In the early days, start-ups make the main mistake of hiring people to do the work that they could do themselves. Jon Oringer More Quotes by Jon Oringer More Quotes From Jon Oringer 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. Jon Oringer great you business people You can't be afraid of the problem. Don't be afraid of failure; don't be afraid to make mistakes. Make sure you learn from each step; iterate, and stay as efficient as possible without being paralyzed by a difficult situation. Jon Oringer mistakes step you failure 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. Jon Oringer talent technology science school 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. Jon Oringer rest start you way 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. Jon Oringer face you problem believe Shutterstock has the tech ethos. Rex has the relationships, packaging, and merchandising know-how. Jon Oringer relationships merchandising packaging 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. Jon Oringer job you leader people 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. Jon Oringer without company i-believe believe At around 50 employees, you get to the point where you can't see what's going on all the time. So you start to have weekly check-ins, and you have days that go by without knowing exactly what's going on. Jon Oringer employees start you time 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. Jon Oringer value alone focus success 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. Jon Oringer feel time sometimes people 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. Jon Oringer problems looking you business We realized we had high-volume marketplace as a platform. Anyone can come in and buy with a subscription. Jon Oringer platform realized buy come To make a computer do something that would take a human a long period of time was always interesting. Jon Oringer always time long interesting 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. Jon Oringer single business success past I opened up Shutterstock to the whole world. I created a contributor community that anyone could give stock photography a shot. Jon Oringer give community photography world 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. Jon Oringer control best you giving I hadn't really worked in an office before Shutterstock, so I didn't have the experience of building a culture, nor did I understand how important that is for attracting and retaining the best talent. Jon Oringer best talent experience culture I love meeting contributors and hearing how we inspire them to create art. I'm also proud of creating hundreds of jobs. Jon Oringer meeting proud love art There's tonnes of room for more people in the tech market, and there are lots of content gaps that have still not yet been tapped into. Jon Oringer content room more people
