Was I going to start companies outside of Shutterstock or inside? Going public kind of meant I was going to start them inside, and I kind of thought this through and decided that if I was going to do that, I was going to continue to operate Shutterstock like it was an incubator of startups.
When I started Shutterstock, I tried to get people access to big events. It's very hard to keep up, to publish them quick, and to get the right photographers.
I opened up Shutterstock to the whole world. I created a contributor community that anyone could give stock photography a shot.
The growing demand for content across our platform delivers bigger payouts to our contributor base and encourages them to upload fresh content to Shutterstock, further facilitating the network effect of our business.
Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time.
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.
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.
We continually hear from our engaged customer base that Shutterstock's content is a true differentiator, given not only the size of the library but also the quality and diversity of the images we offer.
At Shutterstock, we've been offering tutorials to customers and contributors on our blog for many years. Our audience already viewed us as thought leaders on the latest digital and creative skills; we felt it so natural for us to launch Skillfeed, which is an online marketplace for professional learning.
