

Startuprant.com rants on about Scribd.com - MarkyMark
http://startuprant.com/2008/04/02/scribd-4m-in-funding-and-not-able-to-reply-support-email/

======
jgrahamc
> While ranting; what the f*ck do you need $4M for?

According to the article the company has 12 employees. Assuming a fully loaded
cost of $100,000 per employee (I expect most are coders). Then $4m covers 3.3
years of salaries. So they give themselves about 3 years of runway to actually
make the site make money.

That's what you do with $4m.

> The whole iPaper thing is cute.

> But how do you build a working business model around it?

That's what $4m gives you 3 years to figure out. Also, I think iPaper is a bit
more than 'cute'. I have a lot of different document types that I need to make
public (e.g. PDFs, PPTs,Keynote, Excel, Numbers). Since Scribd can just take
these and turn them into a common format for me it makes sense for me (when I
get around to it) to convert everything to iPaper so that everyone can read
them.

~~~
mjnaus
Sure! Looking for ways to burn through $4M in cash, even my 12 year old nephew
will come up with some way! I bet I could do it with half the staff in have
the time. Pissing away money is easy. However, this doesn't makes it good
business.

And when you're already planning to take three years to come up with a
business model, FOR GODS SAKE drop the whole thing and do something useful
with your time and other peoples money.

~~~
jgrahamc
Have you run a technology start-up to the point where it's profitable? My
experience is that it takes a lot longer than anyone thinks.

~~~
mjnaus
If Scribd would be a technology startup in the sense that it would leverage
NEW technology or develop NEW technology, it would make sense for it to take a
longer period of time to become profitable.

However, Scribd is just another company leveraging the internet delivering a
service to their customers. Nothing great and nothing fancy going on there and
if the idea would indeed be worth the effort, they should have no problem
starting of profitable or getting it profitable within the first year of
operation.

~~~
apathy
_Scribd is just another company leveraging the internet delivering a service
to their customers._

You mean like Amazon, or eBay, or Google?

None of those companies make much of anything either.

Good point on responsiveness, my experience is that even pain-in-the-ass
customers are important. Sometimes they're the most important ones over the
long haul. But you're still a pain in the ass ;-)

------
bootload
_"... Hi, sorry to hear about your trouble getting a reply. I’m one of the
founders at Scribd. What was the javascript issue you found? ... Tikhon ..."_

Found this in the comments section. Short cuts the rant at the source.

------
startingup
My beef with Scribd (and all other similar sites, including YouTube) is all
those copyrighted stuff. Just go verify for yourself - you will find entire
books there.

Yes, YouTube has established a "role model" here, but just because they got
away with it - at least dumped any potential legal problems on Google -
doesn't make it _right_. Google could still be held liable and it is
_certainly_ the case that YouTube has turned a blind eye to large scale
copyright infringement.

I get the gnawing feeling that way too many start-ups are in this mode of
"Let's see what we can get away with". That is sad.

~~~
apathy
_too many start-ups are in this mode of "Let's see what we can get away with".
That is sad._

Dude, not to be a dick, but have you watched how ExxonMobil or
Altria/PhilipMorris operate? This is how most companies do business --
brinksmanship is very useful for a CEO.

Why go looking for trouble when it's probably going to find you anyways?
Scribd offers a great service, it's fast, it's useful, and it's not really
their fault that people abuse it, any more than it's the phone company's fault
that individuals make obscene phone calls and pitch scams.

My suspicion is that they would be willing to deal with the copyright
infringement stuff if they could do so without crippling their productivity.
As it stands, wait-for-notification is probably more cost-effective.

I worked at a large free-hosting website from 1998-2000. We had a full-time
staff of 12 people looking for copyright infringement and kiddie porn.
Anything less severe than that was simply not worth the trouble. It's fucking
hard to get on top of peoples' tendency to take advantage.

------
andr
Your attempt at copying uncov.com.. FAIL.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
uncov actually liked scribd: <http://www.uncov.com/2007/4/26/scribd-you-re-
alright>

~~~
pius
From the comments on uncov:

 _really? you trash viable startups like meebo, but you praise scribd, which
has a very, very simple feature that is easily reproducible?_

uncov:

 _I tore meebo apart because they're useless. Youtube is also easily
reproducible, but why did google buy them for $1.65bln? I'll leave you to
figure out the answer. Retard._

