Google Ex-Employee Created $26 Billion App — After Learning a Lesson from His Girlfriend
By: Mohammad Sistan
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Pinterest, Billionaires

Google Ex-Employee Created $26 Billion App — After Learning a Lesson from His Girlfriend

Image by TheDigitalArtist on Pixabay

Prior to the creation of Pinterest. Ben Silbermann worked as a customer support agent at Google. He learnt the skills needed. Got the technical information and headed for his own startup. The story of this startup is as colourful as Pinterest.

The Pre-Pinterest stage

When Ben was an undergrad, he had developed a program that let you try glasses online. He helped his friend design a startup on bands. He also created a quiz website that let anybody play a quiz anytime they wanted.

He wanted to create a big product but procrastination killed his thoughts. His procrastinator mind persuaded him by phrases like: “The market is not suitable”, “I need to learn more” and “This isn’t the right time.”

One night, he was dining with his girlfriend while talking about building some cool stuff. His girlfriend exclaimed this life-changing statement:

“You should either do it or just stop talking about it”

That was harsh, but enough for Ben to stop talking and start working.

He wanted to build a digital shopping catalogue. This idea didn’t work as Apple took a lot of time accepting apps and investors had some common sentences to reject him. The most painful was: “Call me back in a few months”.

Soon he met Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra, they decided to build something that people would use to get inspired, to be themselves. Ben explains it this way:

“I just want to go somewhere and see somebody that I don’t know using something that I made and have it be kind of useful.”

And they came up with a web-based app, where you can follow your personal interests, Pinterest.

The story of Ben Silbermann and Pinterest from these sources.

The Process

Three of them started developing Pinterest in 2009. They realized early that trial and test is the best way to understand customer satisfaction and not rigorous research.

Their primary focus was being creative in developing Pinterest because if Pinterest collection didn’t look cool, nobody was going to share it.

They tried different versions; vertical grid, horizontal grid, left side nav, right side nav, and cool stuff. Months later, Pinterest was launched.

No response

Ben emailed his contact list and explained to them what Pinterest was, guiding them on how to use it. Surprisingly, no one responded.

4 months passed in a blink of an eye and they had only 3000 accounts, not active users. Ben describes 3000 as a low record when 3 of them were promoting Pinterest to everyone every time.

Pin it forward

They understood that they had to promote this app to like-minded people and not everyone under the sun.

They started marketing online. They ran a campaign named “pin it forward” where everyone would create a Pinboard about what home meant to them. The campaign was designed like a chain where one person would introduce another person and that person would introduce another person and the chain goes on.

The campaign worked out:

“We found this little group of people that were interested in the same thing and we showed them how the service could be helpful to them, and fundamentally, that’s what Pinterest is about.” Ben Silbermann

They had meetups. The glorious movement was that people connected with each other at the meetups and had valuable conversations which they wouldn’t otherwise have. People asked each other: “Hey how’s the gardening project going on?”, “ How’s your new living room?”. That’s the power of introducing like-minded people to each other.

Project Pinterest is now taking off.

Testing, testing, unique testing

Ben Silbermann and his mates discovered a unique way of testing the coolness and easiness of Pinterest. They invited potential users to coffee shops and would let them use Pinterest. If users looked at them repeatedly for help, they would know that they need to improve the experience.

In 3 years, Pinterest had achieved a plethora of milestones. It is the 3rd largest source of referral traffic on the internet. Millions of people were connected to billions of ideas.

Results

Today, Pinterest.com gets more than 600 million monthly visits according to Ubersuggest. Pinterest generated more than $1.3 billion annual revenue in 2019 according to Statista. Currently, Pinterest’s market cap is more than $26 billion according to Macrotrends. There are over 250 million pinners on Pinterest.