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

500px 500px (pronounced "five hundred pixels") is a global online photo-sharing platform that is a subsidiary of Visual China Group. It is based in Toronto, Canada. It was co-founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev on October 31, 2009. History E ...

Education

Gutsol was born in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

and moved to Canada as a teenager. He studied Applied Computer Science at

Ryerson University Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU or Toronto Met) is a public university, public research university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, Toronto, Garden District, although i ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada from 2002 to 2005, and dropped out from his senior year to run the company he started, GSM Toronto, full-time.

Career

Gutsol started learning to write software at the age of 9, after receiving a

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

computer as a birthday gift. 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 40, often shortened as S40, is a software platform and application user interface (UI) software on Nokia's broad range of mid-tier feature phones, as well as on some of the Vertu line of luxury phones. It was one of the world's most wi ...

Series 60 The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) was a software platform for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' user interface from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at ...

and

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...

platforms. In late 2007 he joined Evgeny Tchebotarev to create

out of a

LiveJournal LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as ...

community that Evgeny was curating at that time. While working on 500px, Gutsol also took a software development contract with

Filemobile CrowdSpark Ltd, formerly Newzulu and Filemobile, is a privately owned software development company that develops software as a service (SaaS) applications for rich media experiences online. Many major media companies in the US, Canada, and E ...

, SaaS video platform.
500px went live on Halloween 2009, launched from Gutsol's apartment in downtown

. 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. The company raised additional $8.8M in August 2013 in Series A funding, led by

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

, and $13M Series B in July 2015, led by

Visual China Group Visual China Group (VCG) is a Chinese photo and media agency. Established in 2000, it is a supplier of stock multimedia content to the commercial media industry. VCG is currently the largest stock image and media footage provider in China and thi ...

. Beta Kit reported that currently, 500px is used by over 4 million photographers and has over 50 million images on its site. In September 2014 Gutsol was ousted from 500px, following a disagreement within the leadership team about the direction 500px should take. In May 2015, together with his wife, he launched Pickapaw, a global community for responsible animal breeders. In addition to building software companies, Gutsol works with early stage companies through their partnership, O2 Ventures. In December 2016, following his passion for machine learning and artificial intelligence, Gutsol started working on the collective governance algorithm company, Consensus.

Awards

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

Personal life

Gutsol is an amateur

Ironman Iron Man, Ironman or Ironmen may refer to: *Nathaniel "Iron Man" Avery (1939–1985), American caddie for Arnold Palmer *Travis Fulton (1977–2021), American mixed martial arts fighter *Gunnar Graps (1951–2004), Estonian musician *Mick Murphy ...

triathlete, having competed in 2014 Ironman North American Championship, 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 *Grow Conference in Vancouver in 2013 *The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, 2015 *iForum Conference in Kyiv, 2015 *Gutsol also appeared on the episode of the Chase Jarvis LIVE in 2012 with

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...

and Richard Kelly, discussing the future of photo sharing.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gutsol, Oleg Living people Canadian computer businesspeople 21st-century Canadian businesspeople Canadian technology chief executives Canadian technology company founders 1982 births