David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Alright. We focused on this one, but I just want to highlight it. What makes Pinterest different as a significant focus on building our infrastructure in the company ahead of growth and wild contrast to other unicorn cousins. Yep. I worry a little bit that people will take the wrong lessons from the surface level facts here. This is one of the reasons we do this show. You look at the way Pinterest has carried itself over the last 10 years and then you look at the way say, Uber or Lyft have carried themselves , or Airbnb too, and there is definite craziness that’s going on within those other companies, and their markets are so much bigger and they will probably end up being bigger companies in the long run. Pinterest, the market is smaller. It’s extremely well-managed and will be a smaller company in the long run but I feel like much better managed. The lesson is not don’t manage your company well. The lesson is, target big markets, one. Two, manage your company well such that you’ll have the highest probability of succeeding within them. It’s a great elaboration there. Another point that I wanted to—I think this is more of a point of discussion. David, we talked on the LP show about the downsides of being a tools business rather than a platform or a network or a marketplace. Pinterest is kind of a tools business in that it’s much more about me and maybe a handful of other people I’m sharing a board with and it’s much less about communicating with other, seeing what other people are up to. It has, I think, less significant network effects. How do you juxtapose it sort of being a tools business but competing for the very same advertisers that these strong network effect businesses are competing for?…

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