemplated starting various online ventures, including a ride-sharing service, a Craigslist-type site for colleges, a call center called 1-800-ASKTRIP, and a social media site called "Rate your happiness."
Scribd
Adler received inspiration for Scribd from a conversation with his father, who had difficulty publishing an academic paper in a medical journal. Adler then built Scribd with Jared Friedman, a fellow Harvard student, and they attended Y Combinator in the summer of 2006. Scribd was launched from a San Francisco apartment in March 2007. In 2008, it ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore. In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store, and shortly thereafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd. In 2012, the company became profitable.
