The few people that used Pinterest actually really loved it, so instead of immediately changing the product, I thought maybe I could just find more people like me.

While waiting for the app approval, I collaborated with a friend to create a tool for collecting things online, which eventually evolved into Pinterest. In the early days of Pinterest, we thought it would be cool to create a tool for ourselves to collect things, which we believed could also help others see the world differently.

I didn't discover Pinterest; my team recognized its potential, and I was impressed by Ben Silbermann's calm and thoughtful approach as a founder.

When raising money, we had to articulate how big we thought Pinterest could be, which helped us attract ambitious and creative people to the team.

While the core problem Pinterest addresses remains the same, our ambition has expanded significantly over time.

In the beginning, we did desperate things to attract users, like changing Apple Store computers to display Pinterest, hoping to create buzz.

In March 2010, just a few months after launching Pinterest, we had almost 3,000 registered users and our daily pin count was steadily increasing.

We started to have meetups to connect with people who shared common interests, which is fundamentally what Pinterest is about.

A lot of people in Silicon Valley didn't get Pinterest; they looked at it and said it was visual and not organized in real time, but the fact that it made sense to someone was what really mattered to me.