1. Industry
About.com
Retail Industry

Discuss in my forum

Inspiring Quotes About Social Media and Startups from Pinterest's Ben Silbermann

Inspirational Quotes and Leadership Views of Photo Sharing Pinterest Co-Founder

By , About.com Guide

Updated May 08, 2012
The wildly successful social media start-up Pinterest has exploded into the social media stratosphere and as of April 2012, was ranked as the third largest social media site behind Facebook and Twitter. Get an inside look at the fresh management views that are driving the successful expansion of another global Internet phenomenon through the eyes of its twenty-something founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann.

Click to get Inspired Insights Quote of the Day via e-mail >>

Quotable Quotes About Social Media and Internet Startups from Ben Silbermann, Co-Founder and CEO of Pinterest Photo Sharing Site:
  • “To me, [Pinterest's image-dominated] boards are a very human way of looking at the world.”

  • “It's exciting to see people using the product in ways that we never really expected. It's exciting that people care a lot. And then you also feel this weight of responsibility, you sort of brought this little thing to the world, this little product, and you want to see it get better.”

  • “I think anyone who makes products has this simultaneous joy and, almost, shame looking at it. You look at it all day and all you can see is all these things you want to make better.”

  • “There were literally dozens of version that [Pinterest grid] were fully coded, fully styled with live production of data that we went through. We'd vary the width, we'd vary where the meta-data was, we'd vary was the person on the left side or the right side...We just felt like if your collections didn't look awesome, if they weren't really beautiful, why would you spend time to build them?”

  • “The hard part about that idea of ‘minimum viable product,’ for me, is you don’t know what ‘minimum’ is, and you don’t know what ‘viable’ is.”

  • "This is a really strange place," he explains of Silicon Valley. "They love technology here like people I grew up with love sports."

  • “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.”

  • “Don't take too much advice. It's just that most people who have a lot of advice to give—there are a few people who are exceptions, and they have a lot of data in front of them—most people generalize whatever they did and say that's the strategy that made it work.”

  • “We just felt like if everyday we were getting a little bit closer to something that we would be really proud of, we would never regret the time we'd invested.”
More Philosophy and Inspiration from Retail Leader Quotes

©2013 About.com. All rights reserved.