The Pinterest Founder Is Not Even A Coder. Here Is How Ben Silbermann Started Pinterest In A Dorm Room And Turned It Into A Billion Dollar Business.

Pinterest is the world’s largest idea repository. Pinterest has the largest collection of ideas ever collected, with over 250 million users worldwide and over 100 billion recipes, design ideas, fashion inspiration, and life hacks.

People who don’t use Pinterest often assume it’s a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook where users can share their activities with friends. That’s not exact.

In contrast to Facebook, where brands can more obtrusively insert themselves into the conversation, Pinterest has evolved into a much more useful resource for people to find ideas for their lives.

This unique strategy is working well; the business now brings in more than $2.5 billion in revenue annually. The brilliant app was created by three young people, one of whom is the successful internet entrepreneur and American billionaire Ben Silbermann.

Ben never would have imagined that his childhood fascination with collecting things, such as bugs, postage stamps, and baseball cards, would one day make him a multibillionaire. Sharing photos and pinning them to a pinning board on Pinterest is similar to his old hobby of collecting things.

How exactly did Ben Silbermann develop one of the most popular social media platforms ever? What can we take away from him? Let’s dig a little deeper.

BEN SILBERMANN: INTRODUCTION

Ben Silbermann was born in Portland, Oregon in 1979. His parents, ophthalmologists Jane Wang and Neil Silbermann, raised him. Ben went to the MIT Research Science Institute in 1998.

He graduated with the class of 1999 from both Des Moines Central Academy and Des Moines Roosevelt. Later, he earned a Political Science degree from Yale University in the spring of 2003. Ben was hired by Google as an employee of the online advertising group after graduating.

GOOGLE DID NOT SEEM TO WORK FOR BEN SILBERMANN

He started as an ad designer for Google. There, he was exposed to big-picture thinking. He imagined products and ideas while watching people work at Google, but they were always shot down because he did not come from an engineering background.

Google would not let Ben create products, which frustrated him. He used to whine a lot. Up until the point when his girlfriend told him to stop whining and just do it. Silbermann had big ideas and a dream to make them a reality, so he left Google to start something new and big.

After leaving Google, Ben began to develop many innovative products, e.g., tools for keeping medical records, but they all failed. Ben finally joined forces with Paul Sciarra, a college friend living in New York.

They both liked the idea of starting their own business and Sciarra began teaching Ben the fundamentals of programming, and the two collaborated on Tote, an online shopping app. The tote was a failure, so the two began brainstorming new ideas to help them with their startup.

THE FOUNDING OF PINTEREST

Ben and Paul met with many of the capitalists, but everyone was interested in putting their money into promising ventures. Ben soon discovered a contest taking place at NYU with a significant cash prize for the winners.

Though the two came in second place without any money, they were able to meet some investors, and one of them was persuaded to fund half of the round if they could secure the other half.

Finally, they were able to secure funding and begin work on their startup project. At the time, Pinterest acquired a tiny house because it couldn’t afford an office. Ben met his third partner, Evan Sharp, through a mutual friend while both were students at NYU.

Evan and Ben had a shared interest in collecting things and wanted to make something related to it for themselves. They discussed Pinterest. He appeared to be the only one who understood what Ben was saying, as most people assumed Pinterest was another social media app. But it isn’t!

Six months later, they named it Pinterest and opened an office across from San Francisco’s Ferry Building. The platform’s Beta version was released in 2010, and since then the business has been steadily improving the tool to make it one of the biggest in the world.