I hear so many startups talking about how they can raise VC instead of questioning whether they need it in the first place.

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.

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

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.

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.

I've never been very flashy or high-profile.

Editorial imagery licensing includes celebrity, entertainment, sports, and news images that capture what is happening in the world around us.

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.

The best ways of marketing were email and banner advertising, but I needed images... and they were very expensive.

As I started college, I started to build software products that I could sell to people over the Web.

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.

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.

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

I met with several public company CEOs to learn about their experiences of going public and listened to as many earnings calls as I possibly could.

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.

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.

By investing in diverse asset types from SD video to HD video to 4K video, we can satisfy the video needs of a wide array of users.

Nobody is opposed to paying taxes; governments need to coordinate, work together and simplify the law.

We continually hear from our engaged customer base that Shutterstock's content is a true differentiator, given not only the size of the library but also the quality and diversity of the images we offer.

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.

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.

Shutterstock has the tech ethos. Rex has the relationships, packaging, and merchandising know-how.

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.

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.

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.

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

In the early days, start-ups make the main mistake of hiring people to do the work that they could do themselves.

I shot images of everything I could find over the course of a year. I would go all over the world and take pictures. In a day, I could easily take thousands.

I don't own a helicopter because I want someone to bring me places quickly. I own it because it's an incredible machine that I like to fly and learn about. I like the complexity of it.

I've little in common with the scene in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I'm a New Yorker.

All businesses need images to sell their products and services.

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.

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

Every time someone downloads a picture, the photographers get paid about 30% of what we charge.

I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.

Instagram is great for us because it's encouraging people to shoot more stuff. Some of those snappers will become professional, and they may choose to sell their photos through us.

Each time I went to create my website, I needed imagery. It was complicated to get, the process was expensive, I had to negotiate rights. I knew there had to be a better way.

To make a computer do something that would take a human a long period of time was always interesting.

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

Try to rally up as many people as you can with as much information as you can to try to get it to appear in front of the right people in the organization who are the decision-makers to greenlight the project.

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.

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.

On average, an e-commerce client who evolves into a premier enterprise client increases their annual spend by 10 times in that first year.

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.

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.

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

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

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 needed to make the buyer happy: I needed to provide a price point and sort of a model that was attractive to them. But I also needed to make the contributor happy.

Anyone can contribute images, and we sell them to designers and agencies all over the world.