Jared Friedman
Managing Director, Software at Y Combinator
Jared Friedman is Managing Director, Software and a General Partner at Y Combinator, where he has been a full-time partner since 2015. He co-founded Scribd in 2005 with Trip Adler and Tikhon Bernstam and was its CTO, leading its 2010 move from Flash to HTML5. YC says he has advised more than 20 of its unicorns, including Scale AI, Replit and Supabase.
- Venture capital
- Startups
- Hard tech
Y Combinator
Scribd
- Now
- Managing Director, Software and General Partner, Y Combinator1
- Co-founded
- Scribd, 20053
- Studied
- Computer science and economics, Harvard10
- Advised
- More than 20 YC unicorns1
In their words
Helping people start startups at YC.
10
Experience
- Managing Director, Software and General Partnernow
YC says the companies he has worked with are worth a combined $103 billion, and lists Scale AI, Vanta, Substack, Replit and Supabase among the unicorns he has advised.1
- Managing Director, Software and Group Partner2024
His title on YC's blog in April 2024, before he was listed as a General Partner.8
- Partner2015
Joined as a full-time partner in October 2015, announced by Sam Altman, after investing in more than 30 YC companies.2
- Angel investorJan 2007 – May 2015
Invested in companies including Cruise, Instacart, Ironclad and Rappi.10
- Co-founder and CTOSep 2005 – Jun 2015
Co-founded the document-sharing service, which went through YC in Summer 2006 and reached 80 million users.3
- Summer associate10Jun – Aug 2005
- Member of the technical staffJun – Aug 2004
A summer of research in artificial intelligence.10
Education
Recognition
Milestones
- Spends a summer doing AI research at Cycorp10
- Co-founds Scribd with Trip Adler and Tikhon Bernstam3
- Scribd joins Y Combinator's Summer 2006 batch4
- Scribd raises $3.5 million from Redpoint6
- Named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer10
- Announces Scribd is scrapping Flash and moving its documents to HTML55
- Granted a US patent for Scribd's HTML5 document reader10
- Takes a sabbatical from Scribd3
- Joins Y Combinator as a full-time partner2
- Publishes YC's guide to spinning university research out into a startup7
- Publishes "Hard Tech Companies, Then and Now" on YC's blog8
- Lightcone, the YC podcast he co-hosts, interviews Box CEO Aaron Levie9
- Writes YC's post on BillionToOne going public7