| Richard Price | |
| Nationality: | British |
| Alma Mater: | St Catherine's College, Oxford |
| Occupation: | Entrepreneur, business executive |
| Known For: | Founder and CEO, Academia.edu |
| Website: | oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice |
Richard Price is a British entrepreneur and the founder of Academia.edu, a for-profit academic social network and open-access publishing website.[1] [2]
Price was born and raised in England and attended the University of Oxford, studying Philosophy, politics and economics at St. Catherine's College, continuing with a BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy.[1] [3] Price was awarded a prize fellowship of All Souls College in 2004.[4] During his time at Oxford, Price started "Richard's Banana Bakery", a banana cake delivery service for cafes before starting "Dashing Lunches", which sold sandwiches to consumers directly. He also founded LiveOut, a database of student rental properties in Oxford. In 2006, he created a Facebook application that allowed people to rate their friends' photos, which was Facebook's top app for nine months.[5]
After graduating from Oxford, Price became frustrated with the time it took to get his work peer-reviewed and published and decided to create a platform in which academics could publish, peer review, and distribute their work. In 2007, Price raised $600,000 from London-based[6] venture capitalists and moved to San Francisco, California, where he officially launched Academia.edu in September 2008.[7] [8] [9] In 2014, the Academia.edu website had over 10 million registered users who uploaded more than 2.9 million papers. By 2016, the company had raised $17.7 million in funding.[10] [11]