Shutterstock Enters into Definitive Agreement to Acquire Envato
investor.shutterstock.comShutterstock will layoff most of Envato within a year. They’ve been treading water for years with acquisitions and routinely roll the acquired catalog into their base. They are essentially an asset acquisition firm who has spent the last 10 years rewriting their core website and missing the boat on ML technologies. Most of this is due to the rotating door of visionary CEOs and CTOs. Best download your media and licenses now.
This is terrible news. I loved using Envato for quick graphics, or various other design work on side projects. I can only imagine the quality drop when Shutterstock acquires them. RIP Envato, you had a good run. Time to cancel my subscription.
I feel like the niche that Envato covered has gradually been eaten away by the site builders like Squarespace, Wix, etc. who offer built in themes and by sites like Canva that have mixed in the actual production applications. Seems like a good time for them to get out or to get a broader investment.
I could understand that for the code/theme side of things, but they still seem like the best site for things like source graphic templates, logos, after effects/premiere pro video files, etc. I feel like that's going to suffer the most from this acquisition. That's what I use for my side projects.
The list you mentioned is what I see being eroded by Canva.
Right now, they have all of those items natively integrated into their online editor, making it stupidly easy for even someone as graphically challenged as me to get decent output.
Honestly, I think they are a tad late -- Envato should sell and cash out.
There were a few other marketplaces that started when FlashDen started. I just searched my email archive and found Collis (Envato's then-CEO) asking me for an interview for FlashDen (late 2006).
I'm a happy customer of Envato and now I'm happy for them.
Edits:
1. Here is their story https://www.envato.com/blog/the-story-of-envato/
2. I contributed to one of their competitor (a friend from the community) for equity in the company (something like that) but the company went bust after his divorce. One thing I remember with that story was of McCoy’s dialogue to Kirk in Star Trek,“I got nowhere else to go. The ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce.”
Underreported: Envato also owns Codecanyon