Scribd began as site to simply host and share documents.
Essays, poems, novelswhatever writers needed to share,Scribdoffered a home for their words.
And now they’ve grown into a fully fledged book subscription serviceaNetflix for ebooks, you might say.
Where did the idea for Scribd come from?
Were you trying to solve a problem you’d experienced, or did the inspiration come from somewhere else?
After you came up with the idea, what was the next step?
On the product front, we already had a pretty good cross-platform reading experience for documents and books.
The challenge was simply to make it a bit more book-centric.
On the content front, I personally went out and starting pitching publishers.
Without any promotion or marketing, we saw the reading activity on their books quickly spike.
That was when we realized we were on to something.
How did you choose which platforms to target and which to ignore or wait on?
At this point we’ve built the product for iOS, Android, web browsers, and Kindle Fire.
What was your biggest roadblock and how did you overcome it?
Probably the most difficult roadblock for us was getting publishers on board, particularly the big ones.
What was launch like for you?
Growth has remained excellent since launch too.
How do you handle user requests and criticisms effectively?
User criticism and requests are extremely valuable feedback.
We receive a large amount of feedback with a varying degree of quality.
We look for common themes in feedback which helps us identify pain points and validate our product roadmap.
We also treat user feedback as an opportunity to open up a two-way dialog.
Now, how do you split time between developing new features and managing existing ones?
Our goal is to provide a superior ebook reading experience.
New features are also dictated by the business side of Scribd.
If we decide to enter new markets, it will most certainly require new features.
Our overarching goal is quality of features over quantity.
What advice would you give to others that want to take on a similar project?
Oh man, this is a big question.
If you have the right people in the right roles, everything else follows pretty naturally.
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