In short
Tripp Adler’s founder journey from Scribd’s viral document-sharing growth to a major setback, then reinvention via book subscriptions; he and his father, John Adler, discuss perseverance and when to pivot. The episode ends with Tripp launching Created by Humans, a marketplace to license copyrighted works for AI.
Guests
Tripp Adler, founder of Created by Humans; previously founded Scribd (document “YouTube for documents”), growing it to over $300M revenue and later reinventing it around book subscriptions (e.g., $9.99/month unlimited books). John Adler, Stanford professor of neurosurgery and CEO of Zap Surgical; Tripp’s father and a long-term entrepreneur.
Key claims
Viral loops can flip investor interest overnight; failed product launches can trigger rapid team turnover; returning to core business model and profitability enables recovery; AI copyright needs “plug-and-play” licensing.
Notable examples
Scribd’s early viral upload loop; the Float product flop causing half the team to quit; subscription pivot and $9.99 unlimited books; Created by Humans author verification and licensing workflow.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOOpening Reflections and Introduction
0:00 to 0:22
The host reflects on a pivotal moment and introduces the podcast and guest.
“I remember having this moment when everything was going really badly.”
Tripp Adler's Background
0:22 to 1:06
Tripp shares his background, childhood experiences, and early entrepreneurial influences.
“I'm David Rusenko, and on today's show, we talk to Tripp Adler.”
Growing Up with Entrepreneurship
1:06 to 2:12
Tripp discusses his upbringing in a family of entrepreneurs and notable experiences.
“To find out, I also talked to Trip's dad, John Edler.”
Early Ambitions and Education
2:12 to 3:26
Tripp reflects on his academic path and initial career aspirations before entrepreneurship.
“My dad was a brain surgeon turned entrepreneur.”
Finding the Entrepreneurial Bug
3:26 to 5:10
Tripp recounts his journey to entrepreneurship and how he met his co-founder.
“hell no no i didn't know what he was going to do so i mean no i don't know i just was hoping you'd be employed.”
The Scribd Idea Emerges
5:10 to 6:27
Tripp reveals how their idea for Scribd developed from various pitches and pivots.
“So I had this idea and then I was like, you know, I needed a co-founder.”
Launching Scribd and Initial Challenges
6:27 to 7:43
Tripp discusses the initial launch of Scribd and the challenges faced during growth.
“but tell me the story of the Scribd idea.”
Viral Growth and Recognition
7:43 to 9:04
Tripp describes the viral growth of Scribd and the shift in investor interest.
“scribbed and then it kind of went from there.”
The Ups and Downs of Startup Life
9:04 to 12:36
Tripp reflects on the highs and lows of the startup journey, including tough moments.
“Scripps in his early days was in my living room.”
The Launch and Its Fallout
14:06 to 15:10
Discussing the failed product launch and its impact on company morale.
“So we launched a pretty new product under a new brand called Float.”
Show all 16 chapters
Reflections on Leadership Challenges
15:10 to 17:01
Exploring the personal challenges and responsibilities of being a CEO.
“I know as a CEO, a lot of times you feel like the whole company rests on your shoulders.”
Finding Growth Through Subscription Models
17:01 to 18:51
How a shift to subscription models helped the company thrive.
“We just started focusing on the business model and profitability.”
Personal Reflections on Longevity in Companies
18:51 to 20:24
Discussing the long-term commitment to their respective companies.
“in place and getting the culture ready to operate at that kind of like higher level of scale.”
Introducing the New Startup: Created by Humans
20:24 to 22:50
Outlining the new venture aimed at navigating copyright and AI issues.
“Well, I think he has, if I do say so, some of me in him.”
Navigating the Startup Landscape as a Second-Time Founder
22:50 to 24:16
Discussing the transition to a new startup after years in a previous company.
“Starting a new company as a second time founder is actually a pretty enjoyable experience.”
Vision for the Future of Copyright and AI
24:16 to 26:18
Discussing hopes for resolving copyright issues in the AI era.
“And when did you know it was the right time for you to start another company?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00John Adler:I remember having this moment when everything was going really badly. I was looking around and I was like, well, this is a disaster. Who's going to fix this? Who's in charge here? And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm in charge. I need to fix this. And I think there was a moment where I really kind of toughened up and I was like, okay, I got to figure this out.
0:21Trip Adler:Welcome to Leap Forward, a show about founders and the people who believed in them before anyone else. I'm David Rusenko, and on today's show, we talk to Tripp Adler. Tripp is the founder of Created by Humans, a platform where people can get paid when AI uses their work. Before that, Tripp started several companies, most notably Script, which is like a Netflix for books, where you pay a monthly fee to access a massive library of documents. Trip grew Scrib through lots of twists and turns to over$300 million of revenue. Now, every founder story has ups and downs, but Trip's were especially extreme.
0:58Trip Adler:We're talking instant success and huge growth until just a few years later, the company hit a wall and half the team left. So how do you know if you should push harder, pivot, or quit? To find out, I also talked to Trip's dad, John Edler. What's your perspective on how long and how hard you should keep going? Isn't that the most important question an entrepreneur has to ask themselves? And now, Tripp Adler.
1:27Trip Adler:Yeah, I'd love if you could just take us back. What was your childhood like? Where'd you grow up? And what were you like as a kid?
1:33John Adler:I had a lot of exposure to companies growing up. I grew up in Silicon Valley, specifically Stanford campus. You know, a lot of my friends' parents were founders or executives or investors. You know, one really funny story is my childhood babysitters were Susan and Wajinsky from, you know, YouTube and 23andMe. So I was just, you know, really exposed to Silicon Valley a lot. And then my dad was an entrepreneur.
1:59Trip Adler:I'm John Adler. Notably, I'm a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford, and I'm also currently CEO of Zap Surgical. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I'm Tripp Asler's father.
2:12John Adler:My dad was a brain surgeon turned entrepreneur. So I remember the brain surgery job a lot more. I mean, it's easier for a kid to understand what a brain surgeon does and what an entrepreneur does, right? I don't remember consciously that much what entrepreneurs were doing, but I just remember it seemed like it was interesting and cool. And my good friend growing up, his family was the family behind Atari. so we would get to play with Atari games before they were on the market. So I remember those kinds of things. It's pretty cool to be able to play video games before everyone else can play them, right?
2:47John Adler:So I think those are the things as a kid that I noticed about technology and entrepreneurship.
2:51Trip Adler:So I remember one of my earlier memories, I remember being 10 or 11. So I was still young enough to sit on a jungle gym. And I remember being at the top of a jungle gym and thinking to myself that I was gonna start a business building PCs from scratch to make money. um i don't know if you like did you ever have a moment like that where you had these dreams of
3:08John Adler:starting a company you know not like super consciously i remember somebody like asking me what i want to do and i said i wanted to like start and run a business i think it wasn't really until my early 20s that i really figured out that's what i want to do do you remember when
3:23Trip Adler:he was a little kid do you remember what he said he wanted to be when he grew up hell no no i didn't know what he was going to do so i mean no i don't know i just was hoping you'd be employed.
3:34John Adler:But like, I was a really good student. I mean, I did really well in school and ended up going to Harvard. And once I went to college, I was like, I thought I was going to be a doctor. I thought I was going to be an investment banker.
3:43Trip Adler:In his graduating class from college, a lot of the technology-minded students at the time were all pivoting towards finance. They were going to New York and trying to become investment bankers, which I think from many technically mining people is a waste of a lifetime, but he was bit by the bug. And so between his junior and senior year, he went to work in New York City for Bank of America as an intern and he hated it. It was one of the happiest things I've ever heard in my life. But then I said, what the hell are you going to do? And you're otherwise you're unemployable. and finally got bit by the entrepreneur bug.
4:26John Adler:Yeah, so I was at Harvard and I saw a sign on the wall for the Harvard Entrepreneurial Contest and I just had this idea, it was kind of like Uber and I submitted the idea to the contest and ended up being a finalist and that kind of just got me going.
4:40Trip Adler:Was it a goal of yours back then to start a company or was it literally just that was the moment when you saw the sign?
4:46John Adler:No, I think it was percolating for a while. I mean, I was at Harvard in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg and he launched Facebook in our class. So I watched his journey. I mean, to give you a sense, like my freshman roommate was Facebook user number four. He was like in the first group that got emailed about Facebook. So I watched, you know, Zuck building Facebook. And then, you know, maybe this sign for the Harvard Entrepreneur Contest was just sort of like the next signal. So I think it was like a lot of things kind of building on top of each other.
5:10Trip Adler:And how'd you meet your co-founder? Yeah.
5:11John Adler:So I had this idea and then I was like, you know, I needed a co-founder. So I emailed the entire Harvard computer science list and just said, I have an idea for a company that's going going to be bigger than Google? Who wants to work together? And I actually got a ton of responses. I got like 20 responses. But one of them, the person just responded with like a 20-page analysis of the idea. And that person was Jared Friedman, who became my co-founder, who's now a partner at Y Combinator. And then we just started talking startups. And yeah, I remember we would meet up in like the Harvard dining halls like once or twice a week and just talk startups.
5:44John Adler:And we just kind of got going, working together.
5:46Trip Adler:Did you get any responses to that email, like kind of stop spamming me or any kind of interesting responses?
5:52John Adler:I remember there's a lot of interest. Like, yeah, I remember it being a very positive response. But Jared was the only one who like really sort of like took the ideas further and challenged the ideas. So we just started kind of like getting along on that level.
6:05Trip Adler:Was this after Facebook had really started taking off? And so a lot of people started getting interest?
6:10John Adler:It might have been related to Facebook because that had a lot of like buzz at Harvard at the time, especially in the whole computer science department. But yeah, so Mark launched that when we were sophomores. And then I sent that email out when I was a senior. So a couple of years later.
6:23Trip Adler:And so you first had this idea that was kind of an Uber idea. And I know you went through a few different ideas, but tell me the story of the Scribd idea.
6:29John Adler:Yeah, so I met Jared. And then what Jared said to me was that, you know, he wanted to start a company, but he was only going to do it if we applied to Y Combinator. And I was like, oh, well, I looked it up and it described it as like a program. I was like, Jared, I don't want to start a company in a program. Like, I just want to start a company. but he said he would only work with me if he did Y Combinator. So I was like, okay, fine. We'll apply to Y Combinator. So we applied in, let's see, that was spring of 2006. So this was the second year of Y Combinator. We got invited out to interview with Paul Graham.
6:58John Adler:And yeah, we applied with our idea. It was kind of like this, like at this point, like a transportation super app. It was going to be like a little bit of Uber and a little bit of like, you know, Google Maps for transportation, kind of all combined together. And we pitched the idea to Paul Graham. And then Paul's just like, yeah, that's a really bad idea. Do you guys have any other ideas? And there's another idea that I come up with like a week before, which is basically to do like a Craigslist type of model, but for colleges. So we pitched that to PG and PG just said, that's an amazing idea. I'll fund that idea.
7:26John Adler:So we basically just pivoted right then. We called it WhoList for Harvard University List. And we launched it at Harvard. We had like some moderate success, but nothing really. And then from there, we just started pivoting. And we just started trying like one idea after another, probably spent like a year and just kind of like rapid pivot mode. And then eventually land on scribbed and then it kind of went from there.
7:45Trip Adler:Tripp and I had a series of discussions when he was at Harvard and he kind of wanted to do a startup of some sort and I don't think he really knew what it was going to be about. And while we were driving back and forth, we'd like to surf on the coast. We had a discussion about solving my own problem, which was to make medical communication more seamless and effortless. And he took another pivot to the idea that they would now allow people to share documents anywhere. And that became the heartbeat of Scribd then for a long time.
8:23John Adler:Yeah, so the original tagline was put your docs online. We would just allow anyone to take a PDF, a Word doc, a PowerPoint, upload it to the web. we would embed it in a webpage using Flash. And then we would get an audience for that. So people would land on it through SEO. Or we had a homepage. People could vote the top documents up and down, kind of like Reddit style. But yeah, that was the initial idea. Just take a document, upload it to the web, and let the world see it. At the time, YouTube had launched shortly before then. I mean, it was launched and acquired by Google shortly before then.
8:54John Adler:We described it often as YouTube for documents, just a way to share your documents with the world. So it had some YouTube-like growth dynamics, which I think helped to get started.
9:04Trip Adler:Scripps in his early days was in my living room. Tripp and his buddies, you know, they would poach off our Wi-Fi and there was never any Coke in the refrigerator because they were drinking it like nonstop. And big challenge was supply the juice with enough chips or whatever they were eating. They were, where were they living? Tripp was living at home at that time. Where was Jared? I don't know where they were living. It was quintessential, you know, young kid startup.
9:30John Adler:And we had a really momentous launch. We got like a lot of traction. I mean, at the time, you know, like we had probably one of the first good stories of like an app launching and just getting a lot of traction on day one because we just got a huge number of traffic coming in. And then that really quickly started a viral loop where like the traffic would come in. Some of that would upload their own content. Those uploaders would then bring in more traffic and we got this viral loop going. So it was like pretty clear just from like this momentous start that we were onto something.
9:56Trip Adler:So I remember that super clearly because we were in YC, the batch after you. We had just moved to the Y Scraper. And I remember everyone's talking about you guys, about your crazy viral loop, about growth just absolutely taking off. And I remember going up to your apartment and you're, you know, I think you're showing me some graphs of like things that were really working. Tell me a little bit about kind of how it felt to have really hit this viral loop.
10:16John Adler:Yeah, it was really like life changing moment, right? Because we went from having no investors want to talk to us. I mean, I remember we got introduced to a bunch of the top VCs, like, you know, Sequoia and all those guys. And no one would even like take a meeting with us, right? They're just like, Oh, this, this idea is not a very, just not an interesting idea. And now all of a sudden, like, you know, I had my phone number on the website and my phone was just like ringing every hour was like an investor trying to invest in the company. So it was a very, like just big shift to go from like nobody caring about what you're doing to everyone caring about what you're doing.
10:48Um, and since we were young, I was only like, I don't know, 21 or 20 or 22
10:53John Adler:or something. I was pretty young. That's just a big change. So yeah, it was a big shift. And then from there, we were raising millions of dollars, hiring a team and all that kind of stuff.
11:02Trip Adler:Do you ever remember the first moment when you looked at the graphs and you just knew that things were working, kind of like that holy shit moment? Was it right after launch or when was that moment that you could really see everything was working? Well, I think there was a little bit of
11:15John Adler:a moment before launch because we noticed that we had worked really hard to get a few hundred documents on the site before we launched. And we noticed that the average document was getting one visitor per day from Google. And we're just like, well, if we're already getting 100 visitors a day, we haven't launched yet. What if we had like a million documents or 100 million documents? Then when we launched, we just had so much traffic and attention that it just was pretty obvious it was working.
11:40Trip Adler:Just look like the entrepreneurial dream come true. You know, after about half a year, he was moving to an office in San Francisco and these offices had all the kind of cool, funky things. You know, they were, you know, racing go-karts around the office building, had zip lines and crazy zany stuff that was going on among young 20-year-old startups in San Francisco at the time. And I just thought it looked like great fun, you know, and he was hitting it out of the park and having great fun while doing it, surrounded by good people. So I was, if anything, jealous of Tripp's success. Not that I didn't, I wished him all a great success in the world, but I just never had anything like that.
12:23Trip Adler:Interestingly, eventually, the hens came home the roost because those early years, which were magical and a lot of fun, eventually led to some difficult times. So I guess you always got to pay the piper in the end. No matter what your startup, everyone in startup life is going to face some hard times, even if it seems magical for part of your journey.
Read the full transcript
12:49John Adler:I mean, eventually, you know, that first trick kind of stopped working. We had to reinvent the company multiple times.
12:55Trip Adler:I remember when we were kind of struggling at Weebly and I wanted to get your advice. So we went to lunch and you're like, tell me what's going on, man. Seems like, you know, things aren't going that well. And I broke it down for you. and we were struggling with less growth than we were hoping for. And you told me, well, dude, things aren't that bad. Like, let me tell you the story about this moment we went through. So I'd love to kind of break into that. I remember you told me at one point revenue had kind of slowed. Kind of tell us that story. Tell the bad parts, the tough parts. Yeah. We'll be right back.
13:31Trip Adler:The pace of change today can be overwhelming. What's most important to pay attention to if you want to be creative, successful, innovative? I'm Bob Safian, host of Rapid Response. Rapid Response is a podcast that cuts through the noise, featuring candid conversations twice a week with top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. From the team behind the award-winning Masters of Scale podcast comes Rapid Response. Search wherever you get your podcasts to listen and subscribe. And now, back to the episode.
14:34John Adler:which is to launch something new. So we launched a pretty new product under a new brand called Float. It was meant to be connected to Scrib, a little different. We put way too much resources on it. We executed poorly. The product totally flopped. That led to just a morale crisis in the company. I remember half the team quitting in a pretty short period of time. It was like six months, half the team turned over, which is very heartbreaking to see that many people That's crazy. Quit your company in a short period of time. So I think that was a really tough, tough time.
15:08Trip Adler:And so you had this product launch that didn't go so well, like half the company turned over. I mean, what was that experience like? I know as a CEO, a lot of times you feel like the whole company rests on your shoulders.
15:21John Adler:Yeah, well, I remember having this moment when everything was going really badly. And I was looking around, I was like, well, this is a disaster. Who's going to fix this? Who's in charge here? And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm in charge. I need to fix this. And I think there was a moment where I really toughened up. I was like, okay, I got to figure this out.
15:38Trip Adler:Being a CEO is not a fun, cushy job, especially when you don't have anybody to shoulder to cry on. I don't think Trip shared all the tough times with me. I think we tend to, me too, I protect my own parents. And we all know that if you're going to do a startup, there's going to be a lot of tough times, a lot of suffering. But Tripp and I, we did kind of consult each other. He consulted with me a lot as I tried to counsel him through a difficult situation. So Tripp and I, we did talk about the challenges he was facing. And I hope I gave him some good advice along the way. If anything, you just need a shoulder to cry on sometime.
16:21Trip Adler:And so I served that function a little bit. It is true, I think the higher you go, there's fewer shoulders available to you to cry on. And so at that point, he had his father. I mean, a lot of people go through that kind of thing and give up. And certainly it's intensely stressful. What do you think kind of got you through that perspective of like, I'm going to fix it versus, you know, I want to give up?
16:44John Adler:I don't know. I just think I'm just kind of wired that way. I just don't really give up on really kind of anything. I think I've been wired that way for like, you know, most of my life. Just I'm kind of wired to keep sticking with things and just really determined to stick things out and see them succeed. But I think the way we responded to that was we just sort of got back to the core business. We just started focusing on the business model and profitability. And then we realized the subscription model was really the best thing working for us. So that's when we started talking to book publishers, and we pioneered the subscription model for books.
17:17John Adler:And then we made it so you can, for$9.99 a month, you can get unlimited books with your script membership. I think that was kind of like maybe the second major moment when the company was reinvented, which kind of took revenue and profitability and took it as a business up to the next level. And subscriptions just sort of like took off very easily. And it just sort of grew organically over time.
17:35Trip Adler:I remember talking to you around then too, and your growth was rapidly accelerating. You're growing the team. I mean, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that was like.
17:42John Adler:Yeah, so I think like, you know, we got to a point, yeah, maybe around like 2015 or so. I think things were going pretty well in that we had, you know, we had this whole like organic growth funnel built out with the document side of the business. We had the subscription side built out with having all these book deals. We connected these two things together really well. So I think growth those years was probably growing 50 % per year or so, which is pretty good because we're at a pretty big scale at that point, probably pushing up 100 million in revenue. We tend to operate around breakeven. Maybe we're a little profitable, maybe some years a little less profitable, but just doing it around breakeven is a good way to think about it.
18:18John Adler:And yeah, we just kept building the business. At that point, it was probably some of the easier years. We kept adding new books. We kept adding new content types, like launching things like audiobooks. We started going directly to authors and building out an original content business. But overall, I think we did a pretty good job and got the company above$200 million in revenue, highly profitable, with kind of like the steady growth curve behind it. You know, those years, I think a lot of the trouble those years was probably like putting in like a management layers in the company and, you know, getting it kind of operating as a real kind of scale company.
18:50John Adler:So I made a lot of mistakes in terms of just like, you know, getting the right managers in place and getting the culture ready to operate at that kind of like higher level of scale.
18:58Trip Adler:How did it feel to be back on the rocket ship personally? Like after you had a couple, you know, a tough couple of years and all of a sudden, you know, some people left, but you stuck around. Like what was that, you know, what's that feeling like?
19:07John Adler:I mean, it felt good, but like the nature of my personality is I just move on to the next thing pretty quick. You know, as soon as like, as soon as I get a win, I'm already on to building the next thing. So, um, yeah, I mean, it obviously feels great whenever you have a win, but I, you know, I'm one of those people that's just always kind of pushing for the next level. And I'm always kind of, you know, as I work, I'm living in the future and trying to get to that next step.
19:27Trip Adler:And yeah, you said it was 17 years all in?
19:29John Adler:17 years at Scribd.
19:30Trip Adler:Yeah, that was like half my life at the time. 17 years. I mean, I know for me personally, you know, 10 years felt like a long time, you know, and then I ended up being at Weebly for 14 years all in. How did you know? I mean, did you start thinking like, you know, I may be ready to go do something else? Like, how did you decide to move on?
19:46John Adler:Yeah, I mean, I think over time, there's always this thought of like, well, I can start this idea. I can start, you know, I had a perfectly built plan for Uber. I was just like five years too early. So there's a lot of good ideas I was always thinking about. But in general, I was always pretty excited what we're doing at Scribd. And we're always working on new novel things. So it never, even though it was, you know, one job for 17 years, it really felt like a new job every few months. So I think it was overall just a really good, rewarding learning experience.
20:13Trip Adler:so i think you know there's an interesting parallel i think both you and your dad were at your companies for a really long time over 17 years do you think there's any kind of parallels there with both you sticking through something for a really long time oh i think we're both
20:28John Adler:the kinds of people who like build things and stick things out he's now started a total of three companies one that went public one that sold one that's kind of still going and yeah i mean he sticks them out for a long long period of time so i probably get it from him so if you're wondering where I get it from, you should probably ask him because I probably got it from him.
20:45Trip Adler:Well, I think he has, if I do say so, some of me in him. He's a pretty focused person and has the capacity to stay on task for a long period of time, you know, hammering away to win. I think he's clearly ambitious. He's quite reticent to show that ambition to the family, but it's clear as day that he is.
21:10John Adler:I just go for things. I stick with it. I think I've been that way my whole life. I was like that with Scribd. I'm sure I'll be like that with my companies going forward.
21:17Trip Adler:Yeah, I guess that's a good segue. You're starting a new company. Can you tell us about your new company?
21:22John Adler:Yeah, so recently started Created by Humans. We are a startup that is aiming to solve how copyright and AI work together. It has been a really complex issue. A lot of people are grappling with it. And we thought that we could jump in as a startup and help make a difference.
21:38Trip Adler:So how'd you come up with the idea?
21:40John Adler:So what we're doing is we are building a marketplace for AI rights. So the way we can solve this copyright problem is we basically clear the rights for a large number of works and just make it really easy for AI companies to access the copyright works they need for AI purposes. And we're starting specifically with books here. We want to solve this for books and then we're going to expand to other kinds of content. And it came up with the idea because I had for my last company, all these contacts in the book industry, in the AI industry, and I saw everybody suing each other and fighting. And I just really wanted to solve this problem.
22:11John Adler:So we're building a marketplace and we're just trying to make AI licensing plug and play for everyone involved. So authors, they sign up, they verify their identity just to make sure we know we're dealing with a real author. They then select the books they want to license. They select the different AI rights they want to license. They sign a licensing agreement, which licenses the books to Created by Humans. And then we can then in turn go out and strike deals where we license these books out to AI companies and we just make it plug and play for AI companies where they can just sign up, get the data they need, pay for it really easily, and we get that money back to authors.
22:43John Adler:We handle all the complexity around that. So yeah, I just felt like it's something I had to do. So I jumped in and I've been working on it. It's been going great.
22:49Trip Adler:Yeah, tell us a little bit more how it's been going so far.
22:52John Adler:Starting a new company as a second time founder is actually a pretty enjoyable experience. It's also just a lot easier to get started these days. There's just so much more infrastructure for getting a company going. that, yeah, got started about a year ago and just really kind of got going really fast. We've raised about$12 million to date, team of about 10 full-time employees. We've got a live product with authors signing up and licensing their works, and that's growing really nicely. We've got a number of AI deals in the works. So yeah, we just have really great momentum and it's been just a great, great start and a fun experience.
23:24Trip Adler:So you mentioned it's your, you know, the second time. What's changed for you the second time around?
23:28John Adler:Yeah, I mean, after 17 years, I just, I had this new vision and it was just like Scribd wasn't the place to do it anymore. And now I'm just doing it as a new company. And I think there's pros and cons doing it as a new company. It's a little sad to not have the scale of having a billion annual users and all that kind of stuff. But there's a lot of benefits of starting from scratch. I'm really enjoying having the clean slate and just having the creative reset is really nice. Because when you're running one company for a long time, there's just a lot of constraints in place that are really kind of hard to let go of.
24:01John Adler:And when you can start from scratch, I mean, just have a full blank sheet of paper to work with. And yeah, there's times to build something for a long time. There's times to start over.
24:08Trip Adler:So, I mean, I can only speak from personal experience. You know, I know you kind of roll off one company. There's for sure this real decompression moment where you have to catch your breath and kind of recover in a lot of ways. How was that for you? And when did you know it was the right time for you to start another company? Or did you just roll right into the second one?
24:24John Adler:Yeah, I rolled pretty quickly. I was out of Scribd and I just, they couldn't get this idea out of my head so I went right into it so I really took about two months off and I think was the right it was the right call you know I mean Paul Graham was really trying to get me take a longer break but I was just I was just ready to go that's awesome so you said 17 years you know
24:45Trip Adler:this might be the start of another 17 year journey I mean paint the picture for me if everything goes amazing in 17 years was created by humans look like
24:53John Adler:well I hope that this whole issue of copyright and AI is is solved I think that it won't be such a contentious issue. And I think we'll play a key role in solving it. I mean, even bigger than that, I mean, our mission is to protect and preserve human creativity in the AI era and make it thrive in the AI era. And I think like, hopefully we're achieving that mission. Yeah. I mean, there's like a lot of big questions with AI right now of like, you know, what are humans going to do? Will humans be creative? Will AI just do all the creative work for us? And I mean, we're kind of horrified by that future.
25:22John Adler:We want to make sure that humans still are creating things and we want to create a business model that perpetuates human creativity. So I just, I saw this huge problem and I felt like I was kind of the right person to solve it. You know, he's caught between tectonic plates here, you know, human creators making the essence
25:41Trip Adler:of humanity and AI bots just trying to suck it all up and trying to replace the humans. So it's a tectonic battle and I hope he's the winner in it, but I have to admit the The forces that he's dealing with are as large as they get in the world today. And even we never talked ever really about how he was going to succeed. He did that out of sheer ambition. So no one kicked his ass to do it. He just wanted to do it. I think he wanted to win.
26:18Trip Adler:This podcast is brought to you by Leap Forward Ventures, an investor in early stage startups. If you like the show, the number one thing you'll want to do is sign up to get notified when we release new episodes. That includes transcripts and key takeaways from each story. Head to leapforward.fm to sign up. I'd also love to hear your feedback on the episode and who you want to hear from next. Just shoot us a text at 415-915-3050 to get in touch. This episode was produced by Theo Balcom and Kim Naderfein-Petersa. Craig Ellie is our engineer.
26:57Trip Adler:I'm David Rasenko, and this is the Leap Forward podcast. See you next episode.
From the publisher
Scribd took off fast - then hit a wall that nearly broke the company. In this episode, Trip Adler tells the story of building the “Netflix for books,” only to face the moment every founder dreads: when everything comes tumbling down, as growth stalled and much of the team walked away. But while others quit, Trip stayed - spending years rebuilding the company and eventually growing it to more than $300 million in revenue.
We also talked to his dad, John Adler - an entrepreneur himself - about the question at the heart of it all: how do you decide if a company is still worth fighting for? Trip’s journey, from Scribd’s hard earned success to starting Created by Humans, shows that sometimes making it simply comes down to not giving up.