The Soul of Pinterest
To Everyone Who’s Ever Worked on Pinterest
As I reflect on the years since we created Pinterest in 2009, I’m struck most by our team’s many reasons to feel proud. We are a company of heart and soul in an industry of brain and processing units—and Pinners love this! It’s why we now get to serve over half a billion people each month.
So as I step off the board to focus on my next chapter, I’d like to preserve some things I’ve learned for all the folks working on Pinterest past, present and future—learnings about the soul of Pinterest.
Pinterest is Inspiration
It took me years to truly get Pinterest. Initially I thought of it in buzzwords: “visual discovery”, “social curation”. Finally I heard our Pinners saying that Pinterest is for inspiration—for discovering what our soul desires next.
Inspiration is Pinterest’s secret sauce. Everything it does is to inspire — to deliver a feeling. Advertisers value conversions, but the feeling of inspiration is why Pinners sign up, come back, and love our brand.
Inspiration replenishes what social media depletes. In this time of constant connection, Pinterest connects you with you, especially the fresh new parts of you hungry to spring forth. It is personal, not social, media.
Inspiration Reveals Who We’re Becoming
Inspiration is “me time”. It can be hard to make time for ourselves: we may feel selfish, worried we’ll fall behind, or fear looking inwards. Though Pinterest is personal, because it’s also useful it evades these inner barriers.
Inspiration energizes us forward. It fills our shared need to become more resonantly ourselves. Inspiration points us towards what matters and sparks us to act: it is both the compass and battery of our life’s becoming.
Images mirror back our soul. They talk directly to our intuition. Pinterest makes us fluent in the visual language of dreams, imagination, creativity — of our futures. Pinning is an intimate dialogue with a future you.
Inspiration is Mysterious
Inspiration is hard to measure directly. It is a feeling not an action. Thus at Pinterest especially behavioral data must be contextualized with qualitative insights. The company must always actively seek out and listen to Pinners.
Inspiration is easier shown than told. Our culture lacks shared frameworks for relating to how we feel. Thus conveying the value of inspiration is more clearly experienced than discussed. “You know it when you see it.”
Inspiration needs realism. Aspiration alone can trigger “Pinterest perfect” — the comparative inner critic. That’s why Pinners love to find humor in failure, and why Pinterest champions that you “be yourself not your selfie”.
Great Leaders Inspire
Inspirational leadership needs truth. Inspiring leaders anchor on purpose. But purpose demands intellectual and operational excellence. Without these teams may grow to value feel-good stories over complex truths.
Inspirational leadership grows evangelists. Companies that truly care about their users create a tremendous asset: products people love. Leaders of such products know their users are their company’s best storytellers.
Inspirational leadership prioritizes meaning. Leaders are clear about what needs to be done. Inspirational leaders are also clear about why this will matter. This turns the work we “have to do” into work we “get to do”.
Who Pinterest is Becoming
Pinterest is modeling inspiration in business. It’s at its best when it takes its own medicine: the feeling of inspiration. Pinterest performs business rituals—all-hands, board meetings, investor calls—that also inspire.
Pinterest is leading the technology industry. In a disruptive industry it has earned an invaluable leadership role by, simply, caring: by putting Pinners first and truthfully owning its mistakes. Pinterest leads best by example.
Pinterest is inspiring the world. It has the extraordinary opportunity to lead billions of people to create a life they love. To model inspired leadership. To equip the world to envision a more positive future.
Thank You
I get to step down because Pinterest is better than ever. A Founder only feels okay stepping away when times are good. I feel grateful that Pinterest has strong leadership, a growing business, and a positive role in society.
Your job now is to make Pinterest the most inspiring company on Earth. To everyone at Pinterest listening to Pinners, building a product that sings, teaching the world why inspiration matters, and doing the never-ending work of making the basics great: thank you. With your care, Pinterest will grow its business — and create a more inspiring world.
Love,
Evan
Spring 2024, San Francisco
