In high school, I used to teach guitar and fix computers by the hour. I was looking for some way to make some cash, so I actually learned how to play guitar in order to try to teach it.
Shutterstock has evolved from an image-based marketplace for small businesses to a much broader platform, with a large and expanding addressable market opportunity.
Shutterstock has the tech ethos. Rex has the relationships, packaging, and merchandising know-how.
There aren't enough people out there that are becoming experts in technology as technology moves.
Editorial imagery licensing includes celebrity, entertainment, sports, and news images that capture what is happening in the world around us.
When a user signs up for Skillfeed, they get unlimited access to thousands of video courses and creative and technical skills, all as a part of one inexpensive monthly subscription. Instructors from around the world can apply to have their course from Skillfeed and earn money based on how much their courses are viewed.
I hear so many startups talking about how they can raise VC instead of questioning whether they need it in the first place.
At around 50 employees, you get to the point where you can't see what's going on all the time. So you start to have weekly check-ins, and you have days that go by without knowing exactly what's going on.
Equally important to having the right content is providing the proper tools for the users so they can quickly find the images and videos they need.
We sell to businesses who sell other stuff, so we're just going to concentrate on doing that.
As we continue to grow, the question is, how do you keep the company as innovative as it was 15 employees ago?
Working with limited resources is an excellent way to hone skills that will serve you well for the rest of your career. You will prioritize profitability from the start.
I started Shutterstock without any outside funding; I believe in creating a lean startup. By not taking outside investors early, I was forced to use every dollar I had as efficiently as possible. And I was able to keep a large part of the company.
Evolution has been the key tenet of success over the past 13 years, and we have transformed from a single subscription e-commerce image business into a company with a diversified portfolio of content offerings, servicing the needs of businesses of all types and sizes globally.
I've never been very flashy or high-profile.
I figured managing people was obvious - I'd tell someone what they needed to do and they'd do what I wanted. It turns out that's not the case. It was frustrating at first.
As I started college, I started to build software products that I could sell to people over the Web.
I was trying to create products to complement the pop-up blocker. All these people were giving me their credit cards. I figured I could sell them something else.
I would still rather be in Silicon Alley. I like the West Coast also, but it's sort of fragmented. You have companies in downtown San Francisco, companies in Mountain View, and people are driving between them all. It's kind of nice in New York to just jump in a cab and reach another company so easily.
Offset is helping to expand our relationship with large enterprises and serve a broader set of imaging.
