Stocksy United

Stocksy United was founded April 20, 2012 and publicly launched on March 25, 2013.[2] It was started by iStockphoto co-founders Bruce Livingstone and Brianna Wettlaufer.[4] At the time of launch, Stocksy had about 220 contributing photographers, with plans to grow to approximately 500 photographers in its first year.[2] Stocksy now has over 900 contributing members, selected from over 10,000 applications. Its revenue doubled from 2014 to 2015, to $7.9 million. For 2015, Stocksy paid out over half of its revenue as royalties to its contributors, totaling $4.3 million.[5] Revenue for 2016 has grown to $10.7 million, with $4.9 million paid out to contributors.[6] Total for the first four years of business, Stocksy has paid out over $20 million to their nearly 1,000 artists during the period from 2013 to 2017.[7] After starting with 6 founding members, Stocksy’s number of staff reached 50 in early 2018.

Stocksy is a platform cooperative with three classes of shareholders. Class A is made up of advisors, including CEO Brianna Wettlaufer. Class B is made up of staff, and Class C is the artists who contribute content. Currently there are around 980 photographer shareholders in this category. Each member co-owns the cooperative and has one vote. Each class has at least two directors on the board.[6]

Contributing photographers live in 65 countries.[6] After two years of closed membership, Stocksy's Call to Artists is now open.[8] Achieving membership into the cooperative is a single step process whereby interested artists submit a portfolio using Stocksy's Call to Artists webpage. Accepted members license creative content and receive 50% royalties on standard license sales, 75% on extended license sales, and year-end profit sharing in the form of patronage returns.[9] Stocksy paid its artists patronage in the amount of $200,000 following financial year 2015 and $300,000 after 2016.

• Official website