What VSCO’s Joel Flory Has Learned About Leadership, Scaling, and Building Generational Companies | S3E1

Welcome back to Season 3 of Spotlight On! This season, we’re digging into the parts of founding and building companies that people don’t often see: the firsts, the crucible moments, and the key decision points that come after that initial founding phase. 

Great companies are built one decision at a time, so we’re asking the people doing the building: How do you make the decisions that matter? What are the tradeoffs? And would you do it the same way again? 

We start this season with Joel Flory, the co-founder and chairman of Visual Supply Company (VSCO). When Joel and his founders launched VSCO, no serious creators took mobile photography seriously. 14 years later, he’s steered the company through innumerable technology shifts to build VSCO into a generational business. In this episode, we talk about how the business of creativity online has changed, the make-or-break moment that happens as you start to scale (and how to navigate it), how to select investors and leadership teams, and how to treat your company as something bigger than you are. 

Conversation highlights: 

00:00 – How VSCO emerged out of Joel’s own need as a wedding photographer 

07:50 – When to adapt to customer feedback – and when to stay the course

12:08 – How VSCO capitalized on the dawn of mobile photography 

16:07 – The types of brands that stand the test of time

16:24 – Joel’s three guiding principles for selecting an investor

21:27 – Before you scale, you need to align on what your definitions of success are

26:18 – How VSCO navigated the transition from startup to scale-up 

32:40 – How to hire a leadership team that’s ready to scale

36:24 – Creating a generational business means being able to walk away

43:29 – What Gen AI changes about the business of creativity, and what it doesn’t 

Featured: Joel Flory, Co-Founder and Chairman of VSCO and Vas Natarajan, Partner at Accel