What started as a hobby turned into a seven-figure revenue stream for founders Dmitri, Igor and Katrin. The beginnings of this startup came from an apartment in New York City, where Dmitri and Katrin developed a means to share photos with their family and friends abroad. Although photo sharing was their primary concern, they soon expanded to include blogging to add verbal value to their site. Now equipped with the additional elements of photo printing and photo selling, FOTKI.COM has gathered a following of millions of users whom Igor affectionately refers to as “Fotkins.”

In this interview, Igor Shoifot, COO & Co-Founder of FOTKI opens up about some of his struggles on the path to success. His whimsical attitude and serious entrepreneurial background paved the way for superb development in the quest to create FOTKI. Shoifot has an impressive record as a CEO of Epsylon Games (Microsoft’s largest WebTV entertainment portal), as well as a co-founder of several startups in digital video, VoIP, document management, and software development, but his hectic lifestyle hasn’t managed to take away from his colorful sense of humor. Read on to discover Igor’s take on usefulness and the importance of choosing to surround yourself with good people.

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What’s Igor’s favorite quote?

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What two categories?

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Being innovative?

STATS

Companies Founded:
1. FOTKI
2. Sundera
3. Epsylon Video
4. Epsylon VideoMost
5. Vinternship

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Hometown: Born in Novokuznetsk (Siberia), grew up in Moscow (Russia), was adopted by Boston and married to New York, until San Francisco seduced me
Currently Resides: San Francisco, CA
Education:
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Bachelor of Science – 1991
Central European University, Masters of Arts – 1993
Russian Academy of Sciences, PhD – 1996
Boston University, Masters of Business Administration – 1999

Hobbies/Interests: Books, writing, acting, theater, philosophy, boxing, martial arts, arts in general
First Taste of Success: Tasted like a cheap strawberry lipstick with a faint note of vanilla ice cream
Proudest Moment: The night we elected Barack Obama our President
Worst Habit: Reading too much (not like I will ever change it)
Quality Most Remembered For: Ability to make people laugh, scream, love, feel warm and happy (or so I hope!)
Where You See Yourself in 10 Years: In a theater near you
I’m Happiest when…: I am at a book store
I’m Motivated by…: this guy and his kitties
Biggest fear: To waste my life
Favorite Quote: The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody . . . would be to not be used for anything by anybody (Kurt Vonnegut) – it used to hang above my desk, I gave it to a good person as a goodbye gift
Role Models: None that I know of, because nobody is perfect, but I admire Einstein, Nietzsche, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Freud, Wilde, Twain, Paglia and many more amazing people

THE INTERVIEW

IGOR BEING IGOR

Kim Ngo: Hi Igor. Thanks for meeting with me. Before you start telling me about FOTKI, tell me why you want to be used? I understand the want of wanting to be valuable… but being used?

Igor Shoifot: Being used is being valued. My favorite quote is, “The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody . . . would be to not be used for anything by anybody,” by Kurt Vonnegut. I think it’s a brilliant quote. It would be the worst thing – if you lived your whole life and nobody ever used you for anything. You’d be considered useless. I think people are focused on the wrong things when they hear the word “being used.”

FOTKI started in 1998, long before most other photo sites.

FOTKI is a community of people that are in love with photography and come together to share their life and world through pictures. It’s a social photo-sharing site where picture are shared globally. A person’s life is shared through photos that express a million words.

IGOR @WORK

Kim Ngo: How did FOTKI gain such a huge following internationally?

Igor Shoifot: FOTKI started in New York, which is such a diverse area – with people from all over the world. Our team was also diverse. Because of that diverse network of friends outside of the US, FOTKI has big communities in, Canada, Europe, Brazil, Russia, Japan, and South Korea.

Kim Ngo: What do you think you do better than your competitors?

Igor Shoifot: Competitors? What competitors? =) (Laughing) Well, most photo sites are very unique – we are uniquely combining numerous, and very sophisticated photo options with social networking features – that’s what sets us apart. But each user probably loves Fotki for some very personal reason – you’ve got to ask them – we have over 1,400,000 of them.

Kim Ngo: Why do you think your customers continue to stay with FOTKI both paying and non-paying?

FUNKY IGOR

Igor Shoifot: “Once a Fotkin, always a Fotkin.” It’s the power of community. And it’s not only a virtual community here at FOTKI… a lot of our users are building great relationships outside of the web all because of photo-sharing. We’ve made it really easy for photo-obsessed people to connect. There are so many real-life friendships that have been made on FOTKI, and even marriages, even though, for a while, we used to frown upon any “dating activities” on the site feeling that some people don’t feel too comfy about it – we were wrong.

Kim Ngo: How did you get started with FOTKI?

Igor Shoifot: FOTKI started as a hobby by my good friend and business partner, Dimitri, the CEO of FOTKI. He initially built it so his friends, including me, could store and share photos with each other. Then, after when he turned it into a business, he asked me to drop all the many fun things I was doing, and join FOTKI to expand the business. So, we call me a co-founder in the sense that we co-founded the business together and thought up the whole FOTKI strategy between us, and it’s been quite a few years since I’ve been “co-founding” FOTKI.

Keep in mind that FOTKI started as a photo-sharing site, and then naturally grew into a social network where people were actually connecting because of photos and through photos. Frankly, we weren’t geniuses who came up with a great idea to build a social network. It just happened because we needed a place to share our photos.

Kim Ngo: Why do you think Dimitri wanted to make you a founder?

IGOR

Igor Shoifot: We make great business partners. The great thing about our relationship is we come from very different backgrounds. I am the business development and marketing person; and I love explaining the way things work and closing deals. Dmitri, however, is also a businessperson but a much more technical businessperson.

And as much as we like each other and have a true friendship, we disagree more often than not – which is awesome, because if you have two people in a business who always agree, one of them has to go – he just brings no intellectual value then.

Kim Ngo: What was one of the most painful things you had to go through here at FOTKI?

Igor Shoifot: Being dismissed as a company. The worst feeling is when you tell people about your company and product – with over a million users, with paying customers, with employees, and with profits, and people respond, “Well, who needs you if there’s F____ or P___, or S_______ or S_____?.”

There are probably two categories of companies:

1) People who are creating something new, which includes people who are struggling (not necessarily *financially* – but conceptually.) These people are pouring their hearts into something (and Flickr was in this category; they had an amazing – amazing team who built a truly great technology). So this category builds a company, like ours, to develop something new and amazing while at the same time has the pressure and stress of paying salaries and competing with no outside help or investment.

2) The second category is still cool and innovative, but they have lots of money to burn. They don’t need to care about the business model. They actually give away their money: You want unlimited storage? No problem. You want big photos? No problem. You want unlimited traffic? No Problem. And there’s nothing wrong with those companies, and it’s great that they exist. I think in many ways they are helping the progress, but they are also killing it in many ways.

For example, Google killed the whole online calendar space. There were so many great calendar startups until Google came up with The Calendar, which I am using, but the way (its great!), but it killed that industry. Google Calendar is integrated with about everything, and it’s free, ads-free, not even a hint at the “freemium” model – just an (expensive to develop and maintain) totally FREE for all product that burns Google millions of dollars per year, so, how do you compete with that? That’s kind of a killing innovation. And there’s very little that anyone can do anything about it. It’s just a fact of life.

That’s sad! Anything that stops progress is sad.

Kim Ngo: Yeah I know, but you guys are profitable.

Igor Shoifot: We are! But we are just in low seven-figures in terms of revenues, and we are not exactly doing what we WANT to be doing – we have wonderful ideas for FOTKI, and we have a long list of features and services that over a million people have been waiting for – but we need to constantly keep our eyes on the money, NOT on the innovation – and that kind of sucks. Being innovative is not good enough anymore. Being a good orange juice is not good enough anymore. You’ve got to be like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon – fighting lots of guys coming at you from all sorts of angles – and you’re bare-handed, and it’s all in good fun, of course, but you have just your bleeding fists on your side, and maybe a good warrior scream.

Kim Ngo: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Igor Shoifot: No. When I was a kid, I honestly thought I would be an actor and a writer.

Kim Ngo: Are you disappointed that it didn’t happen?

IGOR THE STAR

Igor Shoifot: No. I’m sort of an actor; I played in a movie. I’m also a writer; I’ve written a lot of stuff…I haven’t published yet, besides a small history book in Russian. I also think being an entrepreneur is similar to being an actor and a writer – like a writer, you invent reality, and try to tell a compelling story to your audience, and like an actor, you take part in a “dramatic affair” – and what can be more dramatic than a start-up life? It’s William Shakespeare meets Dave Chappelle, most any day.

Kim Ngo: …but in real life. There are no rewrites, cuts, re-dos, or go backs. Your decisions will determine the fate of your company. There is very little room for error if there’s any room for it at all.

Igor Shoifot: That’s why the Bay Area is so awesome. We are surrounded by these kinds of people everyday who are really fighting and standing up for what they believe in and worked so hard for.

Kim Ngo: What are you afraid of?

Igor Shoifot: My mom! (Laughing)
(Gets serious) I’m afraid of wasting my life and not accomplishing something meaningful. I am not BS-ing! I seriously mean it.

Kim Ngo: What do you get nervous about, besides your mom and not having enough time? Are you easily intimidated by your work?

Igor Shoifot: Not really. I spent my whole childhood trying to answer this question. I did lots of stand-up comedy back in school, which is also why I had to go into boxing and martial arts, because not everybody shared the skinny boy’s sense of humor. Lots of things make me nervous, to be serious: business decisions, the wrong way the whole world is going, not being able to accomplish what I want to accomplish, not finding the True Love, and – I was joking about Mom, of course.

Kim Ngo: What keeps you up at night?

Igor Shoifot: Business. When you’re an entrepreneur, there is this constant tension. You can’t ever relax; you envy the people who are relaxed. You go out, and you see those who are happy and carefree. You see people who are less tense, and my best guess is they are not entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur, I am constantly checking my email, voice messages… making sure projects are completed, if someone replied, etc. This is the nasty side of entrepreneurship; the side I could live without. There’s a very exciting side also.

After FOTKI, my business partner and I would like to open a nonprofit and do something meaningful and not have to worry about profits, deals, or contracts. We actually have a really awesome idea for it!

Kim Ngo: What are you passionate about?

Igor Shoifot: Women (laughing).

Love … making a difference… creating something that is meaningful – to me.

Kim Ngo: You don’t fit the exact stereotype of a COO…

Igor Shoifot: I guess I shouldn’t be a COO then (laughing). I was always a great sales and marketing person, maybe I should stay one? But as to not fitting the stereotype, I think… as the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument in Nebraska says:

The cowards never started
The weak died on the way
Only the strong arrived
And they were the pioneers

Kim Ngo: If you can tell future founders one thing, what would it be?

Igor Shoifot: Work with people you love, respect, and have fun with. Never work with people whom you can barely tolerate.

One of our VC friends said, “The first day you meet with a founder, you better be completely in love with them because its downhill from there.”

Kim Ngo: Besides FOTKI, what’s your favorite website?

Igor Shoifot: Facebook. You can find me there easily; I’m the only Shoifot in the world.

Kim Ngo: What’s your 2^nd favorite site?

Igor Shoifot: IntimateMath. (Laughing)

Kim Ngo: (Laughing)