Pinterest CEO: Expanding Advertising Markets | Mad Money | CNBC

last month pinterest received a hearty welcome to wall street with the bell rung and the IPO done should home gamers put a pin in this newly public stock or can this social media strieber create a delightful tableau in your portfolio [Music] I've spent months warning you about this IPO cycle how so maybe these covers will come in public with nosebleed valuations hey come on we know it the woo is off the rose and even the hottest stocks in the class of 2019 they're starting to who them take Pinterest the online vision ward turned social media platform this stock wore right out of the gate kept up its momentum for a couple of weeks despite some speed bumps until it imported last night picture stock got slammed because it spent a lot of money acquiring new customers an amazing rate something that I think makes perfect sense given that the company's growing like a weed I think the stock itself just got too hot not the company I like this pullback as a buying opportunity and one of the best names to come public in this recent spate of deals earlier today we sat down with Ben's Silverman he's the co-founder and CEO of Pinterest I think you'll like this take a look then being public is almost antithetical to what I think Pinterest is about because you have to be showy yet promotional how are you dealing with the concept of being public versus who you guys are well first Jim thanks for having me on I really really appreciate it it's definitely new experience for us we've been public for about a month now I've just been trying to keep us focused on where we got started and you know with the users that really enjoy the service a lot of people aren't familiar with Pinterest yet but yeah I mean if you're not familiar with it it's really a service that's it's about giving you personal inspiration it's a discovery platform so people use it to get inspired and plan things for their future everything from the meals they cook to the clothes they might want to wear sometimes people will redecorate a home and it's a service it's a little bit different than a lot of other online services because it's really it's about you it's about your interests your aspirations your future it's not as much about keeping up with your friends or following celebrities or reading the news so you're not showing off yourself you're exploring yeah it's really a personal service and I think that is something that's really needed these days I use social media I have Instagram accounts Facebook accounts I have a lot of ways to keep up with my friends and family there aren't that many services that are just about me and what do I want to do and I feel like I can think without having other people kind of watching what I'm doing what I might want to do in the future I looked at what numbers came out and the one that pops at me but of course you're so humble it's ridiculous frankly a healthy revenue growth of 54% that's a spectacular revenue growth how was that possible that is an amazing amazing trajectory yeah we're really happy with the growth this year you know I think when it comes down to is on Pinterest there's a really close alignment between what users are there to do you know they're there to plan their future and get inspiration and what businesses are there to do because they're there to inspire new customers in that alignment has been just really important as we build out advertising solutions if you think about ads on the internet often they're relevant but they're not actually helping you do what you want to do you don't even have to talk to your friends you don't need ads to watch the news or to watch a video but if for example you're you're you're finding you clothes to wear or if you're redecorating your house ads can actually be really really helpful to turn that inspiration into something in your real life I look at what you're doing as empowerment there are a lot of people who have really good ideas small small medium-sized business people on Etsy and on Shopify but we can't find them to me if you have 200 billion ideas you're gonna be able to find a way to get yourself known small medium sized business are really your sweet spot it's something that we're working really hard on you know I'm a huge fan of small medium sized business is often the most interesting products the most interesting services and Pinterest offers them this great chance to reach people in a really authentic way they don't have to think about how do I interrupt their conversations with friends or how do I shout they can really represent themselves through the things that they make so inside the company we're really working hard to build simple tools so small medium-sized businesses can actually advertise easily on Pinterest reach their customers and then make sure they can measure those results there's this weird thing then it's when I ask people about your company they always come back with this concept didn't Wall Street people I'm sorry not real people or simulations and they say they're too nice can you be too nice I don't know you know I've never really I've never really thought about being nice and being successful business as at odds with each other it's kind of like if someone told me that that guy's too funny to be a good basketball player it's good you know I think I think that what is true about Pinterest and about the way that we run the company is we're really focused on that core idea of inspiration so our brand our service it's all designed to make you feel like you can do things it's not there to kind of cut you down and I think the company inside and the culture and the way we try to project ourselves is meant to reflect that as well well I think that you make a really good pair with with Todd Morgan felt because in the and I urge people if they're going to buy the stock please was listen to the earnings call he talks about the metrics that frankly are what Wall Street understand new users engagement churn all those are terrific for you in the last year yeah we've been really excited to know users grew 22% this quarter and we're seeing growth both in the United States but we're seeing a lot internationally and that's been a big focus for us over the last couple years we think inspiration is something that everyone in the world can use and so we've been working to bring that to more and more markets it looks like I like the way that you are getting more I guess I would call the machine learning but also more visual so if I want to take a trip somewhere it's an entertaining to go to Pinterest as opposed to just looking at a something flat you're not flat how can you do that well you know Pender's has always been visual I'm a visual person I think most people find easier not akin I'm not nervous you like to draw I love I love design when I was a kid I loved arts and crafts both my parents are ophthalmologists so I don't know maybe that guy should be my usual is kind of built into the company but you know we've always thought that you know a picture's worth a thousand words' you know they say that for a reason and so if you can show someone an idea they don't have to have this specific vocabulary to describe what they're looking for and when we talk to people they often have a really clear sense of what they love but they don't have the exact words to describe and I know I'm that way too like I couldn't describe in just three key words my favorite living room or the kinds of clothes I want but if I see it I can say hey I think that would be really cool well that's was good talk about the only board experience because I actually find it pretty stimulating because you make me come up with five things that I that are important to me how'd you come that well we only get started with something right so whenever you sign up for a new service I always tell our team it's a little bit like a race you know people sign up for things all the time how quickly can we show you something that's going to inspire you I'm so you say hey this is worth doing more so we pick five things and then we show you a set of pins then as soon as you see a pin that really engages with you that's when our recommendation algorithms kick in and we invest a lot inside the company into machine learning to say if you like this we think you're really likely to enjoy that as well I mean it is it does have that Amazon approach without being sterile yeah you know it's a little bit different because the way we do recommendations it's all based on this idea of human collections so when you use Pinterest what we ask you to do is save things into these collections that we call pin boards and that curation data set is very different from the data set that amazon has which is like people who bought this bought that wear that Google has which is people that clicked on this link click on that link we call that the taste graph and it really is about taste it's about your personal preferences and so the quality of the recommendations feel very different you're from Des Moines area would you ever do something that is like someone who does in Omaha Nebraska would you ever have an annual meeting where people would get together in your hometown you know we've done meetups all over the country and actually I went to Des Moines with my co-founder last year and just visited some painters but we've never done a big event so some thing that maybe we should think about for the future because you would like to go to people's homes and learn but people want to learn about you and they want to learn about each other you would be the first company that I've seen that could rep could recreate what Warren Buffett's done remember he didn't do that for many years but you could do it now because people will come and maybe they'd be entertained and they'd learn and they would be ambassadors we'll definitely think about it I know early days one of the most fun things we did is we did these informal meetups and it was pretty cool because on Pinterest you weren't there to make social connections but it is true that when you get people together around a common hobby around a common interest they end up talking about things and learning things from each other so we'll think about it for the future people the site is a me site versus some of the other sites that I won't even refer to right now but they're Dems it's it how come me is much more compelling right now because the dam sites don't have the growth that you have you know I think that it's just been underserved historically so obviously connecting with other people is a huge need there are a ton of different ways that I can connect with my friends there just been haven't been that many services that are focused on your personal aspiration so I don't think it's an either/or I think people naturally want to do both but I think Pinterest is filling a hole that's been present in the market for a while well I am a huge believer in revenue growth I really at this point in your life cycle would not care as much about how much of spent to get the revenue growth were you surprised that people seem to think that your spending was out of line in order to get revenue growth and that's a misperception isn't it you need the revenue growth that's a sign of health yeah I mean we were really excited in revenue grew 54% and so we're definitely in the growth phase of our business we've tried to be very transparent and clear and the reason that we think about being in the growth phase is we think we're really early on in our journey we're early on here in the United States where we're working with retail and CPG companies but we want to expand how to small medium sized businesses and we're super early internationally we're two-thirds of our users are so we went from seven markets where ads can be bought to 13 markets this quarter but really we're just in the very very first inning we just hired folks in the ground well if that's the case it there could be some tension some people want you to make money I don't I want you to go to billion then two billion three billion but I may be in the minority these days after what happened with uber how do you tell people listen making money right now is not our goal what we want to do is be a dominant company worldwide hmm you know I think that it's actually not that complicated we've tried to just be really clear and if you listen to our earnings calls or if you talk to the analysts that were there in the roadshow we tried to be really transparent about our plans and then we're a new company so people will learn that over time our approach will be to try to do what we say so we're not trying to kind of set expectations artificially low and go above them we're just trying to represent so there's this little daylight between what we think about inside the company and the way that investors can make an educated decision on you know whether it's right for them I'm so glad you mentioned that because when people said the stock go down they thought that something had gone wrong I looked at theirs the thing that went wrong were people who expected you to do something other than what you said which was that we're gonna do what's in the s-1 which is the document maybe we can do a little bit better I don't know what people expected but you're not playing the game well we're trying to be transparent and I think that the consistent thing you'll hear from me before this after this for the future is that we won't want to focus in the long term and to us the long term is pretty straightforward we want to build the best place to get inspiration we want to build the best personalization the best visual discovery tools and then we want to make sure that if you see something you like we can actually help you make it into a reality so if it's a product you can go buy it if it's a recipe we can show you how to cook it you can get reviews on how that recipe turned out if it's a place we can get you there eventually and so that vision I don't think it's going to change for many years to come and then we're gonna do our best to pursue that in the best way possible but I think it's great what you're doing it's also humanity it's kind of what we're supposed to do you express you can design you can bring things to life and I want to applaud what you've done because it's really empowered everyday people to do things that are far beyond they thought they could accomplish so that's Ben Silbermann he's co-founder and CEO of Pinterest the simples P I ns listen go look at their letter their shareholder letter explains everything and they're delivering on everything they promised thank you hey thank you so much really Booya Jim Cramer here from there buddy thanks for watching see me see you on YouTube click here to subscribe and get the jump on my exclusives with CEOs plus market news investing advice and a whole lot more

Channel: CNBC Television

Views: 4,555

Keywords: CNBC, business news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, finance, money tips mad money (tv program), Jim Cramer, stock advice, Jim Cramer interview, CEO interview, interview, mad money interview, stock performance, market news, stock picks, Pinterest, Pinterest IPO, what is Pinterest, Pinterest stock, Pinterest stock price

Id: ImcJ8VoidTQ

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2019