Shutterstock Founder Jon Oringer Steps Down as CEO, Names Stan Pavlovsky Successor

Jon Oringer, who built Shutterstock from a $49-a-month photo subscription site into a $1.5 billion publicly traded company, announced he is stepping down as CEO effective April 1, 2020. Stan Pavlovsky, the company's president and COO, will take the helm. Oringer, who still owns 45% of the company, transitions to executive chairman.

Oringer's origin story is one of accidental entrepreneurship. A serial software builder who created pop-up blockers and firewall tools in the late 1990s, he started shooting his own marketing photos to avoid paying stock image fees — then realized other entrepreneurs probably had the same problem. In 2003 he launched a site offering unlimited downloads for $49 a month. That scrappy bet evolved into a marketplace now selling images, video, music, and editorial photos at a rate of six assets per second, with 1,200 employees headquartered in New York's Empire State Building.

The leadership change comes after two years of deliberate succession planning — and against a backdrop of real financial pressure. Shutterstock went public in 2012 at roughly a $500 million market cap, then surged 600% within two years to a $3.5 billion valuation, making Oringer — who then held 50% of shares — New York's first tech billionaire. But the stock has since fallen roughly 50% from its 2014 peak, returning just 7% over the prior 12 months while the S&P 500 gained 23%. Investors have grown anxious about slowing revenue growth, shrinking margins, and mounting competition from Getty Images and Adobe.

Pavlovsky brings operational muscle to complement Oringer's vision. He previously ran Meredith Digital and orchestrated the integration of 40 media brands after Meredith Corp. acquired Time Inc. in 2018. He joined Shutterstock in spring 2019 as co-COO after connecting with Oringer on LinkedIn. His incoming strategy centers on three pillars: leveraging Shutterstock's content library, technology platform, and first-party data to build tools that help marketers and creatives produce higher-performing content.

Oringer, by his own admission, found the managerial side of scaling a 1,200-person organization a poor fit for his instincts as a technologist who thrives on pursuing multiple projects simultaneously. In his new executive chairman role, he plans to deploy Shutterstock's healthy balance sheet — $230 million in cash, zero debt — toward acquisitions and entry into new business lines, essentially returning to the entrepreneurial mode where he has always been most comfortable.