Jon Oringer
Jon Oringer
Jon Oringer is an American programmer, photographer, and business executive best known as the founder and CEO of Shutterstock, a stock media and editing tools provider headquartered in New York City. Oringer started his career while a college student in the 1990s, when he invented "one of the Web’s first pop-up blockers." He went on to found about ten small startups that used a subscription method to sell "personal firewalls, accounting software, cookie blockers, trademark managers," and other small programs...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth2 May 1974
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
There aren't enough people out there that are becoming experts in technology as technology moves.
We look for the scrappy entrepreneur: the kind of person who will get things done without looking to spend money right away.
There is a lack of talent in technology, and we need to be encouraging kids in school to learn how to code. We need to encourage computer science as a major. We need to encourage entrepreneurism.
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.
To ensure we are meeting the demands of existing customers while also attracting new users, we remain focused on building cutting-edge technology and introducing new and innovative product offerings.
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.
We significantly increased our global presence in 2014. During the year, we expanded the number of languages in which we serve customers to a total of 20.
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.
We sell to businesses who sell other stuff, so we're just going to concentrate on doing that.
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.
Every time someone downloads a picture, the photographers get paid about 30% of what we charge.
As I started college, I started to build software products that I could sell to people over the Web.