Today we are very proud to welcome a new team member: Dustin Plett, former VP of Business development at 500px, who is joining Consensus AI as Chief Strategy Officer.

Dustin is a seasoned leader in enterprise sales, business development, and strategy. He spent over 10 years building businesses in the social media services space, and most recently, 500px — the world’s premier social network for photographers, now with nearly 14M members. As the VP of Business Development, Dustin first launched the stock photography marketplace, allowing users to unlock the value of the tens-of-millions of images shared on 500px. In 2016, Dustin launched and scaled what came to be the world’s leading custom photography platform. These combined efforts attracted the interest of Visual China Group (VCG) — the largest image licensing company in China, who lead the Series B funding round and ultimately acquired 500px in 2018.

Dustin stepped in to be the interim-CEO of 500px through the turbulent period surrounding the acquisition, as he was trusted to be a steady hand and a pragmatic leader. After stabilizing the company, setting direction for the product and transferring the leadership of the company to the new CEO — he turned a new page in his career and joined our project. As the Chief Strategy Officer at Consensus AI, Dustin will lead business strategy, business development and strategic relationships with government officials and enterprise partners.

Dustin and Oleg (Consensus AI founder), have worked together since 2010 and share the passion for using technology to solve societal issues and improve everyday lives. Along with George Bordianu and Artem Loginov, who also were a part of 500px in the past, we have a strong senior team with a incredible track record of building and scaling successful global products, and we are ready for the new, difficult yet exciting challenges of our collective co-existence.