I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that.

I met with several public company CEOs to learn about their experiences of going public and listened to as many earnings calls as I possibly could.

The best thing is to go public only when you're absolutely sure that's the right move for the company. And in order to make sure that is the case, you need to have as much control over the company as possible, which means not giving up control early on.

Evolution has been the key tenet of success over the past 13 years, and we have transformed from a single subscription e-commerce image business into a company with a diversified portfolio of content offerings, servicing the needs of businesses of all types and sizes globally.

In 2013, we opened our first international office in London and established a European hub in Berlin.

I would still rather be in Silicon Alley. I like the West Coast also, but it's sort of fragmented. You have companies in downtown San Francisco, companies in Mountain View, and people are driving between them all. It's kind of nice in New York to just jump in a cab and reach another company so easily.