How We Scaled Pinterest From Zero Users To A $2 Billion Valuation (2024)

FAQs

How did Pinterest get big? ›

Pinterest owes much of its initial success to grassroots marketing and good olde traditional word-of-mouth. Many of Pinterest's first users hailed from Des Moines, the home town of Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, learning of the app through Silbermann's family.

Pinterest emerged from an earlier app created by Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra called Tote which served as a virtual replacement for paper catalogs. Tote struggled as a business, significantly due to difficulties with mobile payments.

Pinterest was such a hit because it helped people do something they were already doing—collecting and organizing things they liked or wanted to buy—by leveraging familiar behaviors, i.e., the idea of digital pin boards as an organizational tool for the real world.

Ownership Structure As of 2021, the majority of Pinterest's shares are owned by its co-founders, with Ben Silbermann holding the largest stake in the company. Other shareholders include venture capital firms, institutional investors, and executives.

Pinterest mostly monetizes its audience by displaying ads and it undoubtedly has room to improve. Consider that Meta Platforms' Facebook made $44.60 per active user in 2023. For comparison, Pinterest only made $6.44 per active user in 2023. There is a massive disparity between these numbers for Facebook and Pinterest.

Pinterest Profit

Pinterest reported a smaller annual net loss in 2023 of $35 million. It was last profitable in 2021.

Pinterest solves the meaningful problem of providing a visual and organized platform for users to discover, save, and curate content related to their interests and passions.

When it comes to users, Pinterest is the 15th most popular social media platform worldwide as of January 2024.

Why use Pinterest instead of Google? ›

Pinterest differs from traditional search engines by focusing on visual discovery. Your products can come to life on Pinterest, showcased in a real-world context that encourages browsers to become buyers. With features like Pinterest Lens, users can take pictures of objects and find where to purchase them.

Total debt on the balance sheet as of December 2023 : $0.19 B. According to Pinterest's latest financial reports the company's total debt is $0.19 B. A company's total debt is the sum of all current and non-current debts.

What Happened: Shares of social commerce platform Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) fell 21.9% in the morning session after the company reported fourth-quarter results with revenue missing analysts' expectations, though EPS beat. Revenue guidance for the next quarter also fell below expectations.

Longtime Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann is stepping down, the company announced Tuesday. Shares jumped more than 5% in after-hours trading. Bill Ready, who was previously in charge of Google's commerce business, is taking over the helm, effective Wednesday.

Why do people use Pinterest instead of Google? It's more visually driven: Even Google Images can't compete with Pinterest's visual user experience. It's just so appealing, letting users browse and discover new designs and ideas.

It's not just regular images. They are normally unique and beautiful images which are vying for your attention. People share them for a reason. This has been one of the key reasons for its success – its image based, unlike other social media which are content based.

Launched on March 2010 to family and friends, Pinterest quickly caught on, becoming one of the 10-largest social sites in 2011. It broke the all-time record at the time to reach 10 million users, due to Pinterest's early hype on the iPhone in 2011.

Pinterest makes its money via advertising, specifically, promoted pins. These promoted pins are ads that look similar to user-generated pins (posts). The company has integrated a “buy it” button which permits users to buy pinned products directly from Pinterest, rather than visiting a separate merchant site.