Scribd raises $3.7M, amid lots of interest
San-Francisco-based Scribd, the so-called “YouTube for documents,” has attracted a lot of attention — including plenty of suitors from Silicon Valley’s venture capital firms.
So it comes as no surprise that, shortly after launch, it has raised $3.7 million from Redpoint and original seed investor Kinsey Hills Group. Co-founder Trip Alder wouldn’t disclose precise valuation the investors placed on Scribd, but did say the rumored $17.5 million post-money valuation is just about right.
The round closed a… Continue Reading
Ignite lights up Web 2.0 Expo
O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 Expo kicked off yesterday in San Francisco, with 10,000 attendees from 59 countries. VentureBeat’s Mark Coker took notes from the day.
The highlight was the evening’s Ignite event: Imagine packing a large conference room with about 600 geeks, giving ‘em all the free beer they can drink, and then entertaining them with a rapid-fire procession of sixteen fast-talking techies who each deliver a twenty-slide PowerPoint on an eclectic subject with only fifteen… Continue Reading
Y Combinator, the incubator with buzz
updated
Y Combinator has nailed the start-up incubator model, most likely because of its visionary leader.
Many famous incubators, from Idealab to CMGI, have come and gone over the years, and there are predictable autopsies suggesting the incubator model is flawed (see a list of articles about incubators here). Without doubt, the incubator flavor of the year is Y Combinator. Few of its companies have matured enough to judge its success, but we’re seeing promising ideas emerge…. Continue Reading
Scribd, the “YouTube for documents,” copyright violations and all
Updated
Scribd, the new Silicon Valley company pitching itself as the “Youtube for documents” is getting some good traction, in part because it hosts copyrighted material.
Scribd launched three weeks ago, and is attracting 100,000 unique visitors a day. Those are the viewers. Far fewer have signed up to upload documents — about 10,000 users have uploaded 13,000 documents.
Why, we asked initially, are people coming to a site to post documents, when all they have to do… Continue Reading
Start-up advice for entrepreneurs, from Y Combinator Startup School
Here’s a summary of the more compelling tips given by several tech industry luminaries — including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Greg McAdoo — at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford this weekend.
The event attracted more than 650 aspiring entrepreneurs. Mark Coker, a VentureBeat contributing writer, was on hand and here are his notes.
FaceBook’s Mark Zuckerberg: Hire only young technical people
FaceBook’s founder and CEO, 22-year old… Continue Reading