Startup Stock Photos FAQ

What is Startup Stock Photos?

Startup Stock Photos is a website with a simple purpose:provide writers, developers, and entrepreneurs access to a library of beautiful, usable, and free “startup-focused” images. SSP is used by thousands of brands and bloggers all over the world, and all content is produced by our team.

Piqued your curiosity? Here’s everything we’ve ever been asked about our beloved side project.

Who are we?
Sculpt is an Iowa City-based social media marketing agency that helps entrepreneurial brands build community, convert customers, and tell powerful stories. We love startups, and hate bad stock photos. Which brings us to where we are today.

Who uses Startup Stock Photos?

From day one, our vision was to gain adoption from the most prominent blogs in the entrepreneurial and technology space. Originally, the site was largely used by friends and writers in the Midwest (thank you Welch Avenue, We Create Here, Silicon Prairie News). After an unexpected wave of traction in Japan, China and Europe, SSP found its way to a series of online design communities and took off across the world in August 2014.

Here’s a very, very small sample of links (updated 2015/2016 – there are many thousands):

Mashable
INC
Forbes
Search Engine Journal
The Next Web
Ragan
NY Times
The Chive
Buffer
Prezi
Hubspot
Entrepreneur
Information Week
Business2Community
visual.ly
Tech.co
Shopify
Percolate
The Stocks
All The Free Stock
Site Builder Repor
Canva
Elegant Themes
Percolate
Designer News
Web Designer Depot
College Info Geek
Subtraction
CSS Author
PR Daily
Quora

Plus startups, agencies, developers and theme builders like Scoop.it, Theme Forest, Graphic River, Dribbble, Creative Market, and Youth Designer Templates

Who takes the pictures?
Largely, the images are shot by Eric Bailey. Eric is a NYC-based designer, developer, photographer, entrepreneur and craft beer taster. Some shots were done by videographer Ian Servin, and friend Zach Sanderson.

What inspired Startup Stock Photos?
The concept is inspired by Unsplash, an iconic platform we love and respect (they seem to respect us too). That, and every person that’s resorted to a pixelated, lifeless stock photo for their article or marketing site.

What constitutes a “startup stock photo”?
We get plenty of jabs for our focus on laptops, Apple products, coffee shops, whiteboards, and a lightly-filtered aesthetic. Of course, startup life is about more than brainstorming and remote working. But for the people who use us, we fill a need. If you have suggestions for different shots we’ll gladly take them.

What’s next?
Eric is currently working on an updated version of the website. Tumblr has been a fantastic medium for the site, but in the near future, we’ll be moving to a design that’s more robust and user-friendly. We hope to receive more outside requests and contributions. More on that below.

Where were the pictures taken?
Locations include the Thinc Lab, The Java House, Water Street Coffee Bar, Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, Iowa City CoLab, Gravitate and Eric’s desk. We’ve also shot pictures from the Sprint Accelerator Building in Kansas City and Kaneko in Omaha.

Where do we source the models?
If you’re integrated in the Creative Corridor startup community, these faces might look familiar. Friendrepreneurs (as we call them) like Nico Aguilar, Melanie Slattery, Sarah Binder, Ben Anderson all appear in pictures.

Where are all of the women?
We appreciate all of the comments about gender diversity, and are making it a point to be better representative of the entrepreneurial community.

Where do people find it?
Acquisition data in Google Analytics reveal a little bit about where people find Startup Stock Photos (numbers all 2014):

• 74% refer from thousands of different websites that link to us
• 17% come from direct visits
• 2% come from social media referrals (Facebook and Twitter are the big two, of course)
• 7% come from organic searches

When was the site established?
Startup Stock Photos was an idea born right before Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids; February 2014.

Why did we make it?
Because we love supporting startups. Because we hated the pictures writers licensed for their articles. Because we love bringing the Iowa startup community to the rest of the world.

How popular is the site?
It’s difficult to know how many times our content has been saved and re-published around the web. Startup Stock Photos is the #4 most viewed photographer on Pexels with more than 360 million views. We really only know what Google Analytics tells us about out own site. In 2015, StartupStockPhotos.com was receiving about 70,000 unique visitors per month. Visitors have come from 200+ countries and all 50 states (Iowa is the 8th most popular).

How often do we update the site?
After 2016, not very often.

How is it funded?
Startup Stock Photos is 100% funded through Eric and Josh’s time and resources. It’s code named a super side project internally.

How can you contribute?
Attribution is not required, but if you would like to link back to Startup Stock Photos or Sculpt, we will hat tip to your content. If you would like to contribute content please send us a message on our contact form. If you would like to have us shoot your people, space, or event, let’s talk.

What else would you like to know about SSP? Shoot us a tweet and find out: @StartupPhotos