Company story

Scripped, Inc. was the company behind Scripped.com, the first-ever internet-based screenwriting platform. It was a small, "scrappy" company (as described by co-founder Ryan Buckley in an article for Inc.), that made a strong effort to enter the freelancer marketplace industry in the field of screenwriting in an era when the internet economy was just bouncing back from the dot-com bubble.

The original concept

The original goal, as described by Buckley in the same interview, was to create a free, cloud-based (though that term was still brand new) screenwriting solution that would allow writers to create and promote their content through one unified service. The Scripped, Inc. team had an ambitious plan to go from a simple word processing service with features tailored to screenwriters to a full-service nexus for screenwriters to get their content seen, though that dream would only be partially realized before the service suffered a devastating technical failure.

Co-founding of Scripped

As of 2019, Crunchbase, a business information platform of private and public companies, still has a profile for Scripped Inc. According to Crunchbase, Scripped Inc was founded on July 7, 2007 by Ryan Buckley, Sunil Rajaman, and Zachary Freer. Crunchbase lists the headquarters of the company in the San Francisco Bay Area; however, as of December 2019, the California Secretary of State no longer has corporate documents related to Scripped Inc. 

As of December 2019, Scripped Inc still has a profile on Bloomberg. The Bloomberg profile highlights: 

• Sunil Rajaraman as CEO and Co-founder, 
• Ryan Buckley as Chief Everything Else Officer, and
• Zachary Freer as Director of Industry and Product Design.

The Bloomberg profile includes a San Francisco address and a link to the now-defunct Scripped.com.

A timeline history of Scripped's early years

When Scripped.com was still active, the about page on the site featured a timeline with a brief history of the first years of the company. The timeline can still be accessed through screen captures on the Internet Archive. Highlights from the timeline include:

• August 15, 2006: Ryan Buckley received a text from Sunil Rajaraman saying, “I have THE idea that will make us rich.”
• September 2, 2006: Sunil began attending UCLA while Ryan attended Harvard.
• July 7, 2007: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP helped Ryan and Sunil establish Scripped, Inc., a Delaware Corporation headquartered at Sunil's parents' house. As of December 2019, records of the company’s registration are no longer featured by the Delaware Secretary of State.
• November 22, 2007: The first investment capital came into Scripped. An uncle, a stepmom, and a father become the first holders of Scripped stock.
• January 2, 2008: Private beta ended and public beta began. The first customers started writing scripts using Scripped.
• March 3, 2008: Scripped reached its first 1,000 registrations.
• June 1, 2008: Sunil received an MBA from UCLA.
• July 1, 2008: Josh Smith started on retainer to build more Scripped features including “Creative Support.” Smith would eventually become the CTO of the company.
• March 10, 2009: Scripped received financing from its first angel investor.
• June 6, 2009: The founding team reunited when Ryan received two Master's degrees and moved back to California.
• August 28, 2009: Scripped released its first real paid services: contests and Pro subscriptions.
• February 22, 2010: Scripped and Zhura officially merged and Scripped kept its name.
• March 29, 2010: A new Scripped.com relaunched with 65,000 screenwriters.

Screenwriting services provided by Scripped

Though the company lacked significant resources and a technical expert, it was actually fairly successful at working toward its goal. Despite struggling with bugs and finding the financing to pay their freelance developers, they launched a number of expansions to their services and had several more road mapped. 

Among the advantages they offered included:

• communities for writers to join, 
• a collaborative writing and editing experience, 
• a registration vault where intellectual property could be protected, and 
• a marketplace for producers, directors, or even other screenwriters to seek content or assistance from the Scripped writers. 

They also utilized a variety of marketing tactics including contests to generate enthusiasm and celebrity advocates to increase interest and trust in their service despite ongoing and mounting technical challenges. 

Merge with Zhura

According to a March 2010 press release from TechCrunch, Scripped merged successfully with its competitor, Zhura Corp. The merger doubled the community of registered screenwriters on Scripped to over 60,000.

Rajaraman remained the CEO after the merger with Zhura 

The financial terms of the merger were not disclosed to the public, but the press release on TechCrunch quoted Scripped saying the deal was in the “seven-figure range.” Co-founder Sunil Rajaraman remained the CEO of the company after the merger. Keith Richman, the CEO of Breka Media, and Ashwin Navin, the co-founder and former President of BitTorrent joined Rajaraman’s Board of Advisors.

Downfall of Scripped

Unfortunately, the company was virtually wiped out when its servers failed in 2015 and all the writers' saved content and account information was lost. The founders managed to pivot their expertise in the online freelance writing marketplace business into Scripted, Inc. a similarly named company that instead focused on marketing content services.

In a final open letter to users featured on Scripped.com, the Scripped team stated,

“As you may be aware, Scripped.com has been dealing with mounting technical problems and outdated technology. We have been planning to shut down for some time, but we had envisioned a much more graceful transition than what has occurred.  Due to a serious technical failure Scripped has little choice but to shut its doors effective immediately. We want to thank our loyal writers who have used the service. 

Due to a simultaneous malfunction in our backup services and primary servers, the unthinkable has happened and all recent script content has been lost. We sincerely apologize for this. If you did not download a backup copy of your screenplay, then we regret to inform you that it no longer exists.”