LeWeb Paris (Video): Images Are Good Business, Says Shutterstock

Over a decade of its existence, US image marketplace Shutterstock has amassed a collection of 20 million images that it sells to media agencies, businesses and directly to consumers. Born from an investment of a few thousand dollars, it now competes with such long-established players as Getty Images and Corbis.

Our colleagues from Silicon France had a chance to chat with Jon Oringer, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Shutterstock, while he was visiting LeWeb 2012 in Paris last week.

Don’t tell me, show me

The platform created by Oringer is now used by 35,000 photographers, graphic designers and visual artists to sell their work. For some, Shutterstock is an easy way to earn pocket money, while for others it’s the primary source of income.

A different side of the platform is its search engine – with clever algorithms and tags to help customers find exactly what they are looking for.

In May, Shutterstock filed for a $115 million initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. That’s quite an achievement for a company that was essentially created by one man, from scratch. Shutterstock already has a tight grip on the image market, and now it plans to diversify into video. Below, you can see Oringer talk about the challenges of the European market and the business model of the company.

LeWeb also hit London this year, and will be coming back in 2013, on June 5 and 6.

This video was first posted on Silicon France.

What do you know about Europe’s role in Tech history? Take our quiz!

Max Smolaks

Max 'Beast from the East' Smolaks covers open source, public sector, startups and technology of the future at TechWeekEurope. If you find him looking lost on the streets of London, feed him coffee and sugar.

Recent Posts

UK’s CMA Readies Cloud Sector “Behavioural” Remedies – Report

Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector

6 hours ago

Former Policy Boss At X Nick Pickles, Joins Sam Altman Venture

Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…

8 hours ago

Bitcoin Rises Above $96,000 Amid Trump Optimism

Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…

10 hours ago

FTX Co-Founder Gary Wang Spared Prison

Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…

11 hours ago