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.'
I want Pinterest to be human. The Internet's still so abstract... To me, boards are a very human way of looking at the world.
One of the hard parts about building a service that you use yourself is that it's easy to forget what it was like the very first time someone signs up. Every once in a while, I'll create a brand new account and give it a try and see how hard it is to find things that I really love, see if I'm using it or thinking about it differently.
I look around my neighborhood, and I see people hailing a cab or ordering their food and then paying for it all with their phone. I've read about that stuff for a really long time, and now it's starting to become commonplace.
As a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It's cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I'm not one of those people.
I always describe Facebook and Twitter to some extent as 'them time': it's time about the world and what's outside of you. Pinterest, for a lot of users, is 'me time.' What do I want my future to be? Who am I? What are the things I want to do?
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.
From the outside, there's a perception Silicon Valley is full of really young, geeky guys. The reality is there are lots of different types of people there.
Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work.
I really liked insects - all kinds: flies, grasshoppers, weevils.
My parents are doctors, both my sisters are doctors, so I figured I'd just be a doctor too. Sometime in my junior year, I had this sudden realization that maybe that wasn't for me. I was sort of lost at sea.
I always just want to move along to the next step.
I've worked on products where they go down in the middle of the night, and no one notices. You get the 'site down' notice, but it doesn't matter.
So March 2010, we launched Pinterest, and we were at 3,000 accounts. And that wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't started building Pinterest actually in November 2009. And that alone wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't left my job to start a company in May 2008.
The biggest thing about Pinterest is that people are there saving ideas for their personal lives. Not to rile up other people or make a big statement.
We're trying to do something so that when the average person uses Pinterest, it has to make the service better.
We want the average person to use it and think that it makes the experience of using Pinterest better.
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.
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.
I used to wake up and look at our analytics and think, 'What if yesterday was the last day anyone used Pinterest?' Like, everyone collectively decided, 'We're done!' Over time I got more confidence.
