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Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation

mtjl79 14y ago
Normally I am not one to comment on fundraising, and I have stayed out of the whole "bubble" debate. But, honestly, this is really getting a little out of hand now. The whole funding situation is getting really frothy. $1.5b pretty much prices them out of any real acquisition now for the most part. So is Pinterest going to go IPO? Where do they go from here? That's the question of the day.
- joering2 14y ago
  I won't tell you where they going. But I know the more people will pin unique, cool photos they stumbled upon, the more artists, photographers and content owners will demand either their share, or take down. In this another debate of "is this a bubble", something interesting came to my mind. I thing the issue here is that any online real estate that made it big, made it huge because they used the latest technology available. Think YouTube. When it started, barely anyone knew how to program flash and have a container to upload 5MB file and it could be coded in different movie codecs and youtube would read it anyways. This was definitely pushing the envelope! The technology was new, but it let you display videos and thats what counted. I think with the new technology coming in, like HTML5, etc, there will be new websites coming out and grabbing huge audience based on this new technology. So in other words, whomever is betting $1,500 millions on Pinterest, is like betting that nothing new will be invented over the web. This is like buying GeoCites, because nobody is sitting in garage developing WordPress 1.0. On buying MySpace because there is no Facebook. I hope you get my drift...
- fruchtose 14y ago
  I think the natural path for Pinterest will be to merge with Groupon, another shopping-related site and one that has survived an IPO--at least for now. This new site will combine the deals of Groupon with the design of Pinterest. Users will coupons, which are automatically pinned to the appropriate boards with automatically chosen photos. Of course, Pinterest is all about design, which is why Groupon will also have to acquire Instragram. This will allow the merged company to select the right photo for any coupon and, if necessary, saturate the yellows, unfocus the background, and add a creatively misaligned border. That night your friends enjoyed the half-price alcohol they bought at Jerry's Drive-In Liquor will look extra cool when the photo has been processed through the "1977" filter. And on the plus side, Groupon/Pinterest/Instagram gets to keep it for their next liquor-oriented deal, giving them free advertising material. It's too early to tell what this new supergroup of startups will be called, but I want some credit if it becomes Groupstagram. I'm only half-kidding, of course.
  - CharlieA 14y ago
    I don't know about the half kidding...it seems like you might legitimately be on to something there in the area of private deal "experiences" for you and close friends. But I'm thinking, more so than Pinterest it's closer to "Path" where you and your small network of close friends collectively get a deal (at Jerry's liquor, lovely example) then post cute photos of your night/experience (sans the trip on the porcelain bus) which become public on "Jerry's Drive-In Liquor" or whatever, and exposes the deal to other people in the private networks of those who were in your private network... a sort of "local viral" marketing effect which works as advertising and as the regular "look how awesome my saturday night was" that we (what? just me?) use Facebook/Instagram for anyway. I think it perfectly combines the innate desire to show off and receive value while maintaining an air of exclusivity plus the whole validation thing, from strangers and friends alike.
- inthewoods 14y ago
  Get bought by Amazon or Google in my mind - they have stock to do it, and it would benefit either of them (although less for Google). I could see Amazon buying them as, essentially, infrastructure for driving ecommerce sales.
  - joering2 14y ago
    they just raised a round on 1.5B valuation. Just exactly how much money you think Amazon or Google would be willing to spend on this deal? I would assume that if they just raised that round, the would not talk about anything less than 10X. I don't think neither Amazon nor Google would pay 15B for a company, regardless how much traffic they are getting. For that amount, and knowing Google, they would rather build their own product.
    - inthewoods 14y ago
      Why would you assume it would have to be 10x? But I agree with your broader point that it would have to have amazing metrics to support that valuation on purchase. Instagram, from my point of view, was as much as defensive move as anything else - not sure there would be the same driver here.
zbowling 14y ago
I cheerfully await several more "Are we in a bubble?" blog posts to get posed to HN shortly after this.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  These days, I cheerfully await any flame or karma bait posts that can come from any brand or celebrity name post. Bring on the "do(n't) learn to not use semicolons on privacy-hating Facebook or ship-jumpinging Google and (don't) hack Github" posts.
abijlani 14y ago
The justification for this frothy valuation is that somehow they will turn the browsers of pictures into buyers of products. It is a difficult task and wish them luck but I still don't understand why they would need $120 MM to accomplish it.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Why is that the justification exactly? Seems like they have a variety of monetization options. That's one, but it's not the one I was thinking of and it would require a lot more work with more risk than other alternatives.
- dcaranda 14y ago
  We don't know if some of the $120MM is for secondary / cashing out existing investors / employees.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  "Turning the browsers of pictures into buyers of products" is an excellent turn of phrase, but I think it kind of misses the point. In actuality, Pinterest is about to become the HSN of the internet. It plays to all of Facebook's weaknesses: - Pinterest makes money on sales rather than ads, through referral links - Pinterest makes identical money on users with accounts and anonymous users - Pinterest has exactly the users who have money and want to spend it - Pinterest runs on greed, envy and materialism rather than lust and boredom It will be interesting to see how it plays out. They've already had a big setback in that they were rewriting or inserting referral links and they had to stop. I'm not sure what the conception is moving forward, but I'm sure $120M will help them figure it out. Unlike a lot of the other big names being bandied around now, there is a sense that they're trying to build a company rather than find the fastest largest way to sell out.
- mibbitier 14y ago
  They need it to IPO or to sell to a bigger fool.
cletus 14y ago
Well I'm going to head off the predictable and boring "bubble" comments and say this: Pinterest has real value and a clear path to monetization through affiliate and/or advertising revenue. It's really a stupidly simple idea (essentially scrapbooking on the Web) executed incredibly well. Is it worth $1.5B? I don't know. I would say it's definitely worth more than Instagram for whatever that's worth (not a lot). I guess we'd need stats on number of active users, engagement and revenue to make that determination--something we're not likely to get. The only concerning point to me is that that it's foreign money, only because foreign money seems to be less discerning, at least based on DST and similar investments. Anyway, congrats to the team. They've done exceptionally well.
- mtjl79 14y ago
  I do agree with you - this possibly has real potential. BUT I think they need more time to answer these questions: - Is this a fad, or is Pinterest here to stay? - Can they really pump up revenues the way they think they can? And can they do it fast? It's like buying condoms before the first date. (Sorry for the inappropriate inference.) I just feel like they needed more time and history before pulling in these types of numbers.
  - AJ007 14y ago
    When I first saw Pinterest's exponential traffic growth sequence, it altered the way I believed women think. But at the end of the day, its just a very well executed image board, marketed to women. The concept in itself is not a fad, but they may need to add features that make a user feel penalized for moving elsewhere. (e.g. the network effect from Facebook, or a users library with Kindle)
  - kenrikm 14y ago
    It's like buying condoms before the first date. (Sorry for the inappropriate inference.) Am I the only one that thinks that's a good idea? Seriously, people in cars cause accidents, accidents in cars cause people.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  "Essentially scrapbooking on the Web" A better analogy is probably delicious for women, at least in terms of having a mental framework to estimate the value.
pitdesi 14y ago
If you want some justification, read this http://www.shopify.com/blog/6058268-how-pinterest-drives-ecommerce-sales http://www.shopify.com/blog/6058268-how-pinterest-drives-eco... TL;DR - Pinterest drives as much ecommerce traffic as twitter with significantly more purchase intent
- rbn 14y ago
  I saw an interview with Gary Vaynerchuck in the Nordic eCommerce summit and one of the things that stuck out for me was when he said that "Pinterest sells more wine for them than Twitter and Facebook combined"
  - jacktea65 14y ago
    Is that like "my monthly revenues are 2000% month-over-month" when your total revenues are $200?
    - redslazer 14y ago
      The thing is if your revenues are up 2000% month-over-month and you start with $200 the next month you have $4000, then $80,000 etc. Those are pretty nice numbers very quickly.
- borism 14y ago
  twitter drives any e-commerce traffic!?
  - maukdaddy 14y ago
    There are a lot of affiliate and spam bots...
- inthewoods 14y ago
  According to the blog post, consumers are 10% more likely to buy vs. Facebook - well, that's a decent lift stat but it does, as someone else mentioned, depend on the base. Then, later in the article we learn that in Sept 11 they had 75 total orders (across 26,000 shops) via pinterest, then 320 orders in April 2012. Yes, that's more or less 4x the Sept number and does indicate an upward trend - but that's still a very, very small number, and the growth rate is unlikely to continue. Pinterest is definitely interesting - I'll be trying it out for some eCommerce, but I'm not expecting much at this point.
jacktea65 14y ago
Pinterest got this valuation because their story is that it's related to ecommerce. The thing is it doesn't seem like that's turning out to be very true at all. It seems like what has made Pinterest really successful is that it's basically 9gag/tumblr photo/meme sharing. If you look at their content it's mostly of that type. Products seem to be a relatively tiny portion of the content. I'm sure they can make a nice chunk of money off that content, but it's unlikely to be a really big business I think, especially if their content skews more and more towards memes/photo sharing which it has been. I think we'll look back on Pinterest as an over-hyped fad I'm sorry to say. People love to rag on it but Groupon will probably look very good in comparison.
- koeselitz 14y ago
  A counterpoint: Lately there's been a lot of discussion about some difficulties Facebook has had in the advertising sector. Jason Bigler of Google was snarking about this earlier today. [1] I realize this is largely because all the snarks come out of the woodwork before an IPO, but to a certain degree - they're right. Facebook just isn't a place that puts people into a "transactional mindset." People go to interact, and they kind of seem to like pictures, but only insofar as they're sharing pictures that are (a) funny or (b) very personal and of themselves or their pets. Pinterest is different. People go on Pinterest to look at pictures of stuff that they like or that they think is cool. Yeah, I can't get into the Pinterest thing either, but I know a few people who do, and I have to say that that model - getting people to amass collections of stuff they think is neat or cool - is much, much more likely to put people in an buyer mindset than most social networking models. And as a few people have shared above, it seems as though advertising on Pinterest has a lot of momentum; many companies have reported extremely good results. My feeling is that this will continue. The whole metaphor of Pinterest seems to be extremely similar to shopping and acquiring - collecting stuff, putting it on your page, browsing other people's collections. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/gleeful-google-exec-takes-a-shot-at-facebooks-lousy-ad-business-2012-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/gleeful-google-exec-takes-a-s...
  - cageface 14y ago
    But are people posting photos of the kinds of things that sell in large volumes and generate a lot of revenue? The attraction of a lot of these sites is that they initially feel like a cosy insider community but that feeling fades fast as they become mainstream. This is happening to FB already. Are people going to be posting and clicking on pictures of ketchup or cleaning products or life insurance policies?
koeselitz 14y ago
Facebook got a $15B valuation from investors including Microsoft way back in 2007 [1] when they had only 50 million users (MySpace had 100 million users) and absolutely no advertising infrastructure in place whatsoever; they got this valuation and made $240 million in investor funding before they'd made a penny directly in advertising. Meanwhile, Pinterest already has amassed well over 10 million users in a very short time, sees enough hits daily to be a top-ten social networking site, and already has a number of advertising arrangements, particularly with retailers like the Gap and Nordstrom. If this is a bubble, it's been around for a while; and this doesn't seem like the most sterling example. If anything, this is less stunning than valuations of tech companies we've been seeing for many, many years. [1] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/10/facebook_future http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/10/facebook_...
- bentlegen 14y ago
  That $15 billion number was inflated. It was valued at $10 billion in January 2009, at which point it had "made a penny directly in advertising". It also had 175 million users the following month, or 17.5x the number of users of Pinterest. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124335674958054943.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124335674958054943.html http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-175-million-users-continuing-to-grow-by-600k-usersday/ http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-...
  - muhfuhkuh 14y ago
    So, pricing it around 1/10th the price for 1/17th the users is execessive, but it should be worth at least a billion, right?
    - Travis 14y ago
      All else equal, maybe. You know what screams "bubble" to me? Everyone defending valuations by comparing the company du jour to Facebook. It's like arguing that Webvan wasn't overvalued because Amazon.com has been successful. Unless a seriously meaningful connection between Facebook and Pinterest is drawn, the comparison is meaningless.
petercooper 14y ago
2005: Yahoo acquired Flickr for $35m, Delicious for $15-20m; 2012: Pinterest is now valued at $1500m, Instagram at $1000m. I'd rather have 75 del.icio.us's than 1 Pinterest but.. I readily admit I'm getting old ;-) So my question is, did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top?
- runako 14y ago
  >> did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top? More likely Option 3: Vastly more people are connected to the Internet, which now has far superior paths to monetization.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I imagine there is some of that involved but perhaps more importantly is the overall usage of the Internet by those people (i.e. time spent online, using mobile devices, etc)? On the people count front, Google's numbers show %-wise between 2006 and 2010 we went from 68.21% to 79.3% population wise (and population generally went up 4%) so there was a growth in the user base but not one to justify 40x growth in value on similar headlining companies IMHO.
    - runako 14y ago
      I think we may be talking about two different sets of numbers. It sounds like you're quoting GOOG's penetration into US (or OECD) total population. (I'm guessing from the percentages.) I'm saying that the aggregate number of people using the Internet has grown much, much faster. I don't have exact numbers handy, but it's certainly possible that the total Internet population has grown more than 100% over this period. You also raise an interesting point about frequency of usage, which would also contribute to valuations. In 2012 it doesn't require huge leaps to see how a company Pinterest rapidly could get to revenue numbers that support this valuation. At YHOO's current revenue-multiple-margin mix, this would imply revenues of around $400m-$500m. I don't know what their revenues are now, but given their growth and reach I'd be surprised if investors didn't pay a higher multiple for Pinterest than for YHOO.
sskates 14y ago
For everyone talking about a bubble, 1.5B might actually be low. If you agree that Facebook is worth about 100B, according to Alexa, Pinterest is about 1/20th of the size by uniques (by pageviews it's about 1/30th). 1/20th means that Pinterest should be valued at about 5B, not 1.5B. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com
- jacktea65 14y ago
  Leaving out the fact that Alex's data is wildly inaccurate that is probably the worst possible way to try to value a company. The most obvious issue is that Pinterest has only been successful for a few months. There's a long list of Facebook apps that were hot for a while then dropped out of existence. Pinterest may still be added to that list.
- beedogs 14y ago
  What if you don't agree that Facebook is worth $100B?
- johnrob 14y ago
  Interestingly, most bubbles end in a scenario where the decline of a popular asset causes a domino effect through out the system. Silicon valley might by in a 'facebook bubble' - we anchor all of our prices on facebook, and then hope like hell that it isn't over valued.
- alanfang 14y ago
  Alexa traffic measurements are too unreliable to base any kind value estimation on.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  You have precisely identified the bubble, inadvertently: Why are we determining what these companies are worth based on things like number of uniques and users, rather than the actual amount of revenue they bring in? Users, in-and-of themselves, are useless. Revenue is always and everywhere the end goal. Somehow we've begun to take at face value that more users=more money, and I don't think that's the case.
nchuhoai 14y ago
Two points people should be thinking about: Yes, Pinterest has a good monetization scheme compared to Facebook (http://cdixon.org/2012/05/15/facebooks-business-model/ http://cdixon.org/2012/05/15/facebooks-business-model/), because of the natural placement of affiliate links and purchase intent. But, Pinterest is so new (relatively), we don't really know whether it's just a fad or something to stay and I oftentimes feel like that risk of being replaced or simply forgotton about is not taken into account. We have seen dozens of growing companies that ended up nowhere, the sheer number of users just covers that up these days.
- notatoad 14y ago
  >But, Pinterest is so new (relatively), we don't really know whether it's just a fad or something to stay i think we can confidently say that it's a fad. social content aggregators don't last. it's just a fact of the industry. kudos to pinterest for collecting some cash while they're hot, but it's only a matter of time before they go the same way as all their predecessors.
  - emmett 14y ago
    Would you care to set any kind of specific timeline on your very confident sounding prediction? Put your (reputational) money down?
atularora 14y ago
It is 100M. Not 120. AllThingsD corrected their headline
ricardobeat 14y ago
Serious question: how does a company like pinterest spend $100 million? That's enough money to keep SpaceX running for an year, hundreds of engineers building space rockets. They don't seem to have, or need, a sales force. They hire mostly developers and designers, and I imagine having hundreds of them isn't of much use unless their service will change radically in the future. Ideas?
- moocow01 14y ago
  I'd imagine a notable chunk is likely going to servers and infrastructure costs and another chunk will be reserved for current or potential legal expenditures. But yes I agree its hard to understand how they are able to put all of that money to work - probably a lot goes into an "emergency fund".
  - frabcus 14y ago
    Acquiring competitors, international expansion, a team to do deals with ecommerce sites.
cheebla 14y ago
Anyone have any insight on what they're gonna spend it on? I don't know anything about valuations but why would a company like Pinterest need 100 million dollars cash?
napolux 14y ago
The word "bubble" (counting this comment) appears 12 times in this page :)
ironchief 14y ago
Numbers for thought Playing a thought game, let us say the money is supposed to last 18 months till the next round (with a higher valuation!?) Let us also assume engineers cost a flat rate of 100,000 per year. 120,000,000 dollars / 1.5 years (18 months) / 100,000 per engineer per year = 800 engineers for 18 months or 400 for 3 years Pinterest: 31 employees http://pinterest.com/about/team/ http://pinterest.com/about/team/ 2.9 million DAU (Daily active users) 11.4 million MAU (Monthly active users) http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/274266067164-pinterest http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/274266067164-pinterest Instagram: 13 employees 2.0 million DAU 16.8 million MAU http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/124024574287414-instagram http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/124024574287414-instagr... They must envision hyper growth continuing ~14% a month (to see 10x increase over 18 months).
- emmett 14y ago
  You're missing monetization. I love instagram, but it's a lot harder to monetize than a service which amounts to a giant online shopping guide.
sparknlaunch12 14y ago
So essentially, if you can create a community with enough followers, referrals and photos you can make a billion dollar company. They suggest Pinterest will use the money to expand internationally. What does this mean? Buy infrastructure internationally or just pursue overseas advertisers? If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact.
- jarek 14y ago
  > Hacker News with photos Already been discussed two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276030 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276030
- joering2 14y ago
  > If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact. I think you are totally not getting whats the value in HN. Seriously, do you see at least one picture on this site, except their logo? If anything, it would be interesting to see Pinterest for HN comments. So often I miss out reading amazing comment because I either skip it or did not come back to the board when it showed up. Perhaps an idea where hackers could "pin" awesome comments to their boards and then I could lookup hackers by their karma (or karma/their lifetime here to see high karma on average per post) and follow hackers that pin awesome comments (so I can read more amazing comments in less time, with a "comb"), perhaps that idea would fly. But not photos for HN for cry out loud.
whateveeerr 14y ago
When will you pipe-greaming boring cunts realise that when the stock market crashes, people's lifes are at stake ?? I feel sorry for you guys. You have created a soap bubble, namely ignorance, around your selfs.
kingsidharth 14y ago
So by this math, if I buy a company's 0.001% for $1000 its valuation becomes $1B? huh!
- kingsidharth 14y ago
  Don't just down vote, answer the question?
- BlackJack 14y ago
  Well if you bought a 0.001% stake for $1000, then the valuation would be $100M, not $1B. You probably mean either $10000 or 0.0001%. Regardless, that's the idea, yes. If a company had a million shares, and you bought one for $1000, you're essentially saying that the present value each of those shares is worth $1000, so the company is worth $1B.
cageface 14y ago
I think this really cements the notion that design is king now. Just about all the big startup hits lately are way more about design than any serious engineering. Sure there's some smart people making things like Facebook scale but the new crop of winners are all about UI.
- idleloops 14y ago
  Which is odd, because it's visual design feels uncomfortable for me. On my laptop which is a 15" Thinkpad with a 1280x800 display - I can't even read the text on Pinterest without zooming. It's also too bright for my eyes. The multi-columns I find hideous to try and track (I can't stand Facebook's timeline for the same reason - which shows as two columns on my screen.)
- ErikHuisman 14y ago
  Consumer focused products are about user experience as it should be. Serious engineering can only help achieve this goal.
barrynolan 14y ago
Outside Facebook, Pinterest is the only app the my wife, and most of her friends, use. It's not a tech early adopter story. And it has obvious monetization given the taste graph its curating, and affiliate opportunities.
Porter_423 14y ago
Fascinating! I'm interested to see if Rakuten's Kobo purchase and Pinterest investment are parts of a longer-term, bigger-stakes game.
vagarwa 14y ago
1.go to pinterest.com 2.make sure, you are not logged in. 3.search 'food' With all the money they have raised, can't they figure out a solution to this most juvenile of spams!!! It of-course doesn't matter since they still managed a $1.5BN valuation
akrymski 14y ago
Sites like this seem to indicate there are tonnes of fake accounts on Pinterest: www.buyrealpinterestfollowers.com My guess is that the majority of accounts are fake, and most posts are uploaded by spammers. However, this may be not much of a problem - like the HN / Digg / Reddit community the core Pinterest community is enough to rise the "good" stuff to the top I guess. If "social filtering" does work better than Google's algorithmic filtering and can't be gamed - Pinterest will succeed. In some ways Amazon has had similar functionality for a while, called the "wish-list". They could easily have build something similar based on their existing data.
- DanBC 14y ago
  I've not seen fake profiles or fake posts on my Pinterest. Maybe the fakes are good enough to look real?
freshfey 14y ago
Do the investors get to see the company's exact exact numbers (DAU, MAU, Revenue, etc) before they invest? I assume they do, but wouldn't those numbers get to the public somehow?
giltotherescue 14y ago
What about all the copyright holders, such as Getty Images, that are circling the water, waiting for Pinterest to start making money so the rights holders can charge licensing fees? Any business model they come up with has to factor in the costs of legally acquiring all the photos they use.
va_coder 14y ago
Is it possible to short stock in a non public company?
- marvin 14y ago
  Nope. It's not even possibly to buy any unless you're an accredited investor.
bbayer 14y ago
sharing pictures always works (imageshack,flicker,imgur,instagram,pinterest...)
usatechie 14y ago
Get the money now before it fizzles!

Normally I am not one to comment on fundraising, and I have stayed out of the whole "bubble" debate. But, honestly, this is really getting a little out of hand now. The whole funding situation is getting really frothy. $1.5b pretty much prices them out of any real acquisition now for the most part. So is Pinterest going to go IPO? Where do they go from here? That's the question of the day.

joering2 14y ago
I won't tell you where they going. But I know the more people will pin unique, cool photos they stumbled upon, the more artists, photographers and content owners will demand either their share, or take down. In this another debate of "is this a bubble", something interesting came to my mind. I thing the issue here is that any online real estate that made it big, made it huge because they used the latest technology available. Think YouTube. When it started, barely anyone knew how to program flash and have a container to upload 5MB file and it could be coded in different movie codecs and youtube would read it anyways. This was definitely pushing the envelope! The technology was new, but it let you display videos and thats what counted. I think with the new technology coming in, like HTML5, etc, there will be new websites coming out and grabbing huge audience based on this new technology. So in other words, whomever is betting $1,500 millions on Pinterest, is like betting that nothing new will be invented over the web. This is like buying GeoCites, because nobody is sitting in garage developing WordPress 1.0. On buying MySpace because there is no Facebook. I hope you get my drift...
fruchtose 14y ago
I think the natural path for Pinterest will be to merge with Groupon, another shopping-related site and one that has survived an IPO--at least for now. This new site will combine the deals of Groupon with the design of Pinterest. Users will coupons, which are automatically pinned to the appropriate boards with automatically chosen photos. Of course, Pinterest is all about design, which is why Groupon will also have to acquire Instragram. This will allow the merged company to select the right photo for any coupon and, if necessary, saturate the yellows, unfocus the background, and add a creatively misaligned border. That night your friends enjoyed the half-price alcohol they bought at Jerry's Drive-In Liquor will look extra cool when the photo has been processed through the "1977" filter. And on the plus side, Groupon/Pinterest/Instagram gets to keep it for their next liquor-oriented deal, giving them free advertising material. It's too early to tell what this new supergroup of startups will be called, but I want some credit if it becomes Groupstagram. I'm only half-kidding, of course.
- CharlieA 14y ago
  I don't know about the half kidding...it seems like you might legitimately be on to something there in the area of private deal "experiences" for you and close friends. But I'm thinking, more so than Pinterest it's closer to "Path" where you and your small network of close friends collectively get a deal (at Jerry's liquor, lovely example) then post cute photos of your night/experience (sans the trip on the porcelain bus) which become public on "Jerry's Drive-In Liquor" or whatever, and exposes the deal to other people in the private networks of those who were in your private network... a sort of "local viral" marketing effect which works as advertising and as the regular "look how awesome my saturday night was" that we (what? just me?) use Facebook/Instagram for anyway. I think it perfectly combines the innate desire to show off and receive value while maintaining an air of exclusivity plus the whole validation thing, from strangers and friends alike.
inthewoods 14y ago
Get bought by Amazon or Google in my mind - they have stock to do it, and it would benefit either of them (although less for Google). I could see Amazon buying them as, essentially, infrastructure for driving ecommerce sales.
- joering2 14y ago
  they just raised a round on 1.5B valuation. Just exactly how much money you think Amazon or Google would be willing to spend on this deal? I would assume that if they just raised that round, the would not talk about anything less than 10X. I don't think neither Amazon nor Google would pay 15B for a company, regardless how much traffic they are getting. For that amount, and knowing Google, they would rather build their own product.
  - inthewoods 14y ago
    Why would you assume it would have to be 10x? But I agree with your broader point that it would have to have amazing metrics to support that valuation on purchase. Instagram, from my point of view, was as much as defensive move as anything else - not sure there would be the same driver here.

zbowling 14y ago

I cheerfully await several more "Are we in a bubble?" blog posts to get posed to HN shortly after this.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
These days, I cheerfully await any flame or karma bait posts that can come from any brand or celebrity name post. Bring on the "do(n't) learn to not use semicolons on privacy-hating Facebook or ship-jumpinging Google and (don't) hack Github" posts.

abijlani 14y ago

The justification for this frothy valuation is that somehow they will turn the browsers of pictures into buyers of products. It is a difficult task and wish them luck but I still don't understand why they would need $120 MM to accomplish it.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
Why is that the justification exactly? Seems like they have a variety of monetization options. That's one, but it's not the one I was thinking of and it would require a lot more work with more risk than other alternatives.
dcaranda 14y ago
We don't know if some of the $120MM is for secondary / cashing out existing investors / employees.
fusiongyro 14y ago
"Turning the browsers of pictures into buyers of products" is an excellent turn of phrase, but I think it kind of misses the point. In actuality, Pinterest is about to become the HSN of the internet. It plays to all of Facebook's weaknesses: - Pinterest makes money on sales rather than ads, through referral links - Pinterest makes identical money on users with accounts and anonymous users - Pinterest has exactly the users who have money and want to spend it - Pinterest runs on greed, envy and materialism rather than lust and boredom It will be interesting to see how it plays out. They've already had a big setback in that they were rewriting or inserting referral links and they had to stop. I'm not sure what the conception is moving forward, but I'm sure $120M will help them figure it out. Unlike a lot of the other big names being bandied around now, there is a sense that they're trying to build a company rather than find the fastest largest way to sell out.
mibbitier 14y ago
They need it to IPO or to sell to a bigger fool.

cletus 14y ago

Well I'm going to head off the predictable and boring "bubble" comments and say this: Pinterest has real value and a clear path to monetization through affiliate and/or advertising revenue. It's really a stupidly simple idea (essentially scrapbooking on the Web) executed incredibly well. Is it worth $1.5B? I don't know. I would say it's definitely worth more than Instagram for whatever that's worth (not a lot). I guess we'd need stats on number of active users, engagement and revenue to make that determination--something we're not likely to get. The only concerning point to me is that that it's foreign money, only because foreign money seems to be less discerning, at least based on DST and similar investments. Anyway, congrats to the team. They've done exceptionally well.

mtjl79 14y ago
I do agree with you - this possibly has real potential. BUT I think they need more time to answer these questions: - Is this a fad, or is Pinterest here to stay? - Can they really pump up revenues the way they think they can? And can they do it fast? It's like buying condoms before the first date. (Sorry for the inappropriate inference.) I just feel like they needed more time and history before pulling in these types of numbers.
- AJ007 14y ago
  When I first saw Pinterest's exponential traffic growth sequence, it altered the way I believed women think. But at the end of the day, its just a very well executed image board, marketed to women. The concept in itself is not a fad, but they may need to add features that make a user feel penalized for moving elsewhere. (e.g. the network effect from Facebook, or a users library with Kindle)
- kenrikm 14y ago
  It's like buying condoms before the first date. (Sorry for the inappropriate inference.) Am I the only one that thinks that's a good idea? Seriously, people in cars cause accidents, accidents in cars cause people.
Alex3917 14y ago
"Essentially scrapbooking on the Web" A better analogy is probably delicious for women, at least in terms of having a mental framework to estimate the value.

pitdesi 14y ago

If you want some justification, read this http://www.shopify.com/blog/6058268-how-pinterest-drives-ecommerce-sales http://www.shopify.com/blog/6058268-how-pinterest-drives-eco... TL;DR - Pinterest drives as much ecommerce traffic as twitter with significantly more purchase intent

rbn 14y ago
I saw an interview with Gary Vaynerchuck in the Nordic eCommerce summit and one of the things that stuck out for me was when he said that "Pinterest sells more wine for them than Twitter and Facebook combined"
- jacktea65 14y ago
  Is that like "my monthly revenues are 2000% month-over-month" when your total revenues are $200?
  - redslazer 14y ago
    The thing is if your revenues are up 2000% month-over-month and you start with $200 the next month you have $4000, then $80,000 etc. Those are pretty nice numbers very quickly.
borism 14y ago
twitter drives any e-commerce traffic!?
- maukdaddy 14y ago
  There are a lot of affiliate and spam bots...
inthewoods 14y ago
According to the blog post, consumers are 10% more likely to buy vs. Facebook - well, that's a decent lift stat but it does, as someone else mentioned, depend on the base. Then, later in the article we learn that in Sept 11 they had 75 total orders (across 26,000 shops) via pinterest, then 320 orders in April 2012. Yes, that's more or less 4x the Sept number and does indicate an upward trend - but that's still a very, very small number, and the growth rate is unlikely to continue. Pinterest is definitely interesting - I'll be trying it out for some eCommerce, but I'm not expecting much at this point.

jacktea65 14y ago

Pinterest got this valuation because their story is that it's related to ecommerce. The thing is it doesn't seem like that's turning out to be very true at all. It seems like what has made Pinterest really successful is that it's basically 9gag/tumblr photo/meme sharing. If you look at their content it's mostly of that type. Products seem to be a relatively tiny portion of the content. I'm sure they can make a nice chunk of money off that content, but it's unlikely to be a really big business I think, especially if their content skews more and more towards memes/photo sharing which it has been. I think we'll look back on Pinterest as an over-hyped fad I'm sorry to say. People love to rag on it but Groupon will probably look very good in comparison.

koeselitz 14y ago
A counterpoint: Lately there's been a lot of discussion about some difficulties Facebook has had in the advertising sector. Jason Bigler of Google was snarking about this earlier today. [1] I realize this is largely because all the snarks come out of the woodwork before an IPO, but to a certain degree - they're right. Facebook just isn't a place that puts people into a "transactional mindset." People go to interact, and they kind of seem to like pictures, but only insofar as they're sharing pictures that are (a) funny or (b) very personal and of themselves or their pets. Pinterest is different. People go on Pinterest to look at pictures of stuff that they like or that they think is cool. Yeah, I can't get into the Pinterest thing either, but I know a few people who do, and I have to say that that model - getting people to amass collections of stuff they think is neat or cool - is much, much more likely to put people in an buyer mindset than most social networking models. And as a few people have shared above, it seems as though advertising on Pinterest has a lot of momentum; many companies have reported extremely good results. My feeling is that this will continue. The whole metaphor of Pinterest seems to be extremely similar to shopping and acquiring - collecting stuff, putting it on your page, browsing other people's collections. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/gleeful-google-exec-takes-a-shot-at-facebooks-lousy-ad-business-2012-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/gleeful-google-exec-takes-a-s...
- cageface 14y ago
  But are people posting photos of the kinds of things that sell in large volumes and generate a lot of revenue? The attraction of a lot of these sites is that they initially feel like a cosy insider community but that feeling fades fast as they become mainstream. This is happening to FB already. Are people going to be posting and clicking on pictures of ketchup or cleaning products or life insurance policies?

koeselitz 14y ago

Facebook got a $15B valuation from investors including Microsoft way back in 2007 [1] when they had only 50 million users (MySpace had 100 million users) and absolutely no advertising infrastructure in place whatsoever; they got this valuation and made $240 million in investor funding before they'd made a penny directly in advertising. Meanwhile, Pinterest already has amassed well over 10 million users in a very short time, sees enough hits daily to be a top-ten social networking site, and already has a number of advertising arrangements, particularly with retailers like the Gap and Nordstrom. If this is a bubble, it's been around for a while; and this doesn't seem like the most sterling example. If anything, this is less stunning than valuations of tech companies we've been seeing for many, many years. [1] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/10/facebook_future http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/10/facebook_...

bentlegen 14y ago
That $15 billion number was inflated. It was valued at $10 billion in January 2009, at which point it had "made a penny directly in advertising". It also had 175 million users the following month, or 17.5x the number of users of Pinterest. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124335674958054943.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124335674958054943.html http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-175-million-users-continuing-to-grow-by-600k-usersday/ http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-...
- muhfuhkuh 14y ago
  So, pricing it around 1/10th the price for 1/17th the users is execessive, but it should be worth at least a billion, right?
  - Travis 14y ago
    All else equal, maybe. You know what screams "bubble" to me? Everyone defending valuations by comparing the company du jour to Facebook. It's like arguing that Webvan wasn't overvalued because Amazon.com has been successful. Unless a seriously meaningful connection between Facebook and Pinterest is drawn, the comparison is meaningless.

petercooper 14y ago

2005: Yahoo acquired Flickr for $35m, Delicious for $15-20m; 2012: Pinterest is now valued at $1500m, Instagram at $1000m. I'd rather have 75 del.icio.us's than 1 Pinterest but.. I readily admit I'm getting old ;-) So my question is, did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top?

runako 14y ago
>> did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top? More likely Option 3: Vastly more people are connected to the Internet, which now has far superior paths to monetization.
- petercooper 14y ago
  I imagine there is some of that involved but perhaps more importantly is the overall usage of the Internet by those people (i.e. time spent online, using mobile devices, etc)? On the people count front, Google's numbers show %-wise between 2006 and 2010 we went from 68.21% to 79.3% population wise (and population generally went up 4%) so there was a growth in the user base but not one to justify 40x growth in value on similar headlining companies IMHO.
  - runako 14y ago
    I think we may be talking about two different sets of numbers. It sounds like you're quoting GOOG's penetration into US (or OECD) total population. (I'm guessing from the percentages.) I'm saying that the aggregate number of people using the Internet has grown much, much faster. I don't have exact numbers handy, but it's certainly possible that the total Internet population has grown more than 100% over this period. You also raise an interesting point about frequency of usage, which would also contribute to valuations. In 2012 it doesn't require huge leaps to see how a company Pinterest rapidly could get to revenue numbers that support this valuation. At YHOO's current revenue-multiple-margin mix, this would imply revenues of around $400m-$500m. I don't know what their revenues are now, but given their growth and reach I'd be surprised if investors didn't pay a higher multiple for Pinterest than for YHOO.

sskates 14y ago

For everyone talking about a bubble, 1.5B might actually be low. If you agree that Facebook is worth about 100B, according to Alexa, Pinterest is about 1/20th of the size by uniques (by pageviews it's about 1/30th). 1/20th means that Pinterest should be valued at about 5B, not 1.5B. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com

jacktea65 14y ago
Leaving out the fact that Alex's data is wildly inaccurate that is probably the worst possible way to try to value a company. The most obvious issue is that Pinterest has only been successful for a few months. There's a long list of Facebook apps that were hot for a while then dropped out of existence. Pinterest may still be added to that list.
beedogs 14y ago
What if you don't agree that Facebook is worth $100B?
johnrob 14y ago
Interestingly, most bubbles end in a scenario where the decline of a popular asset causes a domino effect through out the system. Silicon valley might by in a 'facebook bubble' - we anchor all of our prices on facebook, and then hope like hell that it isn't over valued.
alanfang 14y ago
Alexa traffic measurements are too unreliable to base any kind value estimation on.
tatsuke95 14y ago
You have precisely identified the bubble, inadvertently: Why are we determining what these companies are worth based on things like number of uniques and users, rather than the actual amount of revenue they bring in? Users, in-and-of themselves, are useless. Revenue is always and everywhere the end goal. Somehow we've begun to take at face value that more users=more money, and I don't think that's the case.

nchuhoai 14y ago

Two points people should be thinking about: Yes, Pinterest has a good monetization scheme compared to Facebook (http://cdixon.org/2012/05/15/facebooks-business-model/ http://cdixon.org/2012/05/15/facebooks-business-model/), because of the natural placement of affiliate links and purchase intent. But, Pinterest is so new (relatively), we don't really know whether it's just a fad or something to stay and I oftentimes feel like that risk of being replaced or simply forgotton about is not taken into account. We have seen dozens of growing companies that ended up nowhere, the sheer number of users just covers that up these days.

notatoad 14y ago
>But, Pinterest is so new (relatively), we don't really know whether it's just a fad or something to stay i think we can confidently say that it's a fad. social content aggregators don't last. it's just a fact of the industry. kudos to pinterest for collecting some cash while they're hot, but it's only a matter of time before they go the same way as all their predecessors.
- emmett 14y ago
  Would you care to set any kind of specific timeline on your very confident sounding prediction? Put your (reputational) money down?

atularora 14y ago

It is 100M. Not 120. AllThingsD corrected their headline

ricardobeat 14y ago

Serious question: how does a company like pinterest spend $100 million? That's enough money to keep SpaceX running for an year, hundreds of engineers building space rockets. They don't seem to have, or need, a sales force. They hire mostly developers and designers, and I imagine having hundreds of them isn't of much use unless their service will change radically in the future. Ideas?

moocow01 14y ago
I'd imagine a notable chunk is likely going to servers and infrastructure costs and another chunk will be reserved for current or potential legal expenditures. But yes I agree its hard to understand how they are able to put all of that money to work - probably a lot goes into an "emergency fund".
- frabcus 14y ago
  Acquiring competitors, international expansion, a team to do deals with ecommerce sites.

cheebla 14y ago

Anyone have any insight on what they're gonna spend it on? I don't know anything about valuations but why would a company like Pinterest need 100 million dollars cash?

napolux 14y ago

The word "bubble" (counting this comment) appears 12 times in this page :)

ironchief 14y ago

Numbers for thought Playing a thought game, let us say the money is supposed to last 18 months till the next round (with a higher valuation!?) Let us also assume engineers cost a flat rate of 100,000 per year. 120,000,000 dollars / 1.5 years (18 months) / 100,000 per engineer per year = 800 engineers for 18 months or 400 for 3 years Pinterest: 31 employees http://pinterest.com/about/team/ http://pinterest.com/about/team/ 2.9 million DAU (Daily active users) 11.4 million MAU (Monthly active users) http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/274266067164-pinterest http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/274266067164-pinterest Instagram: 13 employees 2.0 million DAU 16.8 million MAU http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/124024574287414-instagram http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/124024574287414-instagr... They must envision hyper growth continuing ~14% a month (to see 10x increase over 18 months).

emmett 14y ago
You're missing monetization. I love instagram, but it's a lot harder to monetize than a service which amounts to a giant online shopping guide.

sparknlaunch12 14y ago

So essentially, if you can create a community with enough followers, referrals and photos you can make a billion dollar company. They suggest Pinterest will use the money to expand internationally. What does this mean? Buy infrastructure internationally or just pursue overseas advertisers? If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact.

jarek 14y ago
> Hacker News with photos Already been discussed two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276030 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276030
joering2 14y ago
> If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact. I think you are totally not getting whats the value in HN. Seriously, do you see at least one picture on this site, except their logo? If anything, it would be interesting to see Pinterest for HN comments. So often I miss out reading amazing comment because I either skip it or did not come back to the board when it showed up. Perhaps an idea where hackers could "pin" awesome comments to their boards and then I could lookup hackers by their karma (or karma/their lifetime here to see high karma on average per post) and follow hackers that pin awesome comments (so I can read more amazing comments in less time, with a "comb"), perhaps that idea would fly. But not photos for HN for cry out loud.

whateveeerr 14y ago

When will you pipe-greaming boring cunts realise that when the stock market crashes, people's lifes are at stake ?? I feel sorry for you guys. You have created a soap bubble, namely ignorance, around your selfs.

kingsidharth 14y ago

So by this math, if I buy a company's 0.001% for $1000 its valuation becomes $1B? huh!

kingsidharth 14y ago
Don't just down vote, answer the question?
BlackJack 14y ago
Well if you bought a 0.001% stake for $1000, then the valuation would be $100M, not $1B. You probably mean either $10000 or 0.0001%. Regardless, that's the idea, yes. If a company had a million shares, and you bought one for $1000, you're essentially saying that the present value each of those shares is worth $1000, so the company is worth $1B.

cageface 14y ago

I think this really cements the notion that design is king now. Just about all the big startup hits lately are way more about design than any serious engineering. Sure there's some smart people making things like Facebook scale but the new crop of winners are all about UI.

idleloops 14y ago
Which is odd, because it's visual design feels uncomfortable for me. On my laptop which is a 15" Thinkpad with a 1280x800 display - I can't even read the text on Pinterest without zooming. It's also too bright for my eyes. The multi-columns I find hideous to try and track (I can't stand Facebook's timeline for the same reason - which shows as two columns on my screen.)
ErikHuisman 14y ago
Consumer focused products are about user experience as it should be. Serious engineering can only help achieve this goal.

barrynolan 14y ago

Outside Facebook, Pinterest is the only app the my wife, and most of her friends, use. It's not a tech early adopter story. And it has obvious monetization given the taste graph its curating, and affiliate opportunities.

Porter_423 14y ago

Fascinating! I'm interested to see if Rakuten's Kobo purchase and Pinterest investment are parts of a longer-term, bigger-stakes game.

vagarwa 14y ago

1.go to pinterest.com 2.make sure, you are not logged in. 3.search 'food' With all the money they have raised, can't they figure out a solution to this most juvenile of spams!!! It of-course doesn't matter since they still managed a $1.5BN valuation

akrymski 14y ago

Sites like this seem to indicate there are tonnes of fake accounts on Pinterest: www.buyrealpinterestfollowers.com My guess is that the majority of accounts are fake, and most posts are uploaded by spammers. However, this may be not much of a problem - like the HN / Digg / Reddit community the core Pinterest community is enough to rise the "good" stuff to the top I guess. If "social filtering" does work better than Google's algorithmic filtering and can't be gamed - Pinterest will succeed. In some ways Amazon has had similar functionality for a while, called the "wish-list". They could easily have build something similar based on their existing data.

DanBC 14y ago
I've not seen fake profiles or fake posts on my Pinterest. Maybe the fakes are good enough to look real?

freshfey 14y ago

Do the investors get to see the company's exact exact numbers (DAU, MAU, Revenue, etc) before they invest? I assume they do, but wouldn't those numbers get to the public somehow?

giltotherescue 14y ago

What about all the copyright holders, such as Getty Images, that are circling the water, waiting for Pinterest to start making money so the rights holders can charge licensing fees? Any business model they come up with has to factor in the costs of legally acquiring all the photos they use.

va_coder 14y ago

Is it possible to short stock in a non public company?

marvin 14y ago
Nope. It's not even possibly to buy any unless you're an accredited investor.

bbayer 14y ago

sharing pictures always works (imageshack,flicker,imgur,instagram,pinterest...)

usatechie 14y ago

Get the money now before it fizzles!