9 ms·

Pinterest raises $27 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz

49 points by noelsequeira 15y ago

callmeed 15y ago
I have not seen my wife so engaged with a site or mobile app since Facebook and possibly Angry Birds. That's when I knew Pinterest was going to be huge. Good for them on raising this round. I think the path to monetization will be a no-brainer as well. Contrast that with the folks as Svpply (I heard hopes for them for early on) who sit around saying "They’ve (pinterest) locked themselves into a niche community of 22-35yr old women" while Pinterest is absolutely blowing up and eating their lunch. Very stupid and short-sighted view IMO. http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-competing-with-sort-of http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-com... Take note on what your spouse/kids/SO spend their time engaged in.
- rdouble 15y ago
  It's true. SVPPLY is mostly a bunch of dudes who all like the same boring JCrew-meets-Hypebeast dad wear. Not an awful market but nowhere near as big as "women age 20-35."
  - callmeed 15y ago
    Right, but I also already see Pinterest moving out of that niche ... even I have an account now.
- natgordon 15y ago
  From the article you posted from by Svpply blog: "It’s going to be very difficult for them to grow beyond puppies and photos of Ryan Gosling." Wow. What a complete disregard for women as a desirable demographic. When companies act like this it's an opportunity for the rest of us. I've been using pinterest the same way I use twitter; as social media for my business (whose target demographic is women 22-35).
  - rokhayakebe 15y ago
    as social media for my business I wish I could say "OMG", but HN wouldn't allow me. This is exactly what I was afraid of when I found Pinterest: marketers. This is the start of a decline.
    - salemh 15y ago
      Why so? The Twitter deluge of SM marketing? (I'm trying to figure out your concern).
      - rokhayakebe 15y ago
        When people start to promote their products on places like this, they end dominating the content.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  I am a dude. Pinterest gets me in touch with both my creative, and apparently now, feminine side. I like it so much I decide I will build another site around it this weekend.
- davepeck 15y ago
  My girlfriend found Pinterest via Ravelry, a knitting social network. Not sure which of the two she spends more time on at the moment, but pretty sure most of her online time is on one or the other. I think Ravelry is an impressive (and, oddly, rarely spoken of) bootstrapping success story.
- adrianparsons 15y ago
  Agreed. My girlfriend, who totally eschews anything social media related, is completely wrapped up in Pinterest. If I could buy stock I would.
- patio11 15y ago
  locked themselves into a niche community of 22-35yr old women This is like being stranded on a deserted island surrounded by a blue ocean made out of money.
  - lotharbot 15y ago
    And there aren't very many other islands in the ocean. It's a huge demographic that virtually nobody has successfully targeted.
iambot 15y ago
Congrats to the pinterest team, perhaps they can invest in more servers now ;P
pumblechook 15y ago
So it's a photo sharing site?
- diolpah 15y ago
  Yes, but with links. So it's definitely worth billions. Edit: Now that I've actually looked at the site to ensure I wasn't speaking out of ignorance, I noticed that the external links are not rel="nofollow". This will be a brilliant breeding ground for SEO spam.
  - mark_up 15y ago
    I'm always happy to see that. Using rel="nofollow" as a spam deterrent is not ideal, and undermines the vision of the internet as a www.
angelbob 15y ago
If they raised $25 million while valued at $200 million, and earlier raised $10 million, presumably at a much lower valuation... That doesn't leave the company a huge amount of equity and control, does it?
- adient 15y ago
  It was $10 million based on $40 million valuation. Combined with the latest investment, it seems a majority percentage of equity would still belong to the founders. Well past successful at a $200 million valuation, for sure.
sahillavingia 15y ago
They're killing it. Glad to have helped found it.
- jamesjyu 15y ago
  Care to elaborate?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
zacharyz 15y ago
"The start-up, which has no revenue to speak of yet" This is the aspect of the site that always made me scratch my head and say "huh?" It is no doubt a well designed site that engages women. Despite being in beta and invite only I know a bunch of women who are really into it. I don't think being engaging is enough though - where do they go from here? How do they actually justify the valuation? Are they going to have "paid" posts for advertising? Are they going to some how sell the data mined from their users? Paid accounts? This site seems like it is going to be even harder to monetize than reddit.
- diolpah 15y ago
  I'll take a wild guess, predicated on the fact that twitter is another social platform that's difficult to monetize: sponsored pinboards. My company would pay to have "sponsored pinboards" all day long if the net ROI was positive. But that's a huge "if".
  - ericsantos89 15y ago
    I think that pinterest needs to be careful on how many of these "sponsored pinboards" they have. It is currently something cool and hip, but if the ratio of "sponsored pinboards" and user pinboards isn't correct, they can turn off a lot of users.
- KevinEldon 15y ago
  I can vouch for the engages women... Pinterest has the secret sauce. My wife and her friends absolutely love it and get a lot of value and inspiration from the photos and links. At first glance my thought was that it would be an amazing advertising platform. Mix in the user generated pinned photos with high quality targeted photos of products women are interested in buying and you've got some potential magic. Again, using my wife as a reference, she's taken several ideas she's picked up on Pinterest and applied them to recipes, decorations, clothing, house design ideas (we're in the early stages of designing our new home), and travel ideas. She's not one to jump on the latest thing, so it surprised me how effectively Pinterest hooked her.
- rgrieselhuber 15y ago
kbd 15y ago
One of my female friends is obsessed with this site. I don't get it, but then I'm not their demographic.
rgrieselhuber 15y ago
I remember meeting Ben in Palo Alto last year when he was still figuring things out and trying to raise money. Sounds like it's been amazing year since then. Congrats guys. :-)
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  when he was still figuring things out I would like to hear a bit more about this. Did they start with a different product or idea?
  - rgrieselhuber 15y ago
    No, it was the Pinterest you see today but I think they only had a core user group and were figuring out how to make it grow from there.
knarf55 15y ago
Congrats to the team who built such an addicting product to users. Here's hoping that you won't get comfortable with that money now and keep innovating! :)
timjahn 15y ago
Are we really congratulating a "company" that makes no revenue on raising money again? When will it stop?
GBKS 15y ago
It's great to see all this action in the social commerce space. With Pinterest, Polyvore, Svpply, Fancy, Weheartit, Wookmark, Wanelo, Sumally, et al it will be interesting to see if there will be a big winner, or if we will end up with several players for different demographics and more targeted products.
usaar333 15y ago
I always find it incredibly amazing to wander in to a wildly popular site that no one I know uses. It's a sad testament to how incredibly isolated hackers can be.
girlvinyl 15y ago
I am their target demo and have been completely sucked in to it. Pinterest is addictive and engaging and completely enjoyable. It's the first place I go when I am having a bad day. This is one of the most exciting sites I have seen in a long time. My friends and I can't keep off of it. Monetization will be a breeze. This demo doesn't get upset about ads, especially if they're relevant. And ads are just the LCD, no-brainer way to monetize. There is huge potential here. I just don't understand why they need so much money. Jeeez, what are they spending it on?
mrchess 15y ago
Pinterest has existed for many years as a sub-product of a website called Lime Life called MySnaps (http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html). It is essentially the exact same thing as Pinterest except that MySnaps but is not a standalone product, nor is not as "clean" as Pinterest's implementation. I only know about MySnaps as I once got a freelance e-mail about a two years ago from someone asking me to recreate MySnaps for them but I shrugged it off. Makes me wonder if it was the Pinterest guys ;) It's really interesting how marketing, and presentation can make a product more popular than your competitors. Other companies with success like this include Quizlet, and Facebook. EDIT: But now thinking about it, isn't this essentially Delicious all over again as a different mutation?
chsonnu 15y ago
Looks like less engaging 4chan that just happens to have a female demographic.

49 points by noelsequeira 15y ago

I have not seen my wife so engaged with a site or mobile app since Facebook and possibly Angry Birds. That's when I knew Pinterest was going to be huge. Good for them on raising this round. I think the path to monetization will be a no-brainer as well. Contrast that with the folks as Svpply (I heard hopes for them for early on) who sit around saying "They’ve (pinterest) locked themselves into a niche community of 22-35yr old women" while Pinterest is absolutely blowing up and eating their lunch. Very stupid and short-sighted view IMO. http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-competing-with-sort-of http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/10452105095/who-svpply-is-com... Take note on what your spouse/kids/SO spend their time engaged in.

rdouble 15y ago
It's true. SVPPLY is mostly a bunch of dudes who all like the same boring JCrew-meets-Hypebeast dad wear. Not an awful market but nowhere near as big as "women age 20-35."
- callmeed 15y ago
  Right, but I also already see Pinterest moving out of that niche ... even I have an account now.
natgordon 15y ago
From the article you posted from by Svpply blog: "It’s going to be very difficult for them to grow beyond puppies and photos of Ryan Gosling." Wow. What a complete disregard for women as a desirable demographic. When companies act like this it's an opportunity for the rest of us. I've been using pinterest the same way I use twitter; as social media for my business (whose target demographic is women 22-35).
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  as social media for my business I wish I could say "OMG", but HN wouldn't allow me. This is exactly what I was afraid of when I found Pinterest: marketers. This is the start of a decline.
  - salemh 15y ago
    Why so? The Twitter deluge of SM marketing? (I'm trying to figure out your concern).
    - rokhayakebe 15y ago
      When people start to promote their products on places like this, they end dominating the content.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
I am a dude. Pinterest gets me in touch with both my creative, and apparently now, feminine side. I like it so much I decide I will build another site around it this weekend.
davepeck 15y ago
My girlfriend found Pinterest via Ravelry, a knitting social network. Not sure which of the two she spends more time on at the moment, but pretty sure most of her online time is on one or the other. I think Ravelry is an impressive (and, oddly, rarely spoken of) bootstrapping success story.
adrianparsons 15y ago
Agreed. My girlfriend, who totally eschews anything social media related, is completely wrapped up in Pinterest. If I could buy stock I would.
patio11 15y ago
locked themselves into a niche community of 22-35yr old women This is like being stranded on a deserted island surrounded by a blue ocean made out of money.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  And there aren't very many other islands in the ocean. It's a huge demographic that virtually nobody has successfully targeted.

iambot 15y ago

Congrats to the pinterest team, perhaps they can invest in more servers now ;P

pumblechook 15y ago

So it's a photo sharing site?

diolpah 15y ago
Yes, but with links. So it's definitely worth billions. Edit: Now that I've actually looked at the site to ensure I wasn't speaking out of ignorance, I noticed that the external links are not rel="nofollow". This will be a brilliant breeding ground for SEO spam.
- mark_up 15y ago
  I'm always happy to see that. Using rel="nofollow" as a spam deterrent is not ideal, and undermines the vision of the internet as a www.

angelbob 15y ago

If they raised $25 million while valued at $200 million, and earlier raised $10 million, presumably at a much lower valuation... That doesn't leave the company a huge amount of equity and control, does it?

adient 15y ago
It was $10 million based on $40 million valuation. Combined with the latest investment, it seems a majority percentage of equity would still belong to the founders. Well past successful at a $200 million valuation, for sure.

sahillavingia 15y ago

They're killing it. Glad to have helped found it.

jamesjyu 15y ago
Care to elaborate?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

zacharyz 15y ago

"The start-up, which has no revenue to speak of yet" This is the aspect of the site that always made me scratch my head and say "huh?" It is no doubt a well designed site that engages women. Despite being in beta and invite only I know a bunch of women who are really into it. I don't think being engaging is enough though - where do they go from here? How do they actually justify the valuation? Are they going to have "paid" posts for advertising? Are they going to some how sell the data mined from their users? Paid accounts? This site seems like it is going to be even harder to monetize than reddit.

diolpah 15y ago
I'll take a wild guess, predicated on the fact that twitter is another social platform that's difficult to monetize: sponsored pinboards. My company would pay to have "sponsored pinboards" all day long if the net ROI was positive. But that's a huge "if".
- ericsantos89 15y ago
  I think that pinterest needs to be careful on how many of these "sponsored pinboards" they have. It is currently something cool and hip, but if the ratio of "sponsored pinboards" and user pinboards isn't correct, they can turn off a lot of users.
KevinEldon 15y ago
I can vouch for the engages women... Pinterest has the secret sauce. My wife and her friends absolutely love it and get a lot of value and inspiration from the photos and links. At first glance my thought was that it would be an amazing advertising platform. Mix in the user generated pinned photos with high quality targeted photos of products women are interested in buying and you've got some potential magic. Again, using my wife as a reference, she's taken several ideas she's picked up on Pinterest and applied them to recipes, decorations, clothing, house design ideas (we're in the early stages of designing our new home), and travel ideas. She's not one to jump on the latest thing, so it surprised me how effectively Pinterest hooked her.
rgrieselhuber 15y ago

kbd 15y ago

One of my female friends is obsessed with this site. I don't get it, but then I'm not their demographic.

rgrieselhuber 15y ago

I remember meeting Ben in Palo Alto last year when he was still figuring things out and trying to raise money. Sounds like it's been amazing year since then. Congrats guys. :-)

rokhayakebe 15y ago
when he was still figuring things out I would like to hear a bit more about this. Did they start with a different product or idea?
- rgrieselhuber 15y ago
  No, it was the Pinterest you see today but I think they only had a core user group and were figuring out how to make it grow from there.

knarf55 15y ago

Congrats to the team who built such an addicting product to users. Here's hoping that you won't get comfortable with that money now and keep innovating! :)

timjahn 15y ago

Are we really congratulating a "company" that makes no revenue on raising money again? When will it stop?

GBKS 15y ago

It's great to see all this action in the social commerce space. With Pinterest, Polyvore, Svpply, Fancy, Weheartit, Wookmark, Wanelo, Sumally, et al it will be interesting to see if there will be a big winner, or if we will end up with several players for different demographics and more targeted products.

usaar333 15y ago

I always find it incredibly amazing to wander in to a wildly popular site that no one I know uses. It's a sad testament to how incredibly isolated hackers can be.

girlvinyl 15y ago

I am their target demo and have been completely sucked in to it. Pinterest is addictive and engaging and completely enjoyable. It's the first place I go when I am having a bad day. This is one of the most exciting sites I have seen in a long time. My friends and I can't keep off of it. Monetization will be a breeze. This demo doesn't get upset about ads, especially if they're relevant. And ads are just the LCD, no-brainer way to monetize. There is huge potential here. I just don't understand why they need so much money. Jeeez, what are they spending it on?

mrchess 15y ago

Pinterest has existed for many years as a sub-product of a website called Lime Life called MySnaps (http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html http://www.limelife.com/bookmarklet.html). It is essentially the exact same thing as Pinterest except that MySnaps but is not a standalone product, nor is not as "clean" as Pinterest's implementation. I only know about MySnaps as I once got a freelance e-mail about a two years ago from someone asking me to recreate MySnaps for them but I shrugged it off. Makes me wonder if it was the Pinterest guys ;) It's really interesting how marketing, and presentation can make a product more popular than your competitors. Other companies with success like this include Quizlet, and Facebook. EDIT: But now thinking about it, isn't this essentially Delicious all over again as a different mutation?

chsonnu 15y ago

Looks like less engaging 4chan that just happens to have a female demographic.