World’s creative marketplace arrives in Dublin, the city of the cloud.
Global media platform Shutterstock will employ 40 people at its new Dublin offices, which will be a hub for engineering and global R&D.
Founded in 2003 by a photographer with a knack for programming, Shutterstock has emerged to become one of the world’s biggest photography marketplaces, with more than 1bn images and 1.8m paying business customers.
The New York-headquartered company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and counts more than 100,000 contributors from around the world.
“We have a strong footprint of innovative ICT businesses investing in Dublin, and we have the IT specialists and multilingual talent available to enable the company to grow and to embed their operations here,” said the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys, TD.
Picture-perfect
Founder Jon Oringer told Siliconrepublic.com that 22 of the new employees have already been hired.
The investment, backed by IDA Ireland, will see the Dublin hub support the global business need for highly skilled, international tech talent.
The Dublin site will initially focus on certain products, including the company’s Bigstock business and continued development of its editorial platform, Shutterstock Editorial.
The team will use advanced techniques in machine learning, computer vision, cloud computing and analytics to drive the development of capabilities around advanced search, personalisation, recommendation and intelligent digital rights management.
“It is going to be one of our main tech centres,” Oringer said. “We have 22 people hired already and we see that growing to 40 in the near future.
“Our plan is to build important stuff here. I started with some of my own photos and some of the code that I wrote, and it evolved from there. It just kept building and building and today, we are at more than 1,100 people in a dozen offices around the world and we manage 1bn photos.”
Oringer said that the company has emerged to be a provider of not only images but also videos and sound files, and plans to dig deeper in terms of analytics and other services for clients.
Explaining why Shutterstock selected Dublin, he said: “Being a global marketplace, most of our images are sold outside of the US and so, we need a footprint outside of the US.
“We work from the customer first and then backwards. The engineers in this office will think globally and think of our product from the customer point of view.
“What we have in Dublin is a location that is not too far from our headquarters but far enough away to connect to key parts of the world to understand our customers better and drive business for those customers,” Oringer said.
In addition to its new Ireland office, Shutterstock has been licensing content to Ireland-based businesses, media organisations and production companies for a number of years. It has a robust contributor network that sells their images, videos and music through Shutterstock’s creative platform.
Since the company’s founding in 2003, it has paid out more than $5m to Irish-based artists, photographers, videographers and musicians.
“Shutterstock is a significant addition to Ireland’s media, content, e-commerce and machine-learning clusters,” said IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan.
“The company’s pioneering and innovative subscription business model has made the Shutterstock brand instantly recognisable across the globe and I am delighted to welcome them to their new offices in Dublin.
“Ireland is an excellent strategic choice for companies like Shutterstock due to the pro business environment and the wealth of experienced technical talent.”
Inside the Shutterstock headquarters in Manhattan. Image: Pio3/Shutterstock
