Scribd Revenue & Funding (2024)

Scribd generated an estimated $166.8M in annual revenue in 2024.

Scribd was generating approximately $54 million in annualized recurring revenue as of November 2017, a figure the host derived from 500,000 paying subscribers at $9 per month, implying monthly recurring revenue of $4.5 million. Adler confirmed the subscriber count had been announced roughly six months before the interview and that the company had grown past that figure since the announcement.

Scribd had 500,000 paying subscribers as of the announcement made roughly six months before the November 2017 interview, with Adler confirming the company had grown past that number by the interview date. The sole pricing tier was $9 per month, with no alternative price points mentioned. Adler described the model as intentionally simple: one price for all subscribers, with unlimited access to all content categories.

In addition to paying subscribers, Scribd reached approximately 100 million monthly active users on its free, ad-supported document library. Adler noted that the non-paying audience had plateaued in recent years because growth was driven almost entirely by long-tail Google search traffic to the company's library of 70 million user-uploaded documents. The company was not paying meaningfully for user acquisition, marketing its subscription service directly to the existing free audience.

Scribd generates revenue exclusively through consumer subscriptions priced at $9 per month. With 500,000 subscribers at that price, the implied MRR was $4.5 million and implied ARR was $54 million as of mid-2017. Adler confirmed the company was profitable as of November 2017 and described profitability as the reason Scribd was not seeking additional funding.

On the content cost side, Scribd pays publishers on a per-read basis. A read is counted and payment is triggered when a user has consumed at least 20 percent of a book. Adler described this structure as making the arrangement look like a sale from the publisher's perspective. The company's two primary cost categories are headcount and content licensing; paid marketing spend was described as minimal.

Adler stated that capital raised over the company's history was deployed primarily into hiring engineers, designers, and other product staff, and into content deals with book publishers, magazine publishers, and newspapers. Gross margin, churn, LTV, CAC, and burn rate were not discussed in the interview. The company's path to profitability was not broken down in detail beyond Adler's confirmation that Scribd was profitable and self-sustaining on subscription revenue.

Scribd employed approximately 120 people as of November 2017. The majority of the team was based in San Francisco, where the company occupied the 24th floor of a building in the Financial District. A smaller team in New York handled publisher relationships, and an office in Phoenix was being built out to support customer service functions, with a few additional employees located elsewhere around the world.