Ben quoted Katie Evans, a designer at Kate Spade: “Pinterest is one of the tabs that I keep up on screen all day long. I love exploring what other people are pinning.”

The small team focused on perfecting Pinterest’s design and experience, rather than embrace the attention and distractions of press. They never even announced the fund raise.

Rather than blindly follow conventional wisdom that every Internet startup should have a technical founder, Ben and Evan played to their strengths and stuck with their design-centricity.

Pinterest went from five employees with no revenue in a cramped Palo Alto apartment in 2011 to roughly 1,800 team members with more than $750 million in revenue and gleaming offices around the world just before their IPO.

Pinterest’s ability to influence shoppers “mid-funnel” is a byproduct of its pinner community using the platform to seek inspiration for their lives.