Quotes from Jon Oringer

I love meeting contributors and hearing how we inspire them to create art. I'm also proud of creating hundreds of jobs.

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.

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.

We believe PremiumBeat will accelerate our mission to make licensable music accessible to every creator.

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.

Offset and Skillfeed are examples of products launched in 2013 that have expanded our opportunity with both large enterprises and across new content types.

Many entrepreneurs think that cash is the ultimate solution to all of their problems: the one thing standing between them and their dreams.

There aren't enough people out there that are becoming experts in technology as technology moves.

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.

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.

The best thing is to go public only when you're absolutely sure that's the right move for the company. And in order to make sure that is the case, you need to have as much control over the company as possible, which means not giving up control early on.

I think, as an entrepreneur, you have to see the unlimited amount of potential but concentrate on your day and just keep building.

I believe anything has to be possible. You have to be able to face any problem that comes along and unravel it into a solution.

It turned out it was really easy to create commercial stock footage.

I opened up Shutterstock to the whole world. I created a contributor community that anyone could give stock photography a shot.

Offset is helping to expand our relationship with large enterprises and serve a broader set of imaging.

In 2013, we opened our first international office in London and established a European hub in Berlin.

Many entrepreneurs have shifted their focus to pursuing VC funding as a primary strategic priority instead of concentrating on generating value for their users. This is worrisome because raising capital alone is misleading as a benchmark for success.

While the scale of our library is certainly attractive to our users, equally important is the quality of the content we provide and our state-of-the-art processing operation that vets every single piece of content that's submitted to ensure only the most suitable content is included.

Business is a string of seemingly impossible problems looking for solutions. Each problem you solve creates a new barrier to entry for your next competitor.

I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person.

The problem with taking venture capital is if you take $5m from someone, it may feel great; you may feel like they're validating your business model. But they're giving $5m out to 20 different people, hoping one of them will be a hit. They don't really care if it's you.

We realized we had high-volume marketplace as a platform. Anyone can come in and buy with a subscription.

It's typical for video customers to often use licensed music - whether a soundtrack, background music, or sound effects - to complement their video projects.