The Story Behind a Radical New Idea: A Social Network for Academia
Richard Price, the founder of Academia.edu, a social network for academic researchers, recently raised $11.1 million in a Series B funding round. But there’s a lot more to his story.
Business Lessons Before Academia.edu
Price is a serial entrepreneur. As a doctoral student in philosophy at Oxford, he started Richard’s Banana Bakery to supply banana cakes to cafes. He would wake up at 5:30 AM to bake the cakes and deliver them before the morning rush, and buy ingredients in the evening. The hours were too long for the amount of money he was making. That’s how he learned low margin businesses were not for him.
He switched to making sandwiches and delivering them directly to clients for lunch. Dashing Lunches was born and it was much more profitable. His sandwiches were so good that customers took one look and bought them. Unsold inventory became his lunch and his mother’s lunch and…
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