Ben Silbermann

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. ”

So many things that I was excited about as a kid were about proximity. The idea that somebody could grow up in rural Iowa and be into break dancing because of YouTube - that was a really simple, profound idea. ”

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. ”

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. ”

I kind of think of engineering like the chefs at a restaurant. Nobody's going to deny chefs are integrally important, but there's also so many other people who contribute to a great meal. ”

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. ”

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. ”

We want the average person to use it and think that it makes the experience of using Pinterest better. ”

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. ”

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. ”