Pinterest's growth is 'not like Silicon Valley'
Pinterest's characteristics, 'unlike silicon valley':
Pinterest, an online bulletin board and social network that shares images of 'quiet unicorns' (called "pins" in Pinterest terminology) is not growing explosively enough to attract attention but is steadily moving forward without any major problems.
Since its establishment in 2010, Pinterest has been operating with a focus on solidarity rather than growth.
Pinterest's steady but not flashy move is indeed more significant in contrast to Uber and WeWork, which only disappointed by risking their lives for growth while making an astronomical deficit.
Of course, Pinterest isn't making a profit yet. Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann is almost the opposite of Travis Kalanick of Uber and Adam Neumann, founder and CEO of WeWork, who got kicked out for causing trouble.
That's why it was called the 'quiet unicorn' from the beginning of its establishment. Many employees left because they didn't like the boring or boring corporate atmosphere, which is rare in Silicon Valley.
Pinterest isn't the type of company to brag about performance, going all the way to growing and making a profit.
However, this culture of strengthening Pinterest's strength eventually helped increase the number of users and increase revenue.
In this way, we have summarized the characteristics of Pinterest that are not ‘Silicon Valley-like’. opposite from the start
Pinterest, a playground for teenagers:
First of all, Pinterest has completely different characteristics from the start of a typical tech company. Most successful social networks are recognized by teenagers first.
We start with a playground for teenagers who are early adopters. However, It initially began to gain popularity among women in the American Midwest. By starting to share pretty interiors and cooking recipes.
Even today, women remain the main user base of Pinterest. The second peculiarity is that there are no engineers among founders.
Venture capital firms are at a disadvantage in Silicon Valley unless the founder is an engineer to the extent that they say that they do not invest unless the founder is a computer engineer.
By the way, CEO Silbermann majored in political science at Yale University, and co-founder and current design team leader, Evan Sharp, was an architecture student.
He has now left this company, but Paul Ciara, also co-founder, attended Yale College of Liberal Arts. It's not just the beginning that's the opposite.
The same goes for the philosophy of growth. Founded in 2010, Pinterest has grown explosively since 2011. In January 2012, the number of active visitors reached 11.7 million,
surpassing 10 million in the shortest period among major social networks. It was also called one of the three major social networks along with Facebook and Twitter.
Promoted pins and quality growth of Pinterest:
In 2014, Pinterest introduce Promoted Pins, a kind of advertising for revenue. But for some reason, growth is stagnant.
In 2015, the following year, the number of monthly active visitors exceeded 100 million, but this was a small number compared to latecomers Snapchat and Instagram,
which had about 200 million and 400 million, respectively. Various ideas have come up for growth again.
[caption id="attachment_5637" align="alignright" width="289"]
Pinterest growth in 2015[/caption]There was talk of increasing the number of users at an annual marketing cost of 50 million dollars, and a plan was discussed to allow celebrities and influencers to share images on Pinterest.
But CEO Silbermann put both ideas on hold. He wanted 'quality growth'. “There's a natural pace for healthily growing a company,”
he says. Perhaps this CEO was frustrated, and many of the disappointed executives and employees left the company. However, for some reason,
The company has slowly grown in several users and ad sales. In 2015, the number of monthly active users was 100 million. In 2018, it reached 250 million, and advertising revenue, which was $100 million in 2015, will reach $1 billion in 2018.It's not explosive, but it's a number you can't ignore.
Pinterest CEO Silbermann, a humble founder:
[caption id="attachment_5488" align="alignleft" width="307"]
Pinterest CEO Silbermann[/caption]It is said that a company resembles the personality of its founder. Looking at Pinterest, this seems to be true.
“The tech industry decides winners and losers very quickly. They say things like, 'That's never going to happen or 'It'll rule the world'. But the truth is always somewhere in between. "In the words of Pinterest CEO Silbermann.
He often speaks wise words like this. Silbermann, who was born into a family of doctors and originally intended to become a doctor,
He changed his career path to political science after attending Yale University.
After graduating, he worked as a consultant in Washington, D.C.
He often speaks wise words like this. Silbermann, who was born into a family of doctors and originally intended to become a doctor, changed his career path to political science after attending Yale University.
After graduating, he worked as a consultant in Washington, D.C.
Ben Silbermann[/caption]He gets a job at Google and works on the online advertising team. After he left Google, he founded Pinterest.
He was a collector's fanatic when he was young, and he said that this experience had an impact on his business.
The start was not easy. But Silbermann focused on the user. He sent an email directly to the first 5,000 users of the site's early days and gave them a phone number. He even met some users.
Hundreds of millions of users, with more than 2,000 employees, Silbermann's schedule is not much different these days. He doesn't care about his reputation and goes on tours with users 6 times a year and schedules lunches with users every week.
Other social networks 'reducing social':
In addition to that, he is also praised for being humble. He answers every question with sincerity and, after speaking, says it's his opinion, not claiming it's true. It can be said that it is completely different from the Silicon Valley startup founders we often see.
Silbermann also makes hiring different from other tech companies. As of 2016, he says, anyone without a computer science degree can join this platform as a developer.
The reason is that you can teach coding, but you can't teach 'curiosity' about discoveries. Social Networks 'Reducing Social'
Over the past few years, social networks have all gotten messy. Facebook and Twitter are plagued with fake news and provocative postings.
But Pinterest is different. It's becoming a safe, happy, fun place to inspire. Although it is a social network, it is because the ‘social’ part has been reduced. Pinterest has already banned political ads (which Twitter recently banned) before.
Pinterest's success in silicon valley:
Recently, I made my profile picture smaller and changed the design to not show the number of followers.
It became a popular voting site and removed elements that annoy users, which is similar to Instagram's removal of 'likes'.
We've also made it possible for users to make their adjustments to prevent harmful content from being seen.
Sharp, the co-founder, and design director, calls this ‘compassionate design’. “I believe that if you create a good user experience, your business will thrive,” Sharp said. It can be said that it is a baby boy who wants to be a good site that considers the feelings of users.
Is that so? A lot of people see a bright future for Pinterest. According to fashion website Bottica.com, users who visit their site through Facebook spend an average of $85, while users who come through Pinterest spend an average of $180.
The real advertising effectiveness of Pinterest is that it can be higher than Facebook with more users. Pinterest raises the essential question of ‘what does it mean to be successful in Silicon Valley?’ It is because it is growing slowly but steadily in a way that is different from the success formula of Silicon Valley that has worked until now.
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