A very naive little question, no doubt. We are thousands of contributors, how many Shutterstock shares would we need to weigh in on the company's decisions?... No doubt there are specialists in this forum who will explain to me why this suggestion is really naive, but hey, you can always dream 

Yes, all you have to do is convince 258,000 contributors to put in $1,000 each, and you would have a minority interest (20% of the company). No real power, but you may be asked to weigh in on certain decisions.

For real power, 50%+ of the company, just put in $2,500 each and the rest is history. Of course, the share price would skyrocket if you bought that all at once, so it would take a very long time with the current low volume, and measures would be put in place to protect the company.

Best of luck with that, and let us know how it works out!

while also in theory a good idea -

a) it would be cheaper to start your own company
b) getting 1000's of contributors to agree on something would probably be a challenge in itself. so again, cheaper to start your own company.