Discover Pinterest: Data Driven Growth

As part of the Discover Pinterest series, engineers from across disciplines share insights at tech talks and meetups at our San Francisco headquarters. Here, Pinterest growth engineer John Egan shares a wrap up from a talk on data-driven growth. To stay updated on our events, check out the event page to see what’s new each month.

Interest in growth as a discipline has grown over the years, with two branches becoming especially prominent: product-driven growth and marketing-driven growth accomplished by factors such as advertising and inbound marketing. Most of our growth at Pinterest is product-driven , with a small team of a dozen engineers having a big impact.

We’re constantly asking ourselves, how can we improve the experience for existing Pinners, more effectively communicate the uses of Pinterest to new users, and improve content for unengaged users. We’re always running experiments and iterating on what we’ve accomplished so far, but we’re always looking for new ideas.

At the last Discover Pinterest talk, we teamed with fellow growth engineers to discuss ideas and best practices. I shared insights on our growth engineering experiences at Pinterest and how data plays into our quarterly road-mapping process. Airbnb’s Gustaf Alstromer, Yozio founder Lei Sun, Pinterest growth engineering manager Dannie Chu, and Pinterest product manager Cat Lee had a panel discussion about related technical challenges and data analytics.

You can find the slides from the talk on our Discover Pinterest Slideshare account.

John Egan is a Growth Engineer at Pinterest.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Pinterest’s Dannie Chu and Cat Lee, as well as Gustaf Alstromer from Airbnb and Lei Sun from Yozio for participating.