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
We recognized early on that media consumption was evolving and customers were looking for moving images to include as part of their advertising campaigns, website designs and corporate presentations.
We have a lot of customers in Japan, but they don't quite get the local content that they always need, so we want to encourage all of our product teams to start thinking globally.
The decisions you make affect a lot of people. You have investors, employees, and customers who all rely on you. Being a leader is a 24-hour-a-day job.
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.
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.
Shutterstock's ability to cultivate a healthy and expanding marketplace for both customers and contributors remains a key competitive advantage and a crucial component of our sustained growth.
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.
It's typical for video customers to often use licensed music - whether a soundtrack, background music, or sound effects - to complement their video projects.
I think, as an entrepreneur, you have to see the unlimited amount of potential but concentrate on your day and just keep building.
Just as we are enhancing the customer side of our marketplace, we are also looking for ways to increase our contributor expense.
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.
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.
Many entrepreneurs think that cash is the ultimate solution to all of their problems: the one thing standing between them and their dreams.
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.