Evan Sharp

“When we talk about Pinterest, we typically talk about use cases like cooking, or decorating your home... these are all very much project-oriented, goal-oriented behaviors.”

“I think I spent the first many years of Pinterest trying to be a really good leader, like what I thought a good leader should be.”

“I was in school for architecture and when you're in school for a creative discipline, so much of what you produce comes out of inspiration from other people. The more you're exposed to architecturally, the better you can develop your own language out of that history of architectural thought.”

“The things people use Pinterest for tend to be universal. The core usage is every day, common, universal things. What am I going to eat for dinner? How should my house look? What gift should I get for my partner? What should my kid's birthday party look like?”

“Images are really powerful in making us aware of what's possible.”

“There are not many people who understand that creative management is a very different thing than normal management. You don't manage accounts like you manage designers.”

“I just got a dog, and I never thought about using it to look up toys you get for the dog and walks to take the dog on, but there's so much stuff about that on Pinterest!”

“We think of Pinterest as a visual bookmarking tool for saving and discovering creative ideas, and that discovery part is a really a core part of what we work on every day.”

“I've always been a good student, made good enough grades to do well, and enjoyed a lot of different subjects. It wasn't until I went to architecture school, though, that I really loved school work.”

“Our public description, a visual bookmarking tool, tends to resonate with people. That's why we use it. When we talk to the tech press we tend to describe it as a company solving a discovery problem.”

“We want employees teaching each other what they know. We're tying to build a company so each person can achieve at a very high level - we're not just the engineering company or the design company.”

“Our vision for Pinterest is to be a discovery engine for people to see the possibilities for their life, to make their life more meaningfully lived.”

“Pinterest is not about sharing with your friends. It's about saving ideas for your future.”

“The thing I'm actually the most interested in, in a way, when I think about what to build in the world, is to try and help the experts put together a clearer framework around our inner experience and how to relate to that, and how to bring that to people at scale.”

“At its best Pinterest really does help lots of people with everyday things. Those things can seem really small. It's not like you're curing cancer, but all of those things together become really important.”

“The problem with images is obvious, they are two dimensional. Our vision at Pinterest is to use what's great about images, use the users taste to make good decisions but also to make sure to give them that information to make sure they get a more holistic understanding of what they are looking for.”

“My background industry is design - I code a lot, too - but there's been this narrative of design in technology becoming more prominent. What the UI enables on Pinterest is this human activity that ends up creating a great database.”

“The bread and butter of any internet service is user behavior.”

“When I have free time, which I wish I had more of, playing frisbee is a great way to get outdoors and have a bit of fun.”

“If we're not doing better, it's almost always our own inability to execute, not because someone else is stealing our market share or something.”