Oleg Gutsol

Oleg Gutsol (born February 3, 1982) is a Canadian Internet entrepreneur, co-founder and founding CEO of the photography social network and photo distribution platform 500px.

Oleg Gutsol
Born (1982-02-03) February 3, 1982
Kyiv, Ukraine
NationalityCanadian
Alma materRyerson University (Applied Computer Science, 2005)
OccupationInternet entrepreneur
Known forCo-founder of 500px
Websiteoleggutsol.com

Education

Gutsol was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and moved to Canada as a teenager. He studied Applied Computer Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 2002 to 2005, and dropped out from his senior year to run the company he started, GSM Toronto,[1] full-time.

Career

Gutsol started learning to write software at the age of 9, after receiving a ZX Spectrum computer as a birthday gift. [2] In 2000, he became interested in website design and development. In 2003 he launched GSM Toronto, a company specializing in distributing, modifying and unlocking GSM phones and development of mobile games for Nokia Series 40, Series 60 and Symbian platforms.

In late 2007 he joined Evgeny Tchebotarev to create 500px out of a LiveJournal community that Evgeny was curating at that time. [3] While working on 500px, Gutsol also took a software development contract with Filemobile, SaaS video platoform.[4]

500px went live on Halloween 2009, launched from Gutsol's apartment in downtown Toronto.[5] The company saw exponential growth for the inception and raised a seed round from ffVC and other early stage NYC venture funds in May 2011.[6] The company raised additional $8.8M in August 2013 in Series A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, [7] and $13M Series B in July 2015, led by Visual China Group.[8] Beta Kit reported that currently, 500px is used by over 4 million photographers and has over 50 million images on its site.[9]

In September 2014 Gutsol was ousted from 500px, following a disagreement within the leadership team about the direction 500px should take.[10]

In May 2015, together with his wife, he launched Pickapaw, a global community for responsible animal breeders.[11][12][13][14]

In addition to building software companies, Gutsol works with early stage companies through their partnership, O2 Ventures.[4]

In December 2016, following his passion for machine learning and artificial intelligence, Gutsol started working on the collective governance algorithm company, Consensus.[15]

Awards

Under Gutsol's leadership, 500px won a PwC Up-and-Coming Technology Company award in November 2012.[16]

Personal life

Gutsol is an amateur Ironman triathlete, having competed in 2014 Ironman North American Championship,[17] 2015 Ironman Muskoka and a number of other races. Additionally, his personal interest is in yoga and meditation.

Appearances
  • Gutsol was a guest speaker at the EBE conference in Seville, Spain, 2012[18]
  • Grow Conference in Vancouver in 2013[19]
  • The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, 2015[20]
  • iForum Conference in Kyiv, 2015[21]
  • Gutsol also appeared on the episode of the Chase Jarvis LIVE in 2012 with Lawrence Lessig and Richard Kelly, discussing the future of photo sharing.[22]

References
  1. "Gold Sponsor • 500px | PyCon Canada". 2012.pycon.ca. Archived from the original on 2017-03-07. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  2. "Interview with Oleg Gutsol | Crazy Ivory". Crazy-ivory.de. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  3. "After A Decade, 500px Raises $8.8M Series A Funding To Build Out Photo Site". Forbes.com. 2013-06-19. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  5. "Interview with Oleg Gutsol of 500px". Petapixel.com. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  6. "White-Hot Flickr Alternative 500px Raises $525K In Series A". TechCrunch. 2011-06-03. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  7. "500px Raises $8.8 Million Srries A". Business Insider. 2013-08-07. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  8. "500px Raises Another $13M To Take On Getty And Flickr". TechCrunch. 2015-07-21. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  9. "Oleg Gutsol rebounds from 500px departure, plans to launch new venture in Canada". BetaKit. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
  10. "500px Co-Founder And Former CEO Ousted From The Startup". TechCrunch. 2014-09-15. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  11. "PickaPaw Brings Evolution to the Animal Industry". Tworldy.com. 2016-02-02. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  12. "Pickapaw | AngelList". Angel.co. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  13. "Pickapaw, Inc. - Canada Company Directory". Cancompany.org. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  14. "Be a Happy Pet Parent with the Help of a Responsible Breeder | Doggy Bakery". Doggysbakery.com. 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  15. "Consensus homepage".
  17. "08/17/2014 Results: Mont-Tremblant". Ap.ironman/com. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  18. "EBE12. 500px: la fotografía social. Oleg Gutsol, CEO de 500px". Youtube.com. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  19. "UX Design For Developers. Oleg Gutsol, 500px". Youtube.com. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  20. "Oleg Gutsol at TNW Conference Europe 2015 - Growing your company from zero to a million users". Youtube.com. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  21. "Iforum 2015. Украинский форум интернет-деятелей". 2015.iforum.ua. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
  22. "The Future of Photo Sharing | Chase Jarvis LIVE | ChaseJarvis". YouTube. 2012-08-30. Retrieved 2017-03-07.
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