14 DAY TRIAL // Scribd, the popular document sharing site has announced a new round of funding, raising $13 million from a number of institutional investors. This is the company's third funding round and it plans to use the money to fund growth, by hiring several new people, especially in the engineering department.
Scribd enables users to upload and share documents with other users or make them completely public, the equivalent of Flickr or YouTube for documents.
MLC Investments and SVB Capital led the round with existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group also participating.
It's last funding round closed a couple of years ago, it raised $9 million in December 2008. Since launch, in 2007, it raised $26 million, including the latest investment.
"2011 is going to be a milestone year for us," Scribd CEO and co-founder Trip Adler said in a statement.
"As the world rapidly changes the way it reads content on the web, we are rapidly preparing to change the way we deliver what they read," he added.
The company plans to grow rapidly in the coming year, expanding especially in the mobile space. It's current product line up will also receive an update, though there were no specific details.
The plan is to make every document on the site available on as many devices as possible, enabling users to read while commuting, at home and everywhere in between.
"Smartphones are the next computer for billions of consumers, and Scribd’s aggressive expansion plans in the mobile space could bring social reading into the hands of every one of those users," SVB Capital managing director Sulu Mamdani said.
"Product growth, combined with the site’s already impressive advertising revenue, presents enormous opportunity in the year ahead," he added.
Scribd boasts 60 million unique visitors each month after a very good period for growth when the company saw an increase in visitors of 15 percent, month over month.