You think you’re going to Toledo but you’re actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren’t driving well
BEN SILBERMANNYou think you’re going to Toledo but you’re actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren’t driving well
BEN SILBERMANNI’d never managed anyone before, so I don’t have a lot of experience. But I’m lucky – I have a lot of team members who have a really honest relationship with me.
BEN SILBERMANNI always just want to move along to the next step.
BEN SILBERMANNJust build things and find out if they work.
BEN SILBERMANNDon’t take too much advice.
BEN SILBERMANNPeople say doing a startup is like a marathon. It’s actually a roadtrip at night with no headlights.
BEN SILBERMANNI used to wake up and look at our analytics and think, “What if yesterday was the last day anyone used Pinterest?” Like, everyone collectively decided, “We’re done!” Over time I got more confidence.
BEN SILBERMANNDon’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give ~ with a few exceptions ~ generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.
BEN SILBERMANNThe companies that I really admire the most are the ones that have a deep visceral understanding of why people use their service, and they figure out ways of making money that are completely consistent with how people are feeling and what they are doing at the time.
BEN SILBERMANNIf Google teaches you anything, it’s that small ideas can be big.
BEN SILBERMANNI was obsessed with this idea that these things that you collect, they just say so much about who you are. I can’t say it came from hard-nosed business analysis… It was just something I really want to see built.
BEN SILBERMANNI think the thing that I’ve learned is that really great people, they actually want to work on hard problems.
BEN SILBERMANNI want Pinterest to be human. The Internet’s still so abstract… To me, boards are a very human way of looking at the world.
BEN SILBERMANNI look around my neighborhood, and I see people hailing a cab or ordering their food and then paying for it all with their phone. I’ve read about that stuff for a really long time, and now it’s starting to become commonplace.
BEN SILBERMANNI use Pinterest for everything. Book collections, trips, hobbies. It’s all there. I planned my wedding on it. When I had a kid, I planned all his stuff on it. So it was nice to discover that I wasn’t the only one.
BEN SILBERMANNAs a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It’s cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I’m not one of those people.
BEN SILBERMANN