Jared Friedman is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at Y Combinator, where he invests in and mentors early-stage startups across multiple sectors. He has reviewed over 12,000 YC applications and advised more than 20 YC unicorns since joining in 2015.

Jared studied Computer Science at Harvard but dropped out in 2007 to co-found Scribd with his roommates, serving as CTO and scaling it to become one of the top 100 websites globally. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates and a pioneering AI company before founding Scribd.

Jared was an early angel investor in successful companies like Instacart, Parse (acquired by Facebook), and Creative Market. He patented Scribd's HTML5-based document reader and led the platform's migration from Flash to HTML5.

Scribd was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and raised over 26 million dollars, growing to serve over 80 million users. As a YC Partner since 2015, Jared focuses on software startups and has expanded YC's involvement in biotech and hard-tech sectors.

Scribd revolutionized digital publishing by becoming a top 100 web property with millions of documents and users worldwide. At YC, Jared has helped shape the startup ecosystem by mentoring hundreds of companies and contributing to YC's portfolio valued at over 600 billion dollars.