Pinterest has grown steadily since its launch (first as a beta version in March 2010, with the site founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp). The aim of the site is to enable users to ‘pin’ images and to share pictures that are grouped into themes, much like the way a physical pin board or scrapbook would be assembled. Today Pinterest boasts 250 million monthly users (or ‘pinners’ as they are commonly known) (October 2018 figure), with a strong client grouping skewed around women with children (Pinterest claims that it reaches “eight out of ten moms” in the U.S.)
Pinterest shares were valued at $19 each when trading opened and they closed at $24.40, a rise of 28 percent. This has led to the company being valued at $16 billion as of April 18, 2019. The share sale has also made the founders multi-billionaires, according to The Guardian, with Silberman netting the most at $1.6 billion.
SEE: Digital Journal’s Pinterest pages
In terms of revenue generation, Pinterest earns its money through advertisements, which are placed discreetly among the “pins” or posts that users upload on the site. However, for a business that is heavily dependent on advertisers any downturn in advertising spending could harm it over the longer-term.
Pinterest’s flotation on the stock market marks yet another Silicon Valley unicorn going public, following Zoom Video Communications and Lyft, and in advance of Uber which is expected to go public in May 2019. It is anticipated that AirBnB and WeWork will also be open for share trading later in the year.