The whole reason Pinterest exists is to help people discover the things that they love and then go take action on them, and a lot of the things they take action on are tied to commercial intent.
There are a lot of really valuable services that are always pushing you to communicate with other people. But there are relatively few services that are about helping you be the person you want to be and fulfilling your ambitions.
If Google teaches you anything, it's that small ideas can be big.
Don't take too much advice.
One of the things I've learned is to be receptive of feedback.
When Pinterest works well, it helps you find things that are meaningful to you. We want to build a system that helps you do that.
We're trying to do something so that when the average person uses Pinterest, it has to make the service better.
At a small company, so much of the trick is focus. Not only can you only do a finite number of things, but you have to do them in the right order.
I think that a lot of the most talented and driven people, they're not super deterred by failure. So if you put out a really big challenge, I think they get reality excited by that - they say, 'Hey, why not, let's go give it a shot, and if we fall short on that, at least we took a shot at doing something really important and meaningful.'
We want the average person to use it and think that it makes the experience of using Pinterest better.
I think there are a lot more people that don't use Pinterest in the world than do use it, so for most people, that first experience is really, really important. I think feeling really close and in touch with that first user experience is pretty basic to making it better every day.
A lot of the future of search is going to be about pictures instead of keywords. Computer vision technology is going to be a big deal.
There's a lot of pressure to look like the last company that was successful.
I always read about these stories of entrepreneurs - it's like they're in the desert with no water, and they're the ones that survive. But I've been really fortunate to have people on my team who are optimistic about the future and who know that if you work through hard times that there's usually something good at the end.
No amount of technology is going to change the fact that people process information visually.
What you collect says so much about who you are.
I thought Google was the coolest place. People there were so smart and they were all doing these really interesting things. I just felt really lucky to be a part of it even in a small way.
I use Pinterest for everything. Book collections, trips, hobbies. It's all there. I planned my wedding on it. When I had a kid, I planned all his stuff on it. So it was nice to discover that I wasn't the only one.
I'd never managed anyone before, so I don't have a lot of experience. But I'm lucky - I have a lot of team members who have a really honest relationship with me.
Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work.
