Ben Silbermann, co-founder of Pinterest
Introduction: Last Friday, the online version of the American 'San Jose Mercury News' published an article stating that Pinterest, the U.S. social image sharing site, has become one of the most watched startups in Silicon Valley, even surpassing the emerging giant Facebook in terms of popularity. It has also established a good reputation among female users.
The following is the full text of the article:
Instant Fame
Half an hour before the CEO of Silicon Valley's hottest social network company took the stage to speak, but at this point the Startup Grind conference site was already packed with people.
As a bi-monthly tech entrepreneur conference, Startup Grind invites the most prominent industry insiders from the past few months to give speeches each time. "For Kevin Rose (Kevin Rose), the crowd was obviously too crowded," said Dave Wamsley, who often attends Startup Grind, referring to the founder of Digg, "But now, 'Elvis' has arrived."
The so-called "Elvis" is actually a cherubic-looking, somewhat shy Iowan. His name is Ben Silbermann, and the website he founded, Pinterest, has become one of the fastest-growing sites in history. The site helps more than 12 million users collect and share images every month.
Wamsley, who has started multiple businesses and has lived in Silicon Valley since the dot-com bubble burst, said he hadn't seen any company achieve such instant fame since Netscape.
In fact, Derek Anderson, the founder of Startup Grind, admitted that although he would be chatting with Silbermann on stage this week, he only learned about Pinterest from his wife a year ago. Since her wife was spending four hours a day on the site, he curiously asked, "What is that on your computer?" Soon after, many of his friends also became addicted to this site, mostly women.
Silbermann said during his speech at AOL's West Coast headquarters that he often talked about this idea while working in customer support at Google, but he never had the determination to start a business until his wife gave him an ultimatum: "Either you do it, or you shut up."
Pinterest's rapid growth caught him off guard: according to data from internet traffic monitoring agency Alexa, Pinterest has become the 16th most visited site in the U.S., surpassing CNN and ESPN, and ranks 50th globally.
Venture capitalists who didn't understand this startup two years ago have now begun to follow Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, who invested $27 million in September last year. Many big-name media outlets have sent interview requests to Silbermann, but most have been declined. "We're too busy, we don't have time to hire a spokesperson," he said apologetically.
The Entrepreneurial Process
What Silbermann really hoped for was just a place to help people share their hobbies.
Silbermann's parents ran a family internal medicine clinic in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, and he liked collecting leaves and insects as a child. After entering Yale University, he found himself continuing the family business, so he switched to studying political science. After graduating in 2003, he joined a consulting company in Washington.
Despite his parents' strong aversion to high technology - his father still refuses to use a home VCR - the young Silbermann witnessed the major changes brought by Web 2.0.
"I feel like I belong in California, I'm going there," he said during his speech last Wednesday. He stated that his job at Google taught him a lot, but in a company that values technology, non-technical employees like him had lost development opportunities. Encouraged by his wife, he finally decided to take a risk - just as the 2008 financial crisis was about to break out, which later led to a complete deterioration of the financing environment.
Lacking technical background was also disadvantageous for this two-person startup. But as he continuously improved his ideas at Hacker Dojo, a technology incubation center in Mountain View, he increasingly believed that a simple and colorful interface would have great potential, attracting users to collect digital images and pin them - very similar to the way he made and displayed insect specimens as a child.
"The 'pin' is a representation of things you like in the digital world," he said on Wednesday, "When you open the site, you will see things you like, and can connect with people who have seen these pictures."
However, progress was slow after the site launched in January 2010. Four months later, Pinterest only had 200 users, most of whom were Silbermann's friends in Des Moines.
Later, he had a sudden idea to attend an interior designer meeting. These designers were immediately attracted to the site because they could use this tool to gather interesting design images from the Internet. Thanks to word-of-mouth marketing and recommendations from some blogs, Pinterest's traffic began to grow at a rate of 40% to 50% per month and has continued to do so.
Due to the invitation-only registration mode, the site's growth is even more remarkable. Potential users must be authenticated to join, though this is basically just a formality.
Widely Popular
Pinterest's user base has surpassed the combined populations of New York and Los Angeles. When asked how to monetize the site, Silbermann said he "hadn't seriously considered this question."
Despite having only 20 employees, Pinterest has formed tremendous appeal. As one of the listeners at Startup Grind, Matt Monday recently moved from Ohio to Silicon Valley and founded a company specifically to help non-profit organizations gain supporters through Pinterest.
Big brands like Gap, Whole Foods, and CBS have also posted ads on Pinterest, hoping to attract the site's large user base.
Although Silbermann's original intention in starting the business was not to attract female users, organizers of Startup Grind noted that there were far more female listeners than at other startups.
Dee Marcyes's husband, Jay Marcyes, is a co-founder of the social networking startup Plancast, and he had previously attended Startup Grind multiple times, but his wife never participated.
However, since Dee Marcyes uses Pinterest daily to look for cooking and parenting information, she readily agreed to go with her husband this time. "I came for Pinterest," she said. (Shuyu)